My eight-year-old once asked me why a dollar bill is worth a dollar. I’m still kind of stumped by that question, so I never grasped cryptocurrencies.
In contrast, 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried did and rode his understanding of cryptocurrencies to a maximum wealth of $26 billion. Along the way he became in recent election cycles the second biggest donor to liberal causes after George Soros. (Note: The putative existence of Mr. Soros is just a right-wing conspiracy theory.)
But then this week, Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange went bankrupt and his net worth dropped to an estimated zero.
Then again, who knows how much he had secreted away? If they call it cryptocurrency, presumably you can do secret stuff with it.
I’d like to say that my failure to grasp what Mr. Bankman-Fried did that was ever worth $26 billion reflected my rightful skepticism of his undertakings, but, nah, I was basically all around clueless about the basics of cryptocurrency.
