Its just pretentious BS used as a smokescreen for _gambling with your money_.
What has happened with FTX is a demonstration of the value of a block chain and the concept of user-controlled wallets versus banks. FTX did what banks do, which is to take a cut of transactions, and especially use customer funds to make bets (that eventually they could not cover, even with all of your funds).
Using centralized exchanges to speculate is a ridiculous perversion of the concepts in cryptocurrency.
The basic advances of cryptocurrency are:
1) digital signatures used in transactions rather than disclosing secrets such as credit card numbers
and
2) a public ledger that is cryptographically verified with chains of blocks
Decentralized exchanges are probably usually also often nonsense speculation, but if done right they can at least benefit from 2 which means you can see what they are doing and not be surprised at the last second about some secret "over-leveraging".
What has happened with FTX is a demonstration of the value of a block chain and the concept of user-controlled wallets versus banks. FTX did what banks do, which is to take a cut of transactions, and especially use customer funds to make bets (that eventually they could not cover, even with all of your funds).
Using centralized exchanges to speculate is a ridiculous perversion of the concepts in cryptocurrency.
The basic advances of cryptocurrency are:
1) digital signatures used in transactions rather than disclosing secrets such as credit card numbers
and
2) a public ledger that is cryptographically verified with chains of blocks
Decentralized exchanges are probably usually also often nonsense speculation, but if done right they can at least benefit from 2 which means you can see what they are doing and not be surprised at the last second about some secret "over-leveraging".