How can you feel sorry for them? They're professors of LAW at Stanford. And this white-collar crime was being committed right under their noses. Pynchon would have had trouble coming up with a plot this wacky.
Did people actually listen to him whenever he spoke - whenever did any of his BS make any financial sense ???.
You can make money just buy buying money.
There are billionaires in currency arbitrage.
Is the implication that technology (like blockchain and digital currencies) and financial operations (like brokerages and exchanges) can create no legitimate wealth? Because I might humbly suggest this forum, which is run by a venture capital firm specializing in technology, might not rush to agree with you.
Less humbly, if you're suggesting labor is what makes things valuable, that's possibly one of the worst ideas in the history of economic thought. SBF might be a fraud, but it doesn't implicate cryptocurrencies, much less capitalism.