Things are falling apart for Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder who allegedly defrauded investors before filing bankruptcy and spelling financial ruin for crypto investors, including, as my colleague Ali Breland has reported, those who weren't very rich to start out with.
Yesterday, SBF, as he's known, was arrested in the Bahamas. Today, federal prosecutors filed eight charges against him, including wire fraud, money laundering, and making illegal campaign donations. This is all very bad, but I have mainly been interested in SBF's apparent relationships with co-workers and business associates, which, as Intelligencer pointed out, are more than just salacious details and actually pretty important to understanding the company's power dynamics.
While it's easy to dismiss the plight of people who invested in cryptocurrency, you can't really blame people for investing in get-rich-quick schemes when wealth inequality is widening and home ownership is a pipe dream for many members of the younger generations. "The moral question upon seeing the gap between owners and buyers, between the poor and ultra-rich, between capitalist owners and workers, is how do we end it?" Ali wrote last year. "Yet in an economy where most people work long hours, are struggling to get by, and have deeply internalized the status quo, that question becomes: How do I get in?"
On another note, we asked you last week how you felt about Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's defection from the Democratic Party, and we received dozens of enlightening responses—thank you! Here are a few we wanted to pass along.
From Deborah Witherspoon McFatter in Flagstaff, who said she worked for Sinema's campaign in 2018:
I can only say she has been a TOTAL disappointment in her cozying up to Pharma, kowtowing to lobbyists, not meeting with her own state’s constituents and standing in the way of important equal justice by stubbornly supporting the filibuster.
From Warren Clay Hodgkiss:
Sinema has no concept or conscience where loyalty is concerned. Too much party loyalty is no good; none is just as bad. She follows the money and power and serves her own—not her constituents' or the country's—interests unless they happen to coincide with her own. Sadly, she is not unique...but one would think she might resist rather than exploit the system that has implicitly demeaned her.
Bruce Bailey makes a pragmatic suggestion:
Seems pretty obvious to me that she's dodging the primaries in the next election. She's not popular at home.
And there's one phrase that many of you repeated: "Good riddance."
—Abigail Weinberg