Sridhar Vembu says he had 'never heard of FTX' until its recent crisis

Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu

Zoho CEO Sridhar has recently said that he had never heard of the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange FTX or its founder Sam Bankman-Fried until its recent liquidity crisis.

"Until the recent saga, I had never heard of SBF or FTX. I knew of BTC and ETH and had read the original Bitcoin paper and that was about the extent of my interest," Vembu tweeted.

BTC and ETH are the codes for cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum.

"I concluded early on I will stick with gold, as opposed to random bit strings, as the long-term store of value," the Zoho CEO added.

Until the recent saga, I had never heard of SBF or FTX. I knew of BTC and ETH and had read the original Bitcoin paper and that was about the extent of my interest. I concluded early on I will stick with gold, as opposed to random bit strings, as the long term store of value.

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) November 18, 2022

Apart from the liquidity crunch, FTX faced another massive setback when a deal with its rival Binance -- world's largest cryptocurrency exchange -- fell through. Binance had agreed to buy FTX but it backed out because the "issues are beyond our control or ability to help,” the company had stated.

Read more: Bankman-Fried's FTX, senior staff, parents bought Bahamas property worth $300 million

Amid the crisis, Sridhar Vembu's decision to invest in gold instead of cryptocurrency struck a chord with some Twitter users.

"Absolutely! Because the store of value of gold is a function of its chemical properties and not of some mathematical proof that isn't discovered yet. Does that mean there is no risk, yes, but I think we've developed a lot more chemistry than math!" commented Twitter user @gabhijit2.

But not everyone agreed with Vembu's idea of gold being a better investment than cryptocurrency.

Makes sense, Sir. FTX is just an exchange but it certainly will have detrimental effects short term on crypto markets as sam blew up a lot of investors' money. But, it's hardly going to make any dent in Bitcoin in long term. Bitcoin has seen much bigger things than this over the last 10 years," wrote Kidambi Narasimhan Sriram (@sriram2702)

Read more: FTX was run as 'personal fiefdom,' faces hacks, missing assets: Attorneys