| So What's the Good News?
I see two silver linings here.
First off, this does not seem (at this point) to be an endless chain of contagion. Crypto companies either loaned 3AC hundreds of millions and are on the verge of insolvency or they did not. BlockFi dodged the bullet and Voyager did not. Terra Luna sold off billions in bitcoin and didn't have billions more left to sell. We most likely would have found out most of them by now. (knock on wood)
So the bleeding can only continue so much longer, as long as bitcoin doesn't fall deeper.
Second, this is bullish for one segment of the crypto industry—hardware wallets. As crypto users are becoming more aware of the whole point of bitcoin, removing the trusted third party, more of them are buying hardware wallets.
As Rachel Wolfson reported in CoinTelegraph earlier today, Ledger has been seeing more sales, at one point up to $2 million per day in May after the public became aware of Coinbase's fine print after reporting a negative quarter.
What gets me is that so many people weren't paying attention to the obvious facts. Companies aren't naturally evil or dishonest, but the fact is some percentage of them in any field fail. When you give them your money and they fail, they don't have your money anymore. It's the very reason why bitcoin was created.
For those who have their money on exchanges, especially those offering yield, you are exposing yourself to risk. If you are holding your own keys, you are the main one to worry about. If you choose to keep money on exchanges (and I do keep a percentage on exchanges), it is at your own risk.
If you don't know this by now, I suggest you rapidly study self-custody and the history of crypto exchange hacks and failures.
Best of luck to Ledger, Trezor and other great companies out there educating people on how to self-custody their crypto. | 