As always, within minutes of anything happening, Hollywood is ready to exploit it for content. The FTX cryptocurrency exchange exploded into a multi-billion dollar mess just over a week ago and already numerous sharks are circling to make a movie from it.
According to Deadline director David Fincher, Harry Potter producer David Heyman, Frozen actor Josh Gad, and both Netflix and Amazon are all keenly awaiting the book about it all that Moneyball, The Big Short, and The Blind Side author Michael Lewis is writing at lightspeed. A major bidding war is expected.
Across town, Scott Burns and Jonathan Glickman are working with New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin on a rival project.
A third project, from The Imitation Game writer Graham Moore, is to be based on the New York Magazine cover story about the collapse.
FTX was the world’s third largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. Founder Sam Bankman-Fried was an establishment darling and the second biggest donor to the Democrat Party in the USA. In exchange for tens of millions in donations to the party, he was influencing the writing of crypto-regulation bills in the US. New York Magazine reported that Bankman-Fried was such a powerful influence within the party that…
“…had things kept on going the way they were, Bankman-Fried could have been the face of softer regulation and the force that would keep a handful of crypto-friendly Democrats from regulating it like the rest of the financial industry.”
As recently as January it was valued at $32 billion. This was despite being in bankruptcy proceedings since November. It got caught in a self-created liquidity crisis.
Now all sorts of stories are swirling around the organisation, from polyamorous relationships among the key leaders at a luxury compound in the Caribbean, to deep links to the Democrat Party. Dive down some internet rabbit holes and you will find all sorts of lines being drawn to disgraced financier Jeffrey Esptein, his fortune, and even Ukrainian money laundering.
There was even an online rumor that a sex-tape was to be released in revenge for the losses caused by the collapse of FTX.
