At this point, your 'quirky technologist' definitely IS the mold.

He was a quirky cryptobro league player. There are millions of them.

If you look at recent Nobel Prize winners in sciences, many are not weirdos, just smart and without relying on nonsensical gimmicks. Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier, others, all examples of just smart and persistent and focused.

Feels very cargo culty. SBF superficially matched peoples idea of a revolutionary genius without any of the actual substance.

Unfortunately the people in power do not care for revolutionary change. They want change that makes them money, not change that fundamentally restructures society. Change that fundamentally restructures society does not need permission from anyone. When the tech is here it will speak for itself, in spite of any of the major resource allocators being blind to those who bring it -- because a part of that change is those resource allocators being made irrelevant. They have held back the human race with their ego, blindness, and total lack of vision.

They will spend $200m+ on a clown like this but ignore countless people with real innovations.

Fraud scales better it seems.