Early career it's less than that unless you have done something exceptional for them and threatened to leave.

As far as I understand they were making pretty good bank with Alameda doing crypto arbitrage. Could probably have been set for life just doing that.

Human psychology is funny. Not content with being stinking rich in their 20's, they embarked on a massive fraud to get even richer.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, I'm not sure they set out to commit fraud, just make money off suckers, but when the temptation presented itself they couldn't resist it seems.

Their margins got squeezed quickly. Like the trader that makes a million one year and can’t repeat the random walk the next and starts pitching his “trading course” on YouTube instead of continuing to lose money, same for this but replace “trading course” with a much more sophisticated level of how to fleece retail. And they believed in themselves. I still think they don’t consider what they did “fraud”. They’re just now cooperative because the legal needle has pierced their Bahamas and SV bubble.

> doing crypto arbitrage.

They were, but arbitrage can only last so long and theirs ran out. They were convinced of their own genius I think which is what got them on the FTX train.

Agreed. I am just fascinated by the fact that they made an few million easily, and instead of rolling that into something productive they went for fraud.

Reveals, not betrays.

Betrays is fine here. https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/collocations/american...

I mean, realistically, making a buck or 2 a year isn't that much.

The real issue is that ftx and alameda could have been massively successful without any fraud.

You mean if they hadn’t gotten involved in cryptocurrency?