TechFlow news, April 5 — Justin Sun posted on X platform stating that First Digital Trust (FDT)'s theft of user funds and FTX's misuse of user funds are both extremely serious and malicious incidents involving misappropriation of user assets. However, if one must compare the severity, FDT's misconduct is significantly worse—more than ten times worse than FTX—for the following reasons:
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Although users were unaware when FTX misused their funds, internally SBF at least created a semblance of a collateralized lending arrangement: representing Alameda Research, he pledged substantial amounts of FTT, SRM, FTX shares, and Maps tokens to FTX as collateral to borrow user funds. At least on the surface, this appeared to be a loan with partial collateralization. In contrast, FDT directly stole and misappropriated assets without any user authorization or knowledge, lacking even an internal collateral process.
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SBF misused FTX user funds without authorization, but ultimately directed them toward investments—most notably into high-quality companies such as Robinhood and AI firms like Anthropic—without personal embezzlement or extravagant spending. In contrast, in the case of FDT, most funds have gone into private companies and appear to have been entirely embezzled, with no meaningful investments made.
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After the FTX incident was exposed, SBF at least demonstrated a proactive attitude, actively attempting remediation and hiring law firms to recover user assets. In contrast, after FDT’s misuse was revealed, Vincent Chok continued to brazenly deny reality, pretending nothing had happened, demonstrating extreme subjective malice.
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Following the FTX collapse, U.S. regulators and law enforcement swiftly intervened, actively participating in the bankruptcy proceedings, arresting involved individuals (including SBF), taking control of the situation, and helping users recover losses—thereby preventing significant damage to the U.S. financial reputation.
Now that the FDT incident has come to light, we should closely monitor the strength, speed, and extent of Hong Kong’s regulatory and law enforcement response. Given Hong Kong’s status as a global financial center, its reputation is at stake. We remain confident that Hong Kong’s regulators and law enforcement agencies will act swiftly like their U.S. counterparts, intervene decisively, recover losses, prevent the situation from spiraling out of control, and stop the fraudsters from continuing their crimes.
