Why didn't HN spot SBF?

What do you mean by “spot”? I feel like half the articles on this site have been “crypto is an insanely dangerous pyramid scheme”.

Polarization. People that see crypto as a Ponzi scheme would never invest time or money into something like SBF. End of story. On the other hand the people that actively invest in crypto would have had no reason to dismiss SBF. It’s a money making scheme and he was making money.

We didn't know what the balance sheets of FTX and Alameda looked like, and most of us don't know enough about the space to guess this was happening. Brian Armstrong (founder of Coinbase) was on the All-In podcast yesterday and said he was curious how SBF had so much liquidity, but even he admitted he didn't see this coming in the slightest: https://youtu.be/Id7cNqwqt1I?t=2612

I suspect there have been some comments here suggesting that SBF was less than totally honest and FTX etc were not completely open in their accounting. Does that count as "spotting"? Does it count when those comments were downvoted? I think it does.

Its like asking "why didn't anyone suggest COVID might've escaped a lab via someone selling bats?" Someone did.

I did not even know who he was before of these events :)

Charlatans have exited for as long as recorded history. As have suckers for them to exploit. "Spotting" them won't change that.

I believe it comes down to signal-to-noise ratio here. It seems to me that almost every post about crypto drowns in "crypto bad" comments which aren't useful and hinders any legit criticism that may be.

well by his physiognimy the guy doesnt even lift, so what's to spot?

It's not like their accounting was public.

Why do people keep talking about Crypto as a default. This could have been any asset, especially intangibles.

Crypto going bust isn't surprising, it's just expected at this point.

Because HN is just yet another fanboy forum.

Too much hype, too little domain expertise...