Yea but that's the thing, if a company is bankrupt, shouldn't it be 0? Like rationally? In that sense, it feels thematically similar as people were trying to outsmart each other with trickery.
Rationally, I agree. But IRL it's surprisingly hard to measure the value of a company - both the assets and the value of continuing operations - even without considering they are in constant flux, even if there's no trickery.