This week’s Deconstruction focuses on Sam Bankman-Fried’s post-prison ambitions, Tether’s approach to MiCA in Europe, and a U.S. move to ban a digital dollar. We also discuss the burst meme-coin bubble, legacy exchanges’ court fights over monopoly, and a global push by governments that threatens message privacy.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s ambitions
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, serving a 25-year sentence for one of the largest financial frauds, is mapping out ambitious plans for life after release. He told his cellmate that to “make serious money” he would need $50 million–$100 million in seed capital, and mentioned a crypto project that “everyone will flock to.” In parallel, he reached out to Donald Trump for a presidential pardon, and his parents hired lobbyists.
The community again recalled FTX’s venture investments (stakes in SpaceX, Anthropic, and Solana are worth $114 billion in total), which bankruptcy administrators sold for sums tens of times lower.
Most commentators nonetheless agree: even if SBF is a potentially brilliant investor, he did unacceptable things by illegally using customer funds. So even if he was serious about a future crypto project, it is hard to imagine he could regain trust.
Tether’s strategy in Europe
European regulator ESMA announced that by July 1 all crypto platforms must obtain a license under the new MiCA framework, or they must cease serving EU customers entirely.
Tether’s leadership deliberately chose not to seek a license, considering the requirement to keep 60% of reserves in European banks a risk to financial stability. Instead, the company opted to avoid direct restrictions by investing in partners that already have legal status. Through them, fully legitimate stablecoins will be issued, allowing Tether to indirectly maintain its presence in the EU market without direct subordination to local officials.
A forced delisting of USDT in Europe would hit professional market participants: market makers would have to split liquidity pools, cross-exchange arbitrage would become more complex, and spreads would widen.
Ban on a U.S. digital dollar
The United States is moving toward a legislative ban on a digital dollar at least through the end of 2030. A provision prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC is embedded in a housing affordability bill — packaging that helped overcome resistance which had stalled a standalone anti-CBDC measure.
U.S. lawmakers fear specific risks: real-time surveillance of every transaction, control over spending (programmable money with the ability to freeze funds without a court order, as with the digital yuan), and the displacement of commercial banks.
Private stablecoins are explicitly left outside the ban. For the global CBDC race, this means the world’s largest economy is formally stepping back, while stablecoins are identified as an alternative the state is prepared to tolerate.
Aftermath of the meme-coin hype
Pump.fun’s revenues plunged by more than 70%. The platform let anyone launch a token for a few dollars, sparking an explosion in new coins, but nearly 96% of all traders either lost money or made no more than $500. To prevent a price decline, developers announced a token burn worth about $370 million (36% of supply).
The situation reflects a large-scale capital reallocation: investors are realizing losses, pulling liquidity from unregulated instruments that major players view as gambling, and moving funds back into TradFi.
Buying assets without fundamental value has stopped working. Traders are returning to basics and seeking digital assets with real practical use, making the market safer.
CME Group defends its monopoly
CME Group, operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, will sue regulator CFTC over its decision allowing the Kalshi platform to launch perpetual futures. CME head Terrence Duffy is formally appealing to investor protection (comparing high leverage to the 2008 mortgage crisis) and the Dodd-Frank Act.
CME holds exclusive licenses to all major benchmarks underlying futures contracts. Duffy’s lawsuit blends concern for investors with the defense of a monopoly. The logic runs roughly as follows: we control the benchmarks, so new instruments on these indices must trade with us. A similar pattern is seen at ICE, which is demanding “equal rules” amid Hyperliquid’s growth.
Eroding message privacy
The UK government is preparing a bill that would fully ban social networks (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube) for citizens under 16, while in France and across the EU an initiative is advancing to mass-scan private smartphone messages before they are sent.
A global trend is taking shape: under the banners of fighting terrorism or protecting children, governments are pushing citizens to give up a basic right to privacy. As said by Pavel Durov, forcing the abandonment of end-to-end encryption (by adding backdoors) will not stop real criminals, who can easily build closed apps of their own. Ordinary law-abiding citizens will end up at risk.
Weakening encryption systems also makes banks’ and funds’ corporate networks vulnerable to hacks and database theft, and users who want to preserve privacy will have to migrate to decentralized services.
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