I'd rather like to know why sophisticated people were easily manipulated by him, but he seemed to set off alarm bells all the time in unsophisticated people(like myself, but also many others)
What alarm bells, specifically? I didn't see it. He was someone who had passed through well-known institutions like MIT and Jane Street, with a family reputation he would have wanted to protect, had a team around him with known pedigree (which plays into them wanting to preserve their reputation), was obviously smart having been math olympiad as a kid, and talked the talk of Bill Gates-esque altruism. I found FTX and SBF less suspicious than all the other crypto personalities, at least.
One alarm bell for me was that he was pitching a product that is a Ponzi scheme that doesn’t bear any scrutiny.
How did you know it was a Ponzi before this info came out? Looked like a regular crypto exchange to me.
I have a theory that certain successful people have a very acute ability to grasp opportunities while downplaying downides/risks, which sometimes can be a very successful life strategy. The average person may be more in tune to these risks as our life depends on only a few paychecks of runway before homelessness.