I think it's really objectionable to refer to this as an "SBF moment".

It's not just about surviving a downtown and unforseen circumstances with some luck (like the sibling talking about FedEx barely making it). Tesla, for example, was famously extremely close to bankruptcy.

But SBF got into the situation he was in due to his egregious fraud. The accounting at FTX was a criminal joke, with multiple sets of books, bypassable controls, outright fake numbers. My guess is that if SBF had survived that particular BTC downturn that his extreme hubris and willingness to commit fraud would have eventually done him in - downturns always happen at some point, and his brazenness in his criminal enterprise showed no signs of learning from mistakes.

Sure, all hugely successful companies have a ton of luck involved. But I think it's a mistake to pretend that SBF was just done in by bad timing, or that all companies do what he did. His empire collapse was pretty inevitable IMO if you look at what a clown show FTX was under the covers.

Lol, tether, bitfinex are examples that came to mind. A lot of the OG crypto instutions got to where they are by "faking it till they made it" long enough to actually make it.

Does no one still remember that tether continually stalled audits FOR YEARS in the face of increasing scrutiny?

Correct. Companies go bust all the time, for market timing reasons that are mostly out of their control. But going bust is different from going bust and stealing billions.

Whether by negligence or intent, FTX was arranged so that they couldn't go bust without stealing.

But that’s precisely what I mean. How many companies had similarly sketchy situations, cleaned up their act and nobody ever noticed?

That number isn’t 0