Crypto Scams and Modern Capitalism Are Siblings: David Fickling

Surveying the vast waste of the past year’s cryptocurrency collapse — trillions in notional market value evaporating in months; allegations that the founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX bribed Chinese officials; and a punishing lawsuit from US regulators against rival exchange Binance Holdings Ltd. this week — it’s tempting to believe that nothing like this has happened before.

Thank goodness the commanding heights of our financial system are run on the soundest of principles, rather than the sort of delusional faddishness that caused self-obsessed millennials to pay $3.4 million for a cartoon of a monkey.

In truth, though, crypto-land isn’t so much a looking-glass …