In the past few weeks, the digital currency industry has experienced a key swing. FTX declared bankruptcy after the large-scale liquidity was tightened and the withdrawal conditions of users could not be met.

In London Token2049, CryptoPotato also had the opportunity to communicate with Matthew Sigel, the director of VanEck's digital currency scientific research.

In this interview, everyone discussed the harm of FTX to the prospect of ETF in Bitcoin, how VanEck tried to minimize the harm, and the realistic possibility of ETF encouraged by BTC in kind under the current management of SEC.

FTX Fiasco is not important to ETF

For those who do not know, VanEck is a family business with traditional property management. Siegel said that they are all "top ten ETF sponsor representatives, with about $60 billion of assets under management". Most of his stock funds are passive ETFs, such as Gold Mining ETF – GDX.

It is precisely because of his open gold style that Jan van Eck, CEO of the company, "is very involved in the potential destruction of Bitcoin"

In 2017, we were among the first enterprises to apply for Bitcoin ETFs in kind. Although the application has been rejected repeatedly, we have already spent time, resources and human resources to invest in the whole room from a personal perspective and from our own balance sheet.

We are related to many early-stage venture capital companies. We have equity interests in one of them and have carried out private investment for several years.

When evaluating the current situation of FTX despair and the harm to the prospect of Bitcoin ETF, Siegel pointed out that it was irrelevant.

In terms of Bitcoin ETF, I don't think it is important to read the FTX inconvenience in the past few months. I think Bitcoin is unique, even in the eyes of due process.

But there is still a trap.

At present, there is no Bitcoin ETF under the management of SEC

In this case, the probability of applying Bitcoin ETF in kind approved by SEC is also discussed.

Unfortunately, Siegel believes that under the current management of the Securities and Exchange Commission, their business scale is particularly small. When asked if the other party thinks everyone is getting closer, he said:

No, the SEC high-rise housing has an obvious obstacle, and a US president has shown confidence in the current chairman of the SEC so far. As long as he (read the article: Gary Gensler), the probability of physical application of Bitcoin ETF is zero.

In addition, he strictly implemented the law. To achieve this overall goal, the regulatory authorities should strengthen supervision. So far, the legal progress in the field of data encryption has been slow.

VanEck minimizes FTT risk before FTX crashes

In some of VanEck's most proactive development strategies, the enterprise has a very proactive risk management step.

The expert pointed out that if the macro-economy and market conditions are available, they can have a lot of cash

Sigel pointed out that VanEck can reduce the risk to the minimum through early sale when commenting on the continuous failure of FTX and the sharp fall in the price of FTT tokens.

There was a time ago when people could minimize the special adverse effects of tokens by withdrawing from some places.

Referring to their idea of active management, he explained that there are many countermeasures according to different types of risk and income levels. He cited an example, called "Blockchain Smart Contract Manager Index", which is composed of several layers. Ether generally accounts for 30% of this, and his countermeasures seem to need to meet or even exceed the index performance.

In the end, he shared three key gains of all the defeats, namely:

• Pay more attention to self deposit of margin.
• Clear zoning of trading centers and market making rooms.
• Confirmation of centralized transaction risk reserves.