FTX: Descent into Madness is a biting mockumentary about a crypto company's downfall
In 2022, the cryptocurrency company FTX went bankrupt. In 2023, its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was found guilty by a federal jury on seven criminal counts, including wire fraud, money laundering, among others. Initially viewed as the crypto poster boy, Bankman-Fried was found to have laundered money into his sister company, Alameda Research. He's currently serving 25 years in prison.
Director Michael Hoffman Jr.'s mockumentary, FTX: Descent into Madness, is a hilarious, and at times dark mockumentary that traces FTX's rapid rise and fall. This is a film without any good guys. Even the "documentarian," Luis (Armando Gutierrez), comes across as dopey and easily fooled by Bankman-Fried, played by Adam D. Crain.
Luis enlists the help of internet model, Amanda (Nanette Orellena), to shoot the documentary, and the two travel to the Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried relocated with the company's CEO, Caroline Ellison (Cassie Brown), to run FTX's daily business. However, the swanky Bahamas pad isn't much of an office. Instead, it's filled with initially loyal followers of Bankman-Fried, especially the uber possessive Caroline, who shoos away anyone who tries to infringe upon her proximity to her boyfriend. Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried pays influencers to come party and promote his crypto brand. People do lines of coke on the kitchen counters, when they're not living it up on yachts.
FTX: Descent into Madness is an effective satirical look at FTX's rise and fall
Throughout the film's entirety, Bankman-Fried is depicted as a socially inept loser who only made a fortune because he figured out a way to swindle people, which ultimately landed him in prison. However, in front of the cameras, he constantly says one bizarre thing after another. He's sweaty, and his daily outfit consists of shorts and a T-shirt. One interviewee comments that his hair looks like "a wet mop." He games and collects figurines. He's like a perpetual 14-year-old who never had any friends in high school, and yet, as his fortunes grow, he draws more followers who buy into his crypto scheme and party at his Bahamas pad. It should be noted that at one point, Tom and Giselle Brady were even brand ambassadors of FTX. There's certainly nothing flattering in this mockumentary about Bankman-Fried, and even his parents, academic law experts who taught at Stanford, are depicted harshly, and perhaps rightfully so.
In this regard, Crain does a great job starring as the film's totally weird and awkward villain, who's eventually led away in handcuffs. He portrays Bankman-Fried as an uber nerd, certainly not a genius, but the film shows how anyone with gobs of money can influence the system and pull strings. Further, the mockumentary succeeds in making the case that maybe some of these tech guys and crypto bros aren't exactly as smart as the media hyped them up to be. That's certainly the case here with Bankman-Fried's depiction.
Additionally, the mockumentary underscores how the crypto industry, including FTX, was able to buy politicians during the 2022 midterm elections to influence policy. This is shown through a fictious version of Republican politician Michelle Bond (Tracy Johnson), who ultimately lost her New York Congressional primary in 2022, and in another scene where Bankman-Fried meets with the chair of the House's Security and Exchange Commission and tries to woo him by having Caroline sit on his lap and pet his hair. Sure, these scenes are totally absurd, but the humor works. It highlights just how effective the crypto was and maybe still is at buying politicians through unlimited campaign donations.
While the mockumentary certainly lampoons FTX's situation, there's one powerful scene where a business owner in the Bahamas closes his storefront after FTX goes under. As viewers, we realize from that shot that this guy likely invested everything in the crypto scheme. It's a poignant moment that highlights how the crimes Bankman-Fried and those close to him screwed over a lot of people and ruined lives in the process.
FTX: Descent into Madness is an effective mockumentary that uses dark humor to trace the rise and fall of FTX and crypto's poster boy, Bankman-Fried. The film would have benefited from showing a few more scenes of how the money laundering scheme affected average people, but it does succeed on tearing down the crypto industry, the geeky tech bros behind some of the schemes, and FTX's ultimate demise that led to prison sentences for many of its higher-ups.
FTX: Descent into Madness will release soon on digital platforms.
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