CZ aka the CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency in the world, had an instrumental part in FTX’s fall from grace.
The initial collapse started when Binance decided to dispose of assets related to FTX, causing the exchange to suffer a huge deficit in liquidity.
Many attribute Changpeng Zhao’s decision as an attack on a competitor exchange, however, the Binance CEO states that this is not the case.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Zhao claimed that he never had anything against Bankman-Fried, the now-former FTX CEO.
“We don’t focus on other smaller exchanges,” Zhao said.
Also, CZ stated that the decision to completely liquidate Binance’s FTT wasn’t a direct attack on FTX:
“We were never in a battle with him,” Changpeng Zhao said. “He may think he’s in a battle with us. We didn’t even notice.”
In addition to these claims, CZ declared that Bankman-Fried had a liking for talking thrash about Binance, behind their backs.
“We did hear some concerns about, you know, him badmouthing us behind our backs in D.C., in other political lobbying circles,”
Binance Was One Of FTX’s First Investors
However, the clear animosity between the two exchange leaders wasn’t always present.
In fact, Binance was one of the first major companies to invest in Bankman-Fried’s exchange.
Zhao’s firm used to own over a billion dollars worth of the exchange’s native token: FTT. Binance acquired these tokens when it decided to sell its FTX shares.
“We just said, ‘Look, we don’t wanna be entangled, we just want to exit our equity portion.’ We did that a year and a half ago. And as part of that transaction we got some FTT tokens,” Zhao said.
However, after deciding to deliberately liquidate these assets, Binance kick-started the series of events that would eventually lead to FTX’s bankruptcy.
Changpeng Zhao tried to acquire FTX, in order to avoid any major damage to the cryptocurrency sector. However, after seeing first-person the size of the crypto-exchange’s debt – Binance withdrew from the negotiation.
Following the removal of the acquisition offer, Zhao claimed that he was surprised, stating that Bankman-Fried “lied to everybody,”.
CZ Answers If Regulation Could Avoid Another FTX Moment
Governments likely saw the turn of events surrounding FTX as another reason for asking for more cryptocurrency regulations.
When asked if more regulation could have avoided the sector’s meltdown, Changpeng Zhao wasn’t so into the idea.
He said that – while regulations could avoid some of the problems, at the end of the day, Bankman-Fried’s lies were the sole proprietor of the chaotic FTX case.
“We shouldn’t blame this problem on any single person, other than Sam,” he said.