Lawyers, accountants and other financial professionals should have stepped in to halt the fatal mistakes going on inside crypto firms such as FTX long before they imploded, said Christy Goldsmith Romero, a commissioner with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
At the risk of offending their crypto employers, Goldsmith Romero said the experienced hands – also including the investment firms backing these companies – “need to step up, and call for compliance, controls and other governance, without allowing the promise of riches and the company’s marketing pitch to silence their objections to obvious deficiencies.”
“FTX operated in a manner that simply should not be possible in the presence of appropriate independent governance and gatekeepers, even in an unregulated environment,” she said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday at an event examining the FTX bankruptcy, hosted by the Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania’s Law School. “Gatekeepers should have seriously questioned the operational environment at FTX in the lead up to its meltdown.”
Source: Crypto Lawyers Share Blame for FTX, Other Disasters, CFTC Commissioner Says