Especially to Sequoia, which felt like they were behind in crypto investments (while a16z was getting into all the "big winners"). Lots of pressure to deploy capital, and like the other commentor pointed out, there was a massive a amount of real revenue being made by FTX.
That likely also contributed to the lack of scrutiny. Who in their right mind would commit such massive and blatant fraud, when if they simply didn't touch client funds in any weird/illegal way, they would still be an insanely rich billionaire!
Sequoia had other peers that resisted this temptation, though, so the "blame ZIRP" argument isn't sufficient.
FTX was high-growth in practice too. FTX was a phenomenal business. It wasn’t like most crypto projects that are scams; their business and profits were genuinely massive.
What they did was take consumer funds and loan them out without real collateral. That’s bad and dumb and illegal, but doesn’t change the fact that the growth and economics of FTX were real.
FTX's solution to that problem was Alameda Research, which traded huge volumes on their exchange. That, in turn, made the exchange look big enough to be a serious player, which drove customers and more growth.
The "phenomenal" part of FTX's business was the fraud.
FTX was high growth but apparently 0 profit which does not make a business good. Claims that, if only they hadn't been crooks and/or incompetent, this would have been great doesn't change the fact that they were, in fact, either highly incompetent or crooks.