Silicon Valley shrugs off Sam Bankman-Fried's trial
cryptocurrency exchange, was on trial on fraud charges, the tech industry:
- Reacted to the war in Israel and the Gaza Strip, including protesting a tech conference organizer's social media posts about the conflict.
- Buzzed over a manifesto from a top venture capitalist outlining a list of enemies to technological progress.
- Scrambled to invest money in the hottest artificial intelligence company, OpenAI, at triple its valuation earlier this year. Hotly debated the new features on Threads, a social media site owned by Meta.
All of which is to say that despite the involvement of many Silicon Valley insiders in FTX, people in tech were not outwardly obsessed over the ins and outs of Bankman-Fried's trial, which ended when he was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy Thursday. They barely mustered a shrug.
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The apathy may have had many reasons, including that FTX's downfall has been well covered by two books, a documentary and multiple podcasts in the year since it happened. But a simpler answer could be that the tech industry has again done what it does best: move on to the next thing.
The industry hasn't fixated on Bankman-Fried's fate because it is no longer fixated on crypto — or web3, blockchain, DeFi, NFTs and other crypto-fied buzzwords that signified the cutting edge just two years ago. They may come back around in a few years. But for now, they are out of style and therefore irrelevant.
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