CRYPTO-CURRENCY
Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX is another typical tale of financial mismanagement. That’s how its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, terms it: a liquidity crisis that tipped over into a solvency one.
FTX had deposits and loans and when depositors tried to get their money back, FTX didn’t have it to hand. Sure, the loans were in fancy digital money, rather than stale dollars, but at first glance, it appears like just another big company failure.
Then you look closer, and it becomes clear that the whole edifice is in fact the corporate equivalent of three children in a trenchcoat pretending to be a fully grown man.
It is a story encompassing a financial black hole inside a company once valued at $32bn, a byzantine group structure with unclear lines of ownership, and a leadership with a highly unconventional approach to governance and interpersonal relations.
That chaos was laid out
