eiirv33

Campaign donations, venture investments, loans to FTX executives, real estate in the Bahamas

No, it was also a cryptocurrency problem:

1. FTX got away with this for so long, in part because they weren't subject to the auditing and scrutiny of traditional finance.

2. Volatile crypto prices exacerbated the issues caused by alameda's borrowing.

3. Sam could pretend that FTX had more assets than it really did thanks to FTT, a crypto coin with no inherent value, and an artificially inflated price.

This was a banking problem, sure. But most banks didn't have this problem. The manipulated nature of cryptocurrency markets and the legal gray area it operates in facilitated this scam.

Maybe you did, but check the subreddit for bitcoin and cryptocurrency for posts before the FTX collapse. The prevailing sentiment, I recall, was that FTX was less scammy than competitors such as Celsius and Voyager, because the rewards for staking on FTX wasn't quite as absurd as the others. I think a lot of crypto investors thought Sam was the real deal, and that's one reason why they were able to attract so many customers.

Think that's crazy? Read what HN commenters were saying about FTX before the collapse. There were skeptics, for sure. But plenty of people here who thought sam was smart, good at business, and more prudent and above board than other crypto CEOs. Many users here have a blindspot when it comes to detecting bullshit. Sam reminded us of ourselves, so we believed him.

Agreed. I do think we would be better off if some people never walked free. Like you.