Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel, called for better coordination between US regulators in overseeing the crypto industry.
E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images
Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of hedge fund Citadel, called the stunning collapse of FTX a travesty.
He said the event will undermine trust in all financial markets and affect wealth-building.
Griffin also rallied for better coordination between US regulators in overseeing the crypto industry.
Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder and CEO of hedge fund giant Citadel, slammed the stunning collapse of crypto exchange FTX and called it a travesty, as investors risk losing billions.
“FTX is one of these absolute travesties in the history of financial markets,” Griffin said on a live stream of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore on Tuesday. “People are going to lose billions of dollars and that undermines trust in all financial markets.”
Distressed FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday, after it was embroiled in a week-long liquidity crisis.
The fallout from the FTX’s blow-up could have societal impact as the confidence of a generation of investors would be shaken, Griffin said. “That’s really awful because the 20-something-year-olds to 40-year-olds who are so engaged in crypto, they’ve got to save for their retirement and if they don’t believe or trust in financial markets, this is a huge problem,” he said.
Griffin was weighing in on the FTX implosion as Citadel — which has over $50 billion in assets under management as of November — is reportedly setting up a crypto trading marketplace with a high-frequency trading firm, CoinDesk reported in June.
Griffin also called for better coordination between US regulators in overseeing the crypto industry, saying it’s “preposterous” that “they all dance around who owns what and who.” He did not name any agencies involved in the “turf war.”
“The bottom line is, American investors have really gotten hurt here to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in decline in market cap and crypto over the last two years. I mean, that really strikes at the entire core essence of what’s investor protection all about,” he said.