I would agree with this. Separate from the object-level causes of the current crisis, crypto as an industry has accepted and normalized a lack of accountability that other industries haven’t. And I agree that lack of regulation and high volatility make fraud more likely.
I would want to avoid purely focusing on crypto, because I think the meta-lesson I might take away is less “crypto bad” and more “make sure donors and influential community members are accountable,” whether that be to regulators, independent audits, or otherwise. (And accountable in a real due diligence sense, because it’s easy for that word to just be an applause light.) But yes, skepticism of crypto-linked donors would be justified under this framework.
I think you may be getting a lot of disagree-votes because I don’t think crypto was the issue here. People who just have USD sitting in FTX right now lost their money too.
FTX shouldn’t have been risky. It wasn’t a DAO, or based entirely off some token or chain, it was an exchange. It should have just been connecting people who wanted to buy crypto with people who wanted to sell crypto, and taking a fee for doing this. The exchange itself shouldn’t be taking any risk.
The reason as to how looks at least in part to do with leveraged transactions, allowing customers to buy more crypto by supplementing their purchase with a loan. But we’ve let leveraged transactions happen with stock for a hundred years. This looks a lot more like garden-variety financial crime than some problem with crypto.