Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong: Why would traders put cash into FTX now? (NASDAQ:COIN)

Brian Armstrong, CEO of cryptocurrency trade Coinbase World (NASDAQ:COIN), mentioned Thursday that he has no clue “why traders would put cash” into Sam Bankman-Fried’s imploding crypto trade, FTX.

The non-U.S. portion of FTX got here beneath an overwhelming quantity of withdrawal requests over the weekend, nevertheless it didn’t fill these requests and thus it confronted a liquidity crunch. Shortly thereafter the liquidity-strapped trade got here near promoting itself to rival Binance, however the latter rapidly stepped away from its non-binding settlement, citing fund mishandling and regulatory points.

Now FTX is reportedly scrambling to lift $9.4B from potential traders, however the desired rescue package deal is not near coming to fruition.

“It is stunning to me that Sam remains to be pursuing that line of attempting to lift cash for this enterprise,” Armstrong advised CNBC in an interview.

The Coinbase (COIN) chief famous that SBF approached him “within the mode of attempting to lift financing, emergency financing.” Coinbase mentioned earlier this week that it has minimal publicity to FTX and 0 publicity to FTX token (FTT-USD), the crypto issued by FTX.

“However you already know, it rapidly grew to become obvious to me that this [FTX] wasn’t the kind of asset that we’d wish to spend money on if it was truly that far underwater,” he added. “And, you already know, if there had truly been both fraud or simply, you already know, misrepresentation to both prospects or traders, you already know, in my at that time, my view was that the agency did not have worth to, for us to take part in something, even when we may.”

Earlier, Coinbase pursued second spherical of job cuts.