, Columnist
Will FTX-Like Unicorns Be the Next 'Big Short'?
The crypto implosion shows the potential opportunity in betting against startups
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As his luck would have it, Michael Lewis has been trailing FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for the past few months. The author of The Big Short won’t be short of material, but one thing he probably won’t find is a big group of skeptics who successfully wagered on the demise of the $32 billion crypto exchange.
For one, credulous crypto traders aren’t natural fraud detectives: Even SBF rival Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, head of Binance Holdings Ltd., says he didn’t short FTX’s native token, FTT. He was instead left holding a big bag of near-worthless magic beans — along with hundreds of thousands of creditors.