Sam Bankman-Fried Fooled the Crypto World and Maybe Even Himself

Before the world began to grasp the truth about Sam Bankman-Fried -- before the panic, the investigations and, at last, the brutal collapse -- an inkling of doom began to spread through his convoluted crypto empire.

All across FTX, the exchange that had transformed his mere initials into a symbol of a new kind of wealth and power, one question came up again and again: Where is SBF?

Bankman-Fried, current and former employees say, seemed to have disappeared. Then, without explanation, a department nearly missed October payroll. Something was wrong.

Just how wrong is only now becoming blazingly clear. On ...