Crowd Crowns Crypto's Most Damaging Villain, and the Prison Sentence Didn't Save Him

Markets rarely agree on anything, so it is notable that a room full of traders has looked at the wreckage of 2022 and produced a ranking of who did the most damage. The ballot is a four-way contest of fallen founders, and the crowd has been sorting them with the cold efficiency of a creditor reading a balance sheet. Nobody on it is expected to send a thank-you note.

The background is not in dispute. According to Wikipedia's account of Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX, Alameda Research and more than 130 associated entities declared bankruptcy in November 2022. He was later convicted of all seven counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, and on March 28, 2024 was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11 billion. Reuters sources, as summarised there, said at least $4 billion had moved from FTX to Alameda without disclosure, reportedly including customer funds. Disclosure, it turns out, was the one asset in short supply.

The runner-up has a case that would make any prosecutor sit up. Do Kwon co-founded Terraform Labs, and TerraUSD and Luna collapsed in May 2022, wiping out almost $45 billion of market capitalization in one week. He was arrested in Montenegro in March 2023 while trying to travel to Dubai on falsified documents, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2025. A week is an impressive timeframe for a wipeout of that size, if one is being generous with the word impressive.

Now the Morfi numbers, from an opinion market where real traders put money behind their views. Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX) leads at 35% consensus, with Do Kwon (Terra/Luna) behind at 24%. That is conviction, not a headcount of people. Also on the ballot: 2 other sides. So far 41 traders have put $124,375 behind their opinions, in a market that opened less than a day ago, so call this a verdict in the way a first-quarter estimate is a verdict.

My own view, and it is only that: the crowd has it right, and for a boring reason. Kwon blew up a token, but FTX was a place where people kept their actual money, which is a worse place to discover a hole. A longer sentence for Kwon's collapse in a single week does not change my ranking, though it does suggest the courts have a sense of proportion that the crypto industry mostly did not. The finish is one the market would call fairly priced.

What to watch is whether Kwon closes the gap now that his sentence is on the record, and whether the two trailing names stage any late rally from the cheap seats. We called the early lead in Hodl Hannah's earlier report, and the order has held. If you think the crowd has mispriced a villain, the market is open on Morfi, and conviction is, as ever, accepted in cash.