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Notes -
I don't know about psychopathy. Well, not inborn psychopathy anyway; maybe their weird trajectory turned them into psychopaths, if such a thing is consistent with the definition. I think they demonstrated some skill in locating the original arbitrage and building institutions around it, and a lot of luck in starting in the opening innings of a massive boom market; but from there, Main Character Syndrome explains the rest. Sure, they crossed a red line when they bailed out Alameda with stolen customer reserves, but all of their nonconformist iconoclasm so far had been rewarded by the universe, and by that point their whole identity was "brash entrepreneurs who do what it takes to bring home wins for the good guys." Who were the authority figures to impress upon them the wisdom of the gods of the copybook headings? SBF's parents were well known law professors at Stanford Law School and apparently they were themselves busy buying $70M vacation properties in the Bahamas: not, it would seem, stentorian voices for discipline and humility. Every signal they got from the world, during their less than three decades on this planet, was reinforcement.
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