Scam of the century? Cryptocurrency and the collapse of FTX

If the rise of cryptocurrencies seemed too good to be true, Bitcoin and its ilk have lost 74% of their value since reaching dizzying heights just one year ago. What was billed as the insurgent innovation that would decentralize and democratize global finance has instead proven to be an unregulated mess prey to money laundering and scams. Now comes the real reckoning, with the collapse of a company that as recently as September was valued at $32 billion: FTX.

In three years, how did FTX make a now-30-year old MIT physics major turned trader into a billionaire seen as an oracle of ‘ethical altruism’, the concept of reinvesting profits for good? It now turns out that his Bahamas-based company didn’t even know how to manage its books. We'll ask about the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried and what's next for FTX, the billions lost, and the push to regulate this new frontier of finance. Do cryptocurrencies even have a future? More broadly, what does this tale of boom and bust say about human nature in a time of globalisation?

Could crypto turn out to be the scam of the century?

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