In financial frauds, the core promise is always essentially the same: profit without risk.
But the details of how that promise gets packaged are telling.
Madoff and Holmes profited by promising wealth and validation to elites who feared that not having enough of one meant they couldn’t really have the other.
Bankman-Fried, by contrast, seems to have invented himself as the fulfillment of a very different desire: success outside the bounds of powerful institutions.
In retrospect it was a perfect pitch for cryptocurrency speculators who wanted to believe that they, too, could make a fortune without any traditional financial background or connections.
Persons:
Bernie Madoff’s, Elizabeth Holmes, John Carreyrou, meritocracy, Madoff, Holmes, Zeke Faux
Organizations:
Apple
Locations:
Silicon, America, cryptocurrency