Top Deck Recent Reflections

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Published in

Galleon

4 min readNov 15, 2022

If Rum can’t fix it, you are not using enough rum!

TLDR

Our thoughts on FTX, Alameda and SBF.
Galleon’s position is unaffected; we had no material exposure to FTX/Alameda. We Build.
The Cursed Pirates release is most likely pushed till 2023, given the state of the market.

FTX implosion

Last week was insane, our team and the rest of the market were completely shocked by what transpired and it’s very difficult not to be seriously disheartened. The majority of the Galleon team has been in the space for over five years and we agreed internally that this is by far the worst spectacle we’ve witnessed in crypto.

This space is all about standing up for the little guy, building the future of finance with builders who are genuinely passionate about decentralised finance (DeFi), enabling individuals to become their own banks and moving away from corrupt centralised entities that are so prominent in traditional finance.

Perhaps we got complacent, maybe we didn’t see the red flags or the cracks beginning to form, but after seeing an individual achieving so much in such a short space of time — proactive in championing the space against politicians and had the capital to help invest and grow the ecosystem—is it fair to be so hard on ourselves for being duped? Hindsight is a beautiful thing after all.

Crypto is often targeted by grifters, charlatans and snake oil salesmen, but Alameda (and SBF) initially appeared different, untouchable. Sure they were notorious in the market for farming and dumping tokens but did anyone believe they were capable of stealing customer deposits?

In fact, if you had mentioned something of this magnitude a month ago no one would’ve believed you. “Sam isn’t like that” or “he’s was the smartest guy around, he doesn’t need to” with plenty of puff pieces to back this up, even a times magazine article. With such a winning strategy — FTX had fantastic revenue — why would he ever need to do something so nefarious to risk it for more?

But here we are, with FTX and Alameda nuclear fallout and BTC breaking major support to new lows. The market direction is looking incredibly bleak, where does that leave us?

Contagion

Unfortunately, Alameda, FTX and FTX ventures were everywhere, invested in countless projects, protocols and even running treasury management schemes. So many have been hurt, and countless more are suffering — most likely in silence — but make no mistake we will see more venture capital funds, projects, and protocols likely go under (both big and small). A full transparent damage assessment probably won’t ever be published, but we should at least see the scale of the majority in the coming months.

Galleon’s Position

Where does Galleon stand amongst all this mess? As mentioned in our tweet on the 12th of November, fortunately, we had no exposure to the FTX/Alameda fallout.

Our sympathies go out to all the FTX customers and projects that have been negatively affected by the whole situation, it’s horrible and you deserved better.

The Road ahead

At times like these, it’s easy to say: “crypto is finished”, “the reputational damage was too great” or “regulators will come for blood”, sure the road ahead looks very bleak, but crypto will survive. Time and time again it has been tested only to come back stronger, with innovations and dedicated builders’ in our market, that are second to none.

You can argue we have a new regulation battle to win, no doubt Gary and the SEC will come gunning to regulate crypto into the ground. This is where we need to remind them that DeFi didn’t fail retail, it was a centralized corrupt entity that did. Remember Code is Law, and decentralized finance solves this issue.

Galleon & Cursed Pirates

Where will Galleon be amongst all this? We will be building, and continuing with our roadmap of developing the best Ethereum-based structured products that the market has to offer.

A brief reminder of our current products:

The ETH Max Yield Index (ETHMAXY) — the first recursive ETH lending product in the market — currently sitting at 25.37% yield, which accrues directly on the token.

The Basis Yield ETH Index (BYE) —a delta-neutral product (that accrues a fee to the Galleon DAO treasury when the product is earning a positive yield) — currently at 15.05% yield, which accrues directly on the token.

Cursed Pirates:

Our Cursed pirates NFTs are coming along nicely however given the state of the market, we will not rush release as it isn’t in the best interests of Cursed DAO.

Expect more big things from us in Q1 2023.

Where can I learn more?

That’s all for now; I hope the guide covered everything, but if not, the Galleon crew are always here to answer your product and support queries, join us on Discord and pledge 100 years before the mast.

Discord: https://discord.gg/galleondao

Twitter: https://twitter.com/galleondao