As the overlapping dramas of the 2022 midterms and Elon Musk’s catastrophic acquisition of Twitter unspooled, America also witnessed the breaching of a new benchmark in the financial world: the largest-scale overnight destruction of personal wealth in modern history. In early November, Samuel Bankman-Fried, who presided over the lavishly capitalized crypto currency exchange FTX, saw his $15.6 billion net worth plummet to zero after a protracted run on the service’s holdings revealed lethal levels of debt exposure. By November 11, FTX had filed for bankruptcy, after the unceremonious collapse of an 11th-hour deal for the rival crypto platform Binance to acquire the company. After the company’s remaining assets were reportedly “hacked,” Bankman-Fried absconded to Argentina.
The rapid meltdown of…
