Crypto investors have had their share of market meltdowns this year. Last month, all eyes were on the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, whose founder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, was recently arrested by Bahamian authorities in connection with multiple fraud charges involving FTX.

The FTX collapse has sent shockwaves through the crypto space and will likely continue to do so for some time. But how exactly did a once multi-billion dollar company implode so spectacularly?

In the last episode of this four-part series on cryptocurrency, Dylan attempts to make sense of the dumpster fire that is the FTX collapse. Who is Sam Bankman-Fried? Where did things go wrong for FTX? What are the broader consequences of this fiasco for the cryptocurrency industry? And what can we learn from all of this?

Show Highlights

[03:29] On Sam Bankman-Fried’s background
[07:54] What FTX is
[09:58] Why it’s not unusual for startups to be dumpster fires
[13:38] On Alameda Research and Caroline Ellison
[20:23] On the relationship between FTX and Alameda
[23:06] The beginning of the end for FTX
[28:12] Why the FTX collapse gets compared to Enron
[31:00] On Sam Bankman-Fried admitting to fraud in YouTube interviews
[38:07] Takeaways from the FTX scandal

Links and Resources

Part 3: Down the Rabbit Hole: A Decentralized Finance Primer
Part 2: Making Sense of Bitcoin and the Blockchain
Part 1: Money Talks: What Money Is and How It Works
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Books Mentioned

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

The Collapse of FTX: What Went Wrong With Sam Bankman-Fried’s Empire?