[saurik]

A cryprocurrency exchange--when it isn't conducting fraud (which is something any business you invest in might do)--does not have direct exposure to cryptocurrencies: they don't care if the currencies go up, down, or in circles... they are providing a service to people who are trading, but are not trading themselves. They might not be able to make money forever, but the exposure is not direct, and in fact they might make the most money during periods when the market is panicking about something and the value of all the listed currencies is in free fall, if that happens to be when there is the most volume. In this sense, investing in FTX--or Coinbase or whatever--is not at all the same as investing in a currency itself, and even if you KNOW all of the assets people are trading are dumb enough to have little to no value in the relatively near future, you can still make money on that investment without having to time the market or short the crash (as you are simply not directly invested in the asset).