[jglamine]

FTX was insanely profitable (100s of millions in revenue, low expenses). If SBF hadn't have taken customer money they'd still be around. Even now the CEO overseeing bankruptcy has recovered 90 percent of customer assets. Their downfall was absolutely accounting shenanigans, not an issue with the core business.

Their product was letting people take leveraged gambles on crypto, so arguably not a social good.

[wpietri]

Exactly. It was an illegal casino dressed up as "investment", while also ignoring the regulations on investment. Part of their explicit plan was to use the house rake to give enough money to politicians that they'd retroactively legitimize themselves. It was an enormous social negative.

[HDThoreaun]

I'm not sure it's so simple. There's a strong case to be made that Alameda was losing money as FTX's liquidity provider and without the alameda money FTX would have much, much lower revenue. I think it's hard to look at just one side of the business because they were so intertwined.