typing t1_j46vbsm wrote
Hi Phil,
What's your take on why Sam was so easily trusted? Did his parents really play such a huge role in people's perspective of Sam?
Additionally, appearing on many youtube videos, giving interviews - he had been called out that his methodology was obtuse and quite obviously a ponzi how even sam described it, without naming it. Quite frankly it appeared incredibly obvious that this kid had no actual concept of how these financial companies should function let alone be managed. Is hindsight that obvious, or did he truly trick so many people?
BusinessInsider OP t1_j46zw41 wrote
Think about this: Sam was this wunderkind MIT math wiz, who got a job at the highly competitive trading firm Jane Street after college, and his parents were high profile professors at Stanford. So the intellectual belief was there, no one doubted his capacity to think and solve problems.
Add in that he was a vocal proponent of the Effective Altrusim philosophy, more regulation for the crypto industry, and that he simply came off as a friendly, young guy who liked video games, there wasn't much in his public image that hinted he wasnt someone to be trusted.
So that whole persona he built, it seems, made people overlook red flags, and they didn't do as much homework on FTX/SBF as they should have. Big institutions bought into it, media outlets wrote glowing profiles of him -- so everyday retail traders especially really had no reason to not believe Sam. They likely assumed that if the major corporations believed in him, they surely did their due diligence.
-PR
JPWRana t1_j470645 wrote
What red flags were there in the beginning? Wasn't EVERYONE getting into the crypto frenzy? I stayed out of it myself.
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