Expect ‘records broken’ by Bitcoin ETF: Brett Harrison (ex-FTX US), X Hall of Flame
The former president of FTX US dishes the dirt on his falling out with former Jane Street colleague Sam Bankman-Fried and predicts the spot Bitcoin ETF will far outshine the record-breaking success of the Bitcoin Futures ETF.
Who is this guy anyway?
The ex-president of FTX US, Brett Harrison, tells Magazine that he didn’t say a single word to Sam Bankman-Fried during the two-month notice period after he resigned, which was only months before the whole exchange blew up. Even getting a message to SBF to say he was resigning in the first place was hard work.
“I had to talk to other people in the company to formally resign. I wrote one text to Sam and I got back a single heart emoji. That was the last I heard from him,” Harrison declares.
Harrison and Bankman-Fried had been colleagues years earlier at quantitative trading firm Jane Street, where Harrison saw his potential while teaching SBF in a course on programming for traders. But things went south real quick between them at FTX.
Harrison claims it was due to Bankman-Fried’s inflated ego and his reluctance to accept any feedback or advice.
“Sam hated criticism and, as a result, refused to communicate with me. It drove my decision to quit even further,” he says.
Yet, Harrison says he had no clue of the storm about to engulf the company with FTX declaring bankruptcy only a few months after he bailed from the U.S. arm of exchange.
“The rest of us, especially in the U.S., were blindsighted. We were working with regulators, top lawyers, and to have the whole organization fail because of one person’s greed, will stay with us for the rest of our life.”
However, he feels justice was done in the recent fraud trial against his former boss.
“I do feel the result was absolutely just, and I’m glad that justice was served quickly; I think it was essential that Sam was held accountable for his actions,” he declares.
Meanwhile, Harrison wasted no time diving into a new project.
He co-founded Architect.xyz, a DeFi platform that focuses on bridging all the different opportunities in the digital asset space for both institutional and retail investors.
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Harrison is a bit of a brainiac and has a computer science degree focused on artificial intelligence (AI) from Harvard University. So, who better to ask about the potential for AI to take over the world?
“I do not think AI is a threat to humanity,” he declares, pointing out that AI has been in development for much longer than people think:
“Lots of people are now seeing AI for the first time, they don’t appreciate the decades of progress that has gone into it.”
Harrison is more concerned about humans using AI to pull off scams and swipe identities more effortlessly.
“It truly is just linear algebra,” he says. “The idea that linear algebra is some existential threat to our survival just feels somewhat fanciful to people who have been practitioners in the field for a long time.”
What led to Twitter Fame?
Harrison is a smart guy who drops interesting stuff on social media that people seem to dig.
But let’s not dance around the fact that the FTX connection is what blew up his follower numbers, with his count hitting its highest weekly peak when FTX took a nosedive in November 2022, when he gained 2,140 followers, according to data from Social Blade.
Back in January, his long rant about his departure from X got nearly 3 million eyeballs. He said he wasn’t canned from the FTX gig; it just wasn’t his dream job, and SBF was an “insecure, prideful manager.”
Content people can expect
If you scroll through Harrison’s timeline over the years, you’ll notice his glam lifestyle has toned down considerably since the FTX days.
Back then, he was often seen hanging out with celebs and former prime ministers.
Nowadays, it’s way more low-key. Besides throwing in some market talk, Harrison’s been sharing snippets about his family life lately.
He’s even flexing about saving toys from the FTX US office that somehow dodged the whole bankruptcy drama.
What type of content does he like?
Harrison loves the blend of genius and goofiness on Crypto X — getting a daily fix of humor and high intellect.
“One of the things I love about Crypto Twitter is the perfect mix of highly intellectual cerebral, either Market structure or political commentary, and degenerate memes.”
However, when we asked about the accounts he’s into, he’s not that forthcoming.
After doing some light digging, it turns out he’s following 2,100 accounts, and guess who’s in the mix? None other than Bankman-Fried’s pal Tiffany Fong.
Bitcoin predictions?
Harrison used to avoid making predictions, saying he’d never have predicted the events that happened to him. But that was when things were going too smoothly, and that’s all changed.
Harrison declares there is a very “high probability” that a spot Bitcoin ETF will get approved in the first quarter of 2024.
As for price predictions? Harrison isn’t tossing out any six-figure numbers right away.
“In Q1 assuming there is an ETF that’s approved. I think something in the $50,000 to $55,000 range feels pretty probable,” he states.
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He doesn’t see Bitcoin hitting six figures until “toward the end of 2024 or early 2025 at the earliest.”
He points to the first day of Bitcoin Futures ETF as just a little hint of how optimistic he is about the spot Bitcoin ETF:
“If you remember the day when a Bitcoin Futures ETF was listed the inflows were some of the highest ever seen in the history of ETFs. I think we’re going to see even more records broken for a spot Bitcoin ETF.”
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The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the three month period.
The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.
Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.
And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.
Pic: Reuters
Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Am I satisfied with the numbers published today? Of course not. I want growth to be stronger, to come sooner, and also to be felt by families right across the country.”
“It’s why in my Mansion House speech last night, I announced some of the biggest reforms of our pension system in a generation to unlock long term patient capital, up to £80bn to help invest in small businesses and scale up businesses and in the infrastructure needs,” Ms Reeves later told Sky News in an interview.
“We’re four months into this government. There’s a lot more to do to turn around the growth performance of the last decade or so.”
New economy data tests chancellor’s growth plan
The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.
The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.
The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.
It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.
Read more from Sky News:
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The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.
The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.
Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.
The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.
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