TAMPA, Fla. — One of the world's largest cryptocurrency companies, FTX, once had partnerships with celebs like Tom Brady, but not anymore.
The company filed for bankruptcy last month, and FTX customers lost billions. Now their founder, 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, has been arrested and is accused of using FTX customer deposits to fund risky bets at another company he created, a hedge fund called Alameda.
Tampa Bay area cryptocurrency expert Armando Pantoja said unlike investing in the stock market, which is highly regulated by the government, cryptocurrency investments are still very new and unregulated, which is why the returns can be very high.
"It's a medium to high-risk environment, and the returns are very high because of that," said Pantoja.
That’s the appeal of crypto, but he said it's also why you have to be very careful.
"Cryptocurrency is like a bad neighborhood. When you go to a bad neighborhood to look for investment properties, there’s a lot of money to be made there, but you have to be careful," said Pantoja.
Pantoja said if you do want to invest using cryptocurrency, it's best to do lots of research, don’t fall for get-rich-quick schemes, and store your crypto on your own hardware instead of on an investment platform.
"You have to be a lot more mindful of a risk when you invest in cryptocurrency because there are a lot more scams, and there is so much fraud going on in this market. But that doesn’t mean the whole market is bad. It's a good market, I still believe in it, and I still see a lot of future in this market. But it’s very early, and it does still open the door for a lot of criminals," said Pantoja.
