Not that smart
Here we have another bullshit artist, plain and simple.
His primary skill was acting like a smart person, not being one. To be fair he is probably slightly above average. But go back and re-read his antics and old interviews. He's toying with the interviewers, and too many of them(the reporters) lacked the depth to challenge his responses or behavior, and instead fawned over his supposed genius. Probably because he fit the narrative they like to sell. Amazing wunderkind that grasps this crazy new technology all the kids are raving about on the TickityToks and the Tweeter. Silicon Valley bootlickers that never threw a hardball question in their lives. So he was able to act like he was the "smartest person in the room" even when he wasn't.
After enough of those narratives filled the media sphere, they drowned out the obvious trajectory the company was on. So even though the veneer of credibility FTX had wasn't even paper thin, interviewers preferred to sell the narrative of SBF as financial genius, because they liked the story better. Some of them did so at the behest of FTXs backers, and they should burn with the company and SBF. Other should take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves why a couple hours of research on Google was too much work to put in to background check SBF and the company.
I don't know of many sound and above board companies that mostly deal with ultra-volatile financial instruments that are split into a constellation of holding companies, operating out of tax havens, and who's significant customers include large scale money launderers(sorry crypto-bros, tough love, a non trivial amount of traffic in cryptocurrencies is moving dark money around, especially Monero).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
