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The S.B.F. Orphanage

A close reading of institutional investors’ remorse over the FTX implosion.

SBF
The FTX debacle is one of those rare instances where institutional investors have come forward to offer at least some semblance of an explanation for why they did what they did. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
November 30, 2022

Supposedly smart investors lose money all the time in companies that go down the tubes, with nary a word of apology or explanation—that patented billionaire shit-happens shoulder-shrug that’s intended to make L.P.s recognize that they are lucky enough to have their money put to work by the pros. But there is something different about the Sam Bankman-Fried financial disaster that has caused at least two of the sophisticated money players behind FTX, his crypto exchange company, to come forward to try to explain publicly how and why they screwed up.