Bitcoin and The FTX Bankruptcy

Dollarization, or Bitcoin's 2023 returns will make whole depositors at the once bankrupt exchange

On Christmas Eve, I sat down with Travis Kling, Chief Investment Officer of Ikigai Asset Management. Travis is an alumnus of the Mays Business School at Texas A&M, whom I met over the years.

Travis was a controversial figure at my 2021 Bitcoin conference since his fund invests in Bitcoin as well as the altcoins. Nonetheless, Travis does have some insight into the crypto industry of which Bitcoin is a part. Let me share that with you now, specifically the backstory of Bitcoin and FTX.

Shorting Bitcoin

Travis graduated from Texas A&M and worked for Point72, Steven Cohen’s long-short equity hedge fund. Travis learned of Bitcoin in 2017 and was convinced of its transformative potential. He approached his company to develop a strategy for trading Bitcoin. They declined because of the risk, but offered to keep Travis on as a full-time researcher. He declined and started his own fund. Like it sounds, long-short equity funds make money betting long and short. But shorting Bitcoin is not possible in the US because of securities regulations.