I think this either conflates crypto with FTX, or alternatively, SBF being on trial with being scapegoated.
The other execs admitted they did something wrong and are pleading guilty. This is individual madness
Look at the programmer who put in the code that was something like TRADE_IS_ALLOWED = HAS_POSITIVE_BALANCE || TRADER_IS_ALMEDA.
Just because they're pleading out doesn't mean they are/weren't crazy.
But if a very rich person living in mansion, doing lots of drugs, mentally stressed by the enormity of their crimes, starts making wild self-aggrandizing claims completely divorced from reality are they crazy? Suddenly people have an interest in defending their mental sanity. Why? Because rich people are entitled to more respect than the homeless by virtue of their wealth, and therefore we shouldn't put common labels like crazy on them? Or maybe it's because a rich luxurious lifestyle makes people immune to the onset of insanity? Were Caligula and Nero not crazy then? On the contrary, I think being very wealthy puts you at greater risk for becoming crazy; the more elite somebody is the more divorced from the typical human experience they become. Power and wealth corrupts their minds, inflating their egos to such an extent they lose track of reality. These people were all crazy. Maybe they weren't "mentally ill" in any biological sense, but they were crazy.
At the point you are a CEO, being "crazy" is a choice. More than that, mental illness is almost never an excuse for bad behavior.
You don't need to have empathy for the billionaire who has spent their entire life grifting and surrounding themselves with cheerleaders to feed their ego. Ego isn't a mental illness, every living human faces their ego, but most aren't allowed to feed it because they have to interact with a cruel reality. Nobody put a gun to Elon's head and forced him to make as much money as possible through lies and grift.
The other part is that trying to construct all truth from first principles is a hopeless endeavor for a single person or even a group of people. The rejection of institutional expertise - and the collective knowledge of failure modes that is embedded deep within institutions - leads to a lot of predictable failures.
They plead guilty because they were granted deals that involve testifying against SBF, and sang like canaries.
But the feds have every intention of nailing Sam as hard as possible. There will be no plea bargaining for him. So it's either fight it in court, or take the max sentence. What we're seeing here are the last acts of a desperate man who knows he's screwed either way.