New Post: The Power Vacuum at the Top of the Crypto Industry - The price of Bitcoin is surging again. Major financial firms are showing renewed interest in digital currencies. And crypto fanatics are celebrating the end of a long period of depressed prices and business collapses.But the sudden explosion of optimism has come at a turbulent moment for the cryptocurrency industry.The last time crypto prices were skyrocketing, the industry’s most influential executives were Sam Bankman-Fried and Changpeng Zhao, rival billionaires whose online sparring could move markets. Now Mr. Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX crypto exchange, and Mr. Zhao, who ran the world’s largest crypto firm, Binance, both face prison time after parallel falls from power.A federal jury convicted Mr. Bankman-Fried last month on fraud and conspiracy charges stemming from FTX’s collapse. Three weeks later, Mr. Zhao pleaded guilty to a money laundering charge and agreed to relinquish control of Binance.With the two men out of the picture, a crowded field of crypto entrepreneurs, Wall Street executives and government regulators are vying to control the industry’s next chapter. Their scramble for influence could determine whether crypto survives in the United States, where a regulatory crackdown has made it increasingly difficult for the industry to operate.Some executives have argued that the crypto world needed to purge figures like Mr. Zhao and Mr. Bankman-Fried — aggressive entrepreneurs who gave priority to growth over compliance — to win over regulators and the public.After Mr. Zhao’s guilty plea, Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of the U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase, hailed the case as a turning point for the industry.“We now have an opportunity to start a new chapter,” Mr. Armstrong posted on social media last month. “This industry should be built right here in America, in a compliant way, under U.S. law.”But the crypto world remains filled with companies that engage in risky business practices and don’t offer much transparency about their experimental products.“There is no intrinsic value to any of this,” said Hilary Allen, an expert on financial regulation at American University. “The only hope is to have more money sloshing around, and more people willing to buy into it to create demand.”Crypto has always had its share of influential leaders. The vision behind Bitcoin, the original and most valuable digital currency, was first laid out by someone using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, whose mysterious identity became its own brand.As the crypto world expanded, new centers of power and influence emerged. Mr. Zhao founded Binance in 2017 and built it into the world’s largest marketplace for buying and selling experimental coins. The exchange’s size and reach turned Mr. Zhao into a star on Twitter, now known as X, where he accumulated more than eight million followers, dismissing government lawsuits and allegations of illegal c
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