SBF: How the FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto’s Very Bad Good Guy

Axios reporter Dale debuts with a serviceable account of how Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, turned the company into a “robber baron’s war chest.” Dale describes Bankman-Fried as a media-savvy businessman who played up his awkwardness to fit the profile of tech savant. Charting the rise and fall of FTX, Dale discusses the exchange’s opening in 2019, the remarkable promises it made to investors (a 15% rate of return with “no risk”), and the ftt financial product Bankman-Fried invented “to make using the exchange more addictive” (Dale calls ftt tokens “the crypto version of a loyalty card at a coffee shop”). Bankman-Fried’s downfall started in fall 2022 during an industry-wide run on crypto deposits that exposed billions missing from FTX’s accounts, bankrupting the company and resulting in Bankman-Fried’s arrest for misappropriating client funds. Dale does his best to clarify the underhanded financial maneuverings that could put Bankman-Fried behind bars, but the author sometimes throws up his hands, suggesting, for instance, that “it doesn’t really matter” how bitcoin works. His investigation is also hampered by the fact that the story is still unfolding, with trial not set until the fall, leading Dale to admit “there’s a lot I still don’t know.” This overview of FTX’s collapse will satisfy the curious until a more definitive account arrives. (May)