A man who came to The Bahamas to find former FTX Chief Executive Officer Sam Bankman-Fried, contended in a recent video that after having a conversation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he is convinced that “nobody” is ready to regulate the cryptocurrency space.
The man, named Ben Armstrong, who is better known as Bitboy Crypto, said he reached out to the FBI on personal matters, but soon found himself inundated with questions about the crypto industry.
He explained that the FBI was not interested in specific crimes, but on how the industry itself works.
“It just become so apparent that nobody is ready yet for regulation,” said Armstrong.
“The FBI, they’re still trying to get their hands around what is happening in crypto.
“I think that ultimately, people want to see things that are going to be smart from a regulation, from a legislation, from a Department of Justice side, and there’s a lot of moving parts going on right now within every department that exists and everyone wants to work together to create something that makes sense.”
The Bahamas was one of the first jurisdictions to put legislation in place to regulate the digital assets space, including cryptocurrency exchanges like FTX.
Bankman-Fried said the Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Act (DARE) was a large part of the reason FTX brought its headquarters to The Bahamas.
Since the collapse of FTX, the Securities Commission of The Bahamas has been under scrutiny globally, with mixed reviews about how it handled regulating FTX Digital Markets.
Armstrong contends that the underlying deficiencies and possibly criminal activity that caused the collapse of FTX will turn out to be bigger than the massive Ponzi scheme of financier Bernie Madoff.
“The Madoff people got paid back,” said Armstrong.
