A word from Arc CEO Rich Pasqua on recent events regarding FTX, its industry impact, the future of web3, and pushing ahead:
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This will be a fairly quick post for today… I wanted to take a few moments to address the FTX situation, which is the worst and perhaps the most embarrassing moment in Crypto history, to say the least. First and foremost, we want to send well wishes and positive thoughts to all the people, companies, and projects affected by this. The story of the FTX scandal is still unfolding, and I’m sure by now you all have heard much about it so far from multiple crypto personalities and channels, as this is mainstream news that affects us all.
To be clear, this collapse was not due to a security breach, software issues, or the network itself. Was this a premeditated crime generated by Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) and his internal team, designed to mislead users, investors, and government regulators? It will take years to truly understand the complexity and ripple effect this will have on industries in and out of the crypto space. The details and truth are being tracked and exposed now, and let’s hope we won’t have a repeat of 2008 when financial institutions broke the law, many people lost their investments, and no one was held accountable.
It is also important to note that FTX is a centralized exchange that goes against everything crypto stands for. Crypto was born from the 2008 financial collapse, offering users a way to take back custody and ownership of their own assets. It was a way of overriding an antiquated and broken system. FTX does not represent crypto at all, but please know there are many protocols out there that are building decentralized, permissionless tools that stay true to the original ethos of crypto and will continue to push ahead regardless of recent events.
But… This is not a message about falling down the FTX rabbit hole, pointing fingers, or highlighting the obvious corruption in all of this. Rather, it’s a message to all of us out there that truly believe there is a better, more secure way of governance, transacting and exposing the truth through cryptographic technology.
The good news in all of this is: web3 / crypto is not going anywhere. There are enough of us out there who will continue to learn and build on the blockchain, creating a better way forward for all of us. This is the moment where we all should reflect on this and other events in the past to determine who we want in our world and continuously weed out the bad actors. It’s also a good time to define new metrics and tools that offer transparency to end users and investors, allowing everyone to be guardians and make smarter decisions.
With that said, there is an even longer road ahead of us and a lot of work to be done in order to restore faith and momentum in the blockchain, Web3, and investment space. Here at Arc and through the Web3 Unpacked podcast, our purpose has remained very simple from day one: explore the people, projects, and visionaries building the trusted web, and we feel these are the people and projects building up the truth, block by block and not exploiting it for personal gains.
The narrative must change, and it all starts with us, not forgetting why we are all in this and not handing over control to anyone. We must continuously remind ourselves of the importance between centralized and decentralized exchanges and tools and understand the companies we will be interacting with, the founders, their teams, and their history.
Our core mission together is to stay true to the idea of a decentralized network and manifest and build upon all the positives this technology can bring when used properly. Believe in what we are doing and believe there is truth out there, and keep pushing ahead.
Thank you, and be safe.
/Rich Pasqua, CEO
& The Arc Team
