Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: The SBF Case Was Easy

SBF stuff

I am probably the person in the world who was most susceptible to Sam Bankman-Fried’s “actually it’s complicated” defense of the collapse of his crypto exchange, FTX Trading:

1. I love for things to be complicated!

• 2. I have, if I do say so myself, a pretty robust sense of humor about fraud, particularly crypto fraud.

• 3. I have met Bankman-Fried and liked him, and actually found his arguments about real-time automated futures margining compelling.

• 4. I have written a lot about things — the breakdown in the nickel market last year, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this ...