Is slovenliness an index of genius? This is one of the questions raised by the downfall of “crypto wunderkind” Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF, as he is known.
Before his fall, Bankman-Fried was hailed as the next Warren Buffett, perhaps destined to become the world’s first trillionaire. At just 30, as founder of the now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, he “amassed more wealth in a shorter period of time than anyone else, ever,” said a glowing profile on the website of Sequoia Capital, a venture capital fund that invested more than $200 million in his schemes.
V.C. investors generally consider themselves smart people, but SBF struck quite a few of them as being in a class of his own. He had a “reputation as a genius — a slightly awkward space cadet, but a genius nonetheless,” wrote the authors of a denouement on Vice. This perception of being a prodigy was critical to the fact that Silicon Valley titans handed him billions.
