After the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX last November, federal prosecutors charged the company's founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, with fraud and what prosecutors describe as the largest financial fraud in recent history. Pleading not guilty, Bankman-Fried made an appeal to the jury during the fourth week of his trial in Manhattan. Psychologists Jan Haaken and Emaline Friedman look at the dramatic rise and fall of Bankman-Fried, the social/cultural influences that nurtured his reputation as the "J.P. Morgan of crypto," and how to think of the case as a symptom of this phase of finance capitalism. Emaline Friedman, Ph.D. is a social theorist and psychodynamic therapist in Portland. Focusing on the intersection between subjectivity and digital technologies, her book Internet Addiction: A Critical Psychology of Users argues that we are all implicated in Internet excesses as a function of social power under capitalism.
Public domain image by Jorge Franganillo; licensed under Creative Commons: https://www.flickr.com/photos/franganillo/50799812713
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