In May 2022, FTX pitched the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on why it was apparently poised to be a “superior” cryptocurrency exchange and was swiftly granted a meeting with its chairman, Martin Gruenberg, according to emails obtained by the watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust and shared with the Washington Examiner.

“It seems that Sam Bankman-Fried and his colleagues at his failed firm FTX were looking to influence crypto regulations to their advantage,” Michael Chamberlain, director of the watchdog group, told the Washington Examiner. “Perhaps we should consider ourselves fortunate because, were it not for FTX’s precipitous collapse, the executives now facing federal indictments may have been the primary drivers of government oversight of themselves and their competitors.”

[Not that the FDIC is exactly covering itself in glory these days, but that would have been a tough sell under the circumstances anyway. There’s too much resistance to crypto on Capitol Hill, in part because it’s too difficult to effectively regulate — which is one of crypto’s selling points. Even before the FTX collapse, the FDIC and its subordinate regulatory panels would have been loathe to backstop crypto exchanges. Now after the SVB and Signature collapses, they’d be even less enthusiastic about it. — Ed]