This week’s focus in "Deconstruction" is on Sam Bankman-Fried's ambitious plans, Tether's strategy to circumvent MiCA regulations, and the ban on the digital dollar in the U.S. We will also discuss the burst bubble of meme coins, traditional exchanges' legal battles for monopoly, and the global trend of governments eroding privacy.
Sam Bankman-Fried's Ambitions
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, serving a 25-year sentence for one of the largest financial frauds, is making ambitious plans for life after prison. He confided to his cellmate that he would need $50 million to $100 million in startup capital to "make serious money" and mentioned a cryptocurrency project that "everyone will flock to." Meanwhile, he has reached out to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, and his parents have hired lobbyists.
The community has also recalled FTX's venture investments (stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, and Solana worth a total of $114 billion), which bankruptcy administrators sold for a fraction of that amount.
However, most commentators agree that while SBF may be a brilliant investor, he engaged in completely unacceptable actions by illegally using client funds. Therefore, even if he wasn't joking about his future crypto project, it's hard to imagine him regaining trust.
Tether's Strategy in Europe
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has announced that all cryptocurrency platforms must obtain a license under the new MiCA regulation by July 1, or they must cease servicing EU clients entirely.
Tether's management has intentionally opted not to obtain a license, deeming the requirement to hold 60% of reserves in European banks as risky for financial stability. Instead, the company has chosen a strategy to circumvent direct restrictions by investing in partners that already have legal status. Through these partners, fully legitimate stablecoins will be issued, allowing Tether to maintain its presence in the EU market without direct compliance with local authorities.
However, the forced delisting of USDT in Europe will impact professional market participants: market makers will have to split liquidity pools, inter-exchange arbitrage will become more complicated, and spreads will widen.
Ban on Digital Dollar in the U.S.
The U.S. is moving toward a legislative ban on the digital dollar at least until the end of 2030. The provision prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC is embedded in a housing affordability bill—this packaging helped overcome resistance that had stalled a separate anti-CBDC document.
American lawmakers are concerned about specific issues: total surveillance of every transaction in real-time, control over spending (programming money with the ability to freeze without a court order, as seen with the digital yuan), and the displacement of commercial banks.
Private stablecoins are clearly exempt from the ban. For the global CBDC race, this means that the world's largest economy is officially withdrawing from it, while stablecoins are marked as an alternative that the government is willing to tolerate.
Consequences of the Meme Coin Hype
Revenue for the platform Pump.fun has plummeted by over 70%. The platform allowed anyone to launch their token for a few dollars, leading to an explosive increase in the number of new coins, but ultimately nearly 96% of all traders either lost money or earned no more than $500. To prevent price drops, developers announced a token burn worth about $370 million (36% of the supply).
This situation reflects a broader capital redistribution process: investors are mass liquidating losses, pulling liquidity from unregulated instruments that major players view as gambling, and returning funds to traditional finance.
The practice of buying assets without fundamental value has ceased to work; traders must return to basic principles and seek digital assets with real practical applications, making the market safer.
CME Group Defends Monopoly
The operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, plans to sue the CFTC over its approval for the platform Kalshi to launch perpetual futures. CME's CEO, Terrence Duffy, is formally appealing to investor protection (comparing high leverage to the 2008 mortgage crisis) and the Dodd-Frank Act.
At the same time, CME holds exclusive licenses for all major benchmarks on which futures contracts are based. Duffy has combined investor concern with monopoly protection in his lawsuit. The logic is roughly as follows: we control the benchmarks, so new instruments based on these indices must trade with us. A similar pattern is observed with ICE, which demands "equal rules" due to the rise of the Hyperliquid platform.
Destruction of Messaging Privacy
The UK government is preparing legislation that will completely ban the use of social media (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube) for citizens under 16, while France and the EU are advancing initiatives for mass scanning of personal messages on smartphones before they are sent.
A global trend is emerging: under the pretext of combating terrorism or protecting children, governments are forcing citizens to relinquish their basic right to privacy. As noted by Pavel Durov, the forced abandonment of end-to-end encryption technology (embedding backdoors) will not stop real criminals, as they can easily create their own closed applications. In the end, ordinary law-abiding citizens will be the ones affected.
Moreover, weakening encryption systems makes corporate networks of banks and funds vulnerable to hacking attacks and data theft, while users will need to switch to decentralized services to maintain privacy.
This is a shortened version of the podcast. Watch the full episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgiBzekHjfw
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