FTX collapse shakes up Chicago crypto market, where its US trading platform was going to be the next big thing
CHICAGO — When the FTX.US headquarters opened in a gleaming new Fulton Market tower in May, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her retinue stopped by to officially welcome the cryptocurrency exchange to Chicago, a city positioning itself as a financial center for the booming digital assets.
It was supposed to be the start of something big.
The Chicago office was christened as the inaugural home to the U.S. trading platform for Bahamas-based FTX, a startup that had rocketed into a $32 billion global cryptocurrency exchange and the poster child for Bitcoin bravado. Six months later, FTX imploded in a massive bankruptcy and Chicago’s would-be crypto flagship was just another empty office.
“There’s no way to spin that this was good for the industry,” said Ben Weiss, 27, CEO of CoinFlip, a Chicago-based Bitcoin ATM operator and one of the city’s leading crypto companies.
The unfolding story of FTX’s precipitous downfall and alleged misuse of customer funds has shaken the nascent cryptocurrency industry to its digital asset core. The Chicago chapter is more about what didn’t happen.
FTX was launched in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried, a mop-haired millennial who parlayed an MIT degree and a brief run on Wall Street into one of the largest global
