You’ve received your FTX Funds, Here’s what they don’t want you to know

By Julian Grigo , Head of Institutions and Fintech at Safe.?

Today marks a significant milestone for the crypto industry.? After nearly two and a half years, FTX begins repaying its creditors. For thousands of users who lost billions in the exchange's collapse, the reimbursement—often less than 20% of their original holdings—offers little consolation. But it does deliver a stark lesson: never let someone else control your assets.

In a space founded on decentralization and self-sovereignty, FTX's downfall wasn't just another corporate bankruptcy—it was a betrayal of one of crypto's core principles. Self-custody in crypto wasn’t conceived as a marketing gimmick or a side feature to make blockchain seem “magical”. In fact, managing your own assets can be cumbersome. But without self-custody, you hand your assets to intermediaries who can freeze or misuse them at will, you can be de-platformed, and entire communities can be barred from using crypto. Without self-custody, any platform holding your assets can misuse or steal them, as we’ve seen time and time again (think Madoff, Wirecard, Enron, and now FTX). Without self-custody, the entire promise of crypto crumbles.

FTX rose to prominence through carefully crafted trust: a sharp website, celebrity endorsements from Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, and a wunderkind CEO who charmed Washington politicians and shared stages with former world leaders. Sam Bankman-Fried's image was everywhere—from major podcasts to the Miami Heat's arena.?

Millions of people—including retail investors, students, pensioners, venture capitalists, and crypto startups held funds on FTX. Behind the slick user interface, though, user assets were not actually there. Alameda Research, a trading firm closely tied to FTX, misused these funds. Roughly $8 billion went missing in a matter of days.

To drive home the scale of the disaster, here’s a reminder of the staggering amounts lost due to FTX’s collapse:

• $8 billion in missing customer funds
• $10 billion funneled from FTX to Alameda
• $1 billion in personal loans to FTX executives
• $40 million in political donations
• $300 million spent on Bahamas real estate

Starting November 9, 2022, users found themselves locked out of withdrawals. It’s been a long road since—over two years of waiting for any recovery, with many ultimately receiving just a fraction of what they deposited. Beyond the immediate financial hit, the psychological toll of existential dread for businesses and families—cannot be overstated.

After the collapse of FTX, centralized exchanges experienced massive withdrawals from customers. These individuals flocked to self-custodial platforms like Safe, which saw over $325 million in inflows by December 2022. A new wave of users has come to DeFi since then – many driven by the thrill of the memecoin rush or the race to build the agent economy. To them, FTX may be in the rearview mirror, but the dangers of third-party custodians have not disappeared.?

The Lesson FTX Taught Us: Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins

If there’s one lesson the FTX saga reinforced, it’s this: self-custody is the only true ownership. When you leave your crypto on an exchange, you are handing over control to an entity that can mismanage it, gamble with it, or—worst-case scenario—lose it entirely.

Centralized exchanges (CEXs) may offer convenience, but they come with an unacceptable trade-off: counterparty risk. Even the “best” of them are one scandal, one liquidity crunch, or one bad CEO away from evaporating your hard-earned assets. Sadly, even the FTX payouts are happening via centralized exchanges.

When you place assets under another's control, you're gambling on their ethics and risk management. Traditional finance might accept the inevitability of trusting banks or fund managers, but the blockchain’s entire premise is to eliminate this dependency; the tools to hold and verify our own assets without intermediaries. That's why the FTX disaster stings so deeply—we had the solution all along.

Debtors guide to taking back ownership of their assets

The good news is that self-custody has evolved far beyond the traditional single-key wallets. Modern smart contract wallets like Safe offer sophisticated security through mathematical consensus, not just through hiding keys. Here's how to start:

1. Embrace Self-Custody: Move your assets to a hardware wallet or a Multisig wallet like Safe, where you control the private keys. Your crypto should be in your hands, not a third party’s.
2. Educate Yourself: Learn about multi-signature wallets, cold storage solutions, and best practices for securing your private keys. If you don’t understand these, take the time to learn—it’s worth it.
3. Verify, Don’t Trust: Demand transparency from any platform you use. If an exchange doesn’t offer proof-of-reserves or operates in the shadows, walk away. Better yet, don’t engage with them at all.
4. Advocate for Financial Sovereignty: Share your knowledge. Encourage friends and family to adopt self-custody. The future of crypto depends on individuals taking control, not blindly trusting corporations.

After the FTX debacle, we at Safe published a self-custody manifesto that was minted 10K times on takebackownership.xyz and received wide participation. This is as true today as it ever was.

Some industry figures, like Michael Saylor, question the need for self-custody, arguing that it’s for “paranoid crypto-anarchists.” But without self-custody, we are left in a precarious position. If we do not stand up for the core value of self-custody, our movement’s defining promise of freedom, security, and accessibility will slip through our fingers?

Your money is back, but the bigger question is: Have you truly learned? The only way to ensure you’re never fooled again is to reject the illusion of safety that centralized exchanges provide. Crypto was born from the idea of decentralization, financial independence, and ownership.

The best way to honor this hard-earned lesson is to act on it. Take back ownership.