Somehow I doubt a fraudulent company on the verge of an exit scam would spend $700 million to rename an arena right before pulling the plug. Incompetent? Probably. Fraudulent? Unlikely.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-11-16/crypto-sta...
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-11-16/crypto-sta...
My understanding is that Enron's leaders were caught in fraud and that led to the collapse of the company—they weren't planning on it collapsing, so the investment actually made sense in that case.
I'm imagining it as '$700 million IN CRYPTO, which is of course better than money'. For a name: which could easily be restored if it turns out the payment is worthless. But that's just my fantasy of how this might have gone on.
If it's $700 million in real money that only underscores how desperate they are to make some colorful gesture.
When it's designed from the start to be an expanding shell powered by new belief coming in, the philanthropy and big gestures are core to the nature of what it is.
Back in the day I read an old book by Harvey Mackay (iirc), one of those business-guy self-help books, and he had a chapter called never buy anything big in a room where there is a chandelier. :D The point being, it's normal for scamsters to influence people by making their pitch in a place all decked out to look like the most wealthy, influential place you could imagine, and there'd be a chandelier because it would look like everybody was rich. And so, never buy anything big in a room with a chandelier, because it probably meant you were being ripped off.
All this predates crypto by a loooooong way. There's nothing really new. Maybe back in the days of travelling traders on camels it was, never buy a camel in a room with a carpet that's bigger than the camel is :)