The lessons for India from the FTX saga

FTX, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange, run by self-styled “effective altruist" Sam Bankman-Fried, collapsed last week. The exchange saw a run on its virtual assets precipitated by aggressive short-selling of an FTX-owned blockchain token called FTT, by a business rival. This led to a liquidity crisis, followed almost immediately by insolvency. Bankman-Fried issued multiple public apologies for the mismanagement that led up to the quick disintegration. For India, the heady mix of technology and finance that crypto marketsrepresent may seem daunting, but they are necessary to understand and govern all the same.