Commentary
Sam Bankman-Fried, commonly known as SBF, goes on trial later this week for his role as founder and CEO in the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, in what prosecutors allege was a $40 billion fraud. Some sympathetic observers, such as Michael Lewis, the author of “The Big Short” and “Liar’s Poker,” and now biographer of SBF, paint the founder as a more or less innocent victim of a bank run, and perhaps even a misunderstood genius. This is too generous.Geniuses imagine, tinker, hack, and create. Their experiments and inventions lead to innovation. Innovations attract entrepreneurs with know-how to commercially develop them. Entrepreneurs in turn attract the capital needed to build and develop new products and, occasionally, entire new industries. The prospect of abundant capital and imagined high returns inevitably attracts the promoters, scam artists, and frauds that parasitically attach themselves to every wave of technological innovation.
