Does the extradition of one crypto’s highest-profile players mean digital currencies are fundamentally unsound?

Published

3 years ago

December 22, 2022

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As a symbol of the year in crypto, the sight of Sam Bankman-Fried being hustled out of court in Nassau to a blacked-out SUV that would take him to an airfield, and an extradition flight to New York, takes some beating.

For the highest-profile player in cryptocurrency, 2022 has come to an abrupt and unforgiving end.

The man who received celebrities, prime ministers and presidents in shorts and a T-shirt is no longer the quirky nerd whose genius might unlock the potential to earn digital billions.

Instead, he’s the face of a massive fraud, accused of using customers’ money in the crypto exchange FTX to cover his bad bets and fund a Bahamian penthouse lifestyle while he preached a doctrine of altruism, in which his millions were earned in the service of the less fortunate.

Prosecutors revealed on Wednesday that his closest partners in the business, his co-founder and the some-time girlfriend who ran his crypto hedge fund, have turned, pleading guilty to wrongdoing and providing evidence against him.

SBF, as he is sometimes known, has insisted that none of this was intentional, that the siphoning of customer money to his private accounts is a function of incompetence rather than venality.

But with tens of millions of those dollars having been directed to political donations, Washington is as embarrassed as celebrities like Tom Brady – who beamed their endorsements in FTX’s lavish marketing campaigns – and the outlook is bleak.

Was it inevitable?

The question for the crypto industry, and the wider field of digital assets, is whether FTX’s collapse is an inevitable symptom of a sector that, in promising to magic value out of the electronic ether, has always been short on trust and credibility, and fertile ground for corruption.

Or is SBF, as his successor as chief executive of FTX alleges, simply an old-fashioned embezzler whose alleged crimes were sophisticated only in the way they were hidden in plain view? And if so, do digital assets have a future not forever mired in wild volatility of questionable assets, sudden collapses, and cons?

It had already been a chastening year with a series of summer collapses, of crypto lender Celsius and the Terra-Luna network, a scandal with its own fugitive from justice, Do Kwon, subject of an arrest warrant in South Korea, and an Interpol red notice.

These collapses wiped out billions, and a 75% slump in the value of the original cryptocurrency Bitcoin took a few more, much of it from retail investors whose willingness to exchange real money for digital ciphers is the fuel that keeps the crypto machine running.

Frances Coppola, an economist and noted crypto-sceptic, says these episodes are a consequence of the fundamentally unsound nature of the products, hastened by the wider economic climate in which cheap money is no longer available to top up the punchbowl.

“In the time crypto’s been in existence it has promised much and delivered very little, except a lot of bubbles which have then spectacularly burst,” she says. “We are now in our third major bursting of a crypto bubble in its short timeframe and it’s not at all clear when or if it will recover from this.

“I think FTX and the rest, Terra, Luna, Celsius, are a phenomenon of the crypto bubble that we’ve seen in the last two years. It’s not greatly surprising that it all came to grief when the Fed [US Federal Reserve] started to tighten monetary policy along with other central banks, and the withdrawal from the global economy of all the money that had been pumped in during the pandemic.”

Wild volatility part of Crypto’s appeal

The wild volatility that has been so costly this year appears to be a fundamental part of crypto’s appeal. Speculation and the ability to massively leverage bets by borrowing from exchanges feels like it has more in common with gambling than an investment, a retail version of the wild derivatives trading exposed to public view at horrible cost in 2008.

That has not stopped mainstream investors from taking a greater interest in crypto. Some of the biggest venture capital funds in America lost money in FTX, and banks are responding to demand from institutional investors unwilling to leave an estimated trillion dollars in new digital assets on the table.

Waqar Chaudry, of Standard Chartered bank, told me the next two years will be pivotal for mainstream engagement with digital finance: “We believe digital assets are here to stay for the long term. The primary job for a bank is to provide services to the clients where they need it.

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“From an institutional banking point of view, there is demand where large institutions are moving into cryptocurrencies. So where they are moving into that world they need service providers who have pedigree in financial services, and they are talking to us about what their plans are and what they look like for the next 12 to 24 months.”

The corporate world meanwhile is looking hard at the technology that lies beneath. These ‘distributed digital ledgers’, in which watertight cryptography and a public network of scrutineers replacing a clearing house or intermediary, have long appeared to have transformational potential.

For years blockchain has seemed like an answer awaiting the right question, but numerous routes are becoming clear.

The economy of things

Philip Skipper, Vodafone’s head of technology for the internet of things, says they are crucial to the next step in digital living, ‘the economy of things’.

“We already have devices that you can communicate with. The economy of things is when these devices communicate and transact with each other.

“So you can be driving down the road and your electric car could be communicating with a traffic light, you can be buying access to a congestion charge for the next 50 yards. It’s the ability of these devices to connect and transact together. That is the economy of things. Underpinning that is how you link all those plays together and that’s where blockchain has the key role.”

Global supply chains, so disrupted by COVID, could be transformed by the technology too. The combination of blockchain and stable digital currency opens the door to smart money, which could link payments to quality and delivery at each stage of a production process.

The flip side of this notion is state-controlled money which limits a citizen’s ability to spend as and when they choose. Imagine welfare payments paid only in approved digital coins that would only unlock for approved products.

The potential of these technologies for good and ill makes the role of regulators and government central, as well as the importance of public debate about what exactly we want from our money.

That absence of regulation is a common theme to the catastrophic failures in crypto this year. Ironically for a technology that promised to bypass mainstream institutions, they will be central to shaping the future of crypto and blockchain.

Business

Donald Trump says tariffs will be cut after ‘amazing’ meeting with Xi Jinping

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3 hours ago

October 30, 2025

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Donald Trump says tariffs will be cut after 'amazing' meeting with Xi Jinping

Donald Trump has described crucial trade talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping as “amazing” – and says he will visit Beijing in April.

The leaders of the world’s two biggest economies met in South Korea as they tried to defuse growing tensions – with both countries imposing aggressive tariffs on exports since the president’s second term began.

Catch up on Trump-Xi meeting

Aboard Air Force One, Mr Trump confirmed tariffs on Chinese goods exported to the US will be reduced, which could prove much-needed relief to consumers.

It was also agreed that Beijing will work “hard” to stop fentanyl flowing into the US.

Semiconductor chips were another issue raised during their 100-minute meeting, but the president admitted certain issues weren’t discussed.

“On a scale of one to 10, the meeting with Xi was 12,” he told reporters en route back to the US.

Xi a ‘tough negotiator’, says Trump

The talks conclude a whirlwind visit across Asia – with Mr Trump saying he was “too busy” to see Kim Jong Un.

However, the president said he would be willing to fly back to see the North Korean leader, with a view to discussing denuclearisation.

Mr Trump had predicted negotiations with his Chinese counterpart would last for three or four hours – but their meeting ended in less than two.

The pair shook hands before the summit, with the US president quipping: “He’s a tough negotiator – and that’s not good!”

It marks the first face-to-face meeting between both men since 2019 – back in Mr Trump’s first term.

There were signs that Beijing had extended an olive branch to Washington ahead of the talks, with confirmation China will start buying US soybeans again.

American farmers have been feeling the pinch since China stopped making purchases earlier this year – not least because the country was their biggest overseas market.

Chinese stocks reached a 10-year high early on Thursday as investors digested their meeting, with the yuan rallying to a one-year high against the US dollar.

Analysis: A fascinating power play

Sky News Asia correspondent Helen-Ann Smith – who is in Busan where the talks took place – said it was fascinating to see the power play between both world leaders.

She said: “Trump moved quickly to dominate the space – leaning in, doing all the talking, even responding very briefly to a few thrown questions.

“That didn’t draw so much as an eyebrow raise from his counterpart, who was totally inscrutable. Xi does not like or respond well to unscripted moments, Trump lives for them.”

On Truth Social, Mr Trump had described the summit as a gathering of the “G2” – a nod to America and China’s status as the world’s two biggest economies.

While en route to see President Xi, he also revealed that the US “Department of War” has now been ordered to start testing nuclear weapons for the first time since 1992.

Business

Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta results overshadowed by growing fears of AI bubble

Published

4 hours ago

October 30, 2025

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Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta results overshadowed by growing fears of AI bubble

Some of the world’s biggest tech giants reported quarterly earnings on Wednesday – with a mixed bag of results as fears grow that a bubble is forming in artificial intelligence.

Microsoft revealed that its spending on AI infrastructure hit almost $35bn (£26.5bn) in the three months to the end of September, a sharp rise compared with the year before.

Despite revenue jumping 18% and net income rising 12%, shares plunged by close to 4% in after-hours trading, with investors concerned about the mounting costs of sustaining the boom.

Microsoft’s vice president of investor relations Jonathan Neilson said: “We continue to see demand which exceeds the capacity we have available.

“Our capital expenditure strategy remains unchanged in that we build against the demand signal we’re seeing.”

Big Tech is facing increasing pressure to show returns on the massive AI investments they’re making, against a backdrop of soaring valuations and limited evidence of productivity gains.

Microsoft became the world’s second most valuable company this week thanks to its 27% stake in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

Its market capitalisation surged beyond $4trn (£3trn) at one point, but that psychologically significant threshold is now in doubt because of recent selloffs.

Alphabet makes history

Last night’s results weren’t all doom and gloom – with shares in Google’s parent company surging by 6% in after-hours trading.

Alphabet has also set out aggressive spending ambitions, but placated investors thanks to an impressive set of results that surpassed analysts’ expectations.

Total revenue for the quarter stood at a staggering $102.35bn (£77bn), with the search giant’s advertising unit remaining robust despite growing competition.

But concerns linger that Alphabet’s dominance in search could be undermined by AI startups, with OpenAI recently unveiling a browser designed to rival Google Chrome.

Hargreaves Lansdown’s senior equity analyst Matt Britzman shrugged off this threat – and believes the company is “gearing up for long-term AI leadership”.

He said: “Alphabet just delivered its first-ever $100bn quarter, silencing the doubters with standout performances in both Search and Cloud.

“AI Overviews and AI Mode are clearly resonating with users, helping to ease fears that Google’s core search business is under threat from generative AI.

“With ChatGPT’s recent browser demo falling short of a game-changer, Google looks well-placed to put up a strong defence as gatekeeper to the internet.”

Meta faces a mauling

Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – saw its shares tumble by as much as 10% in after-hours trading.

Mark Zuckerberg’s tech empire anticipates “notably larger” capital expenses next year as it ramps up investments in AI and goes on a hiring spree for top talent.

Net income in the third quarter stood at $2.7bn (£2bn) and suffered an eye-watering $16bn (£12bn) hit because of Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”.

Meta was late to the party on AI but has now doubled down on this still-nascent technology – setting an ambition to achieve superintelligence, a milestone where machines could theoretically outthink humans.

The social networking giant continues to benefit from its massive user base, and expects fourth-quarter revenues of up to $59bn (£44bn).

Business

Victims of Post Office Capture scandal say they are being treated as ‘second-class’ citizens

Published

13 hours ago

October 29, 2025

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Victims of Post Office Capture scandal say they are being treated as 'second-class' citizens

Victims of the Post Office Capture scandal say they are being treated as second-class citizens – accusing the government of running a “two-tier” compensation system.

It comes as the Department for Business and Trade announced the launch of the first-ever redress scheme for those wronged after faulty software created false accounting shortfalls in the 1990s.

Capture was used between 1992 and 1999 in up to 2,500 Post Office branches, with many sub postmasters making up cash losses themselves.

A government-commissioned report last year found it was likely the software caused accounting errors.

The Capture Redress Scheme will provide payments of up to £300,000, and more in “exceptional” cases, to former postmasters who suffered financial losses.

Steve Marston, who was convicted in 1998 of stealing from his branch and is not yet eligible to apply to the scheme, said other victims were feeling “frustrated” with it.

“I want to know, what do they consider exceptional circumstances?” he said, “because I want it to see it in black and white what they consider as exceptional circumstances rather than just a vague statement.”

He said that victims felt like “second-class” citizens, describing the Horizon schemes and the new Capture scheme as “two-tier” systems.

“[It’s] one law for the Horizon victims, and a totally different law for us Capture victims and that’s not really fair.

“One of the main bones of contention is the fact that with Horizon there’s a right of appeal against decisions, and you’ve got multiple rights to appeal.

“Whereas with the Capture appeal process, there’s only a one-shot chance, so basically, it’s a second-class system.”

The scheme will be tested for the first 150 claimants before a full roll-out.

Chris Roberts, whose mother Liz was jailed in 1999 for theft, is one of them and said victims were concerned about the “glacial pace” of government.

He is able to apply to the redress scheme on behalf of his father, who was a postmaster alongside his mother, who oversaw accounts.

Both Liz and Bill Roberts have passed away.

“I’d hate us to get to the point where, you know, this scheme’s come out and we go through these 150 cases and then it’s further developed … and half the people it would apply to are gone,” Chris said.

“We will lose people before they can see justice, and I think that’s a terrible tragedy.”

Under the Capture scheme, eligible claimants will receive an immediate interim payment of £10,000.

An independent panel will then assess final awards through a banding model ranging from £10,000 to £300,000, with higher payments in exceptional circumstances.

The Post Office Minister Blair McDougall, speaking exclusively to Sky News, said he understood why victims have “low levels of trust in the state”.

He said: “They’ve been treated appallingly by the state, but what we’ve done with this scheme is to try to learn some of those lessons from previous compensation schemes for postmasters that didn’t work.

“So we’re collecting more evidence from the beginning to try to speed things up.

“We’re trying to give sub postmasters the benefit of the doubt throughout this. And I hope we will see that this scheme treats them with a bit more dignity and a bit more urgency.”

He also said that funds overall for the Capture scandal were “uncapped”, with “no ceiling” on compensation.

Mr McDougall also said that the government was working “as fast as we possibly can, and that’s because people have waited so long”.

When asked if he would personally guarantee speedy redress, he replied: “Absolutely – that’s what we are doing today, to make sure that we have a scheme that gets people’s redress as quickly as possible.

“But it’s challenging, because we’re dealing with cases where there’s not a lot of evidence. So much time has passed.

“So we tried to design a scheme to get postmasters the benefit of the doubt and to try to be as fair as possible.”

He said within the scheme there was the “opportunity” for victims to make a “wider case of the impact on their lives – and if the independent panel feels that there is a compelling case, they can go beyond that £300,000”.