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> It seems that his _actual_ take was that SBF was a dumbass rather than a criminal mastermind.

He was a dumbass though. He got caught up in it all and you bend, bend, bend until the next thing you know...

This guy was lying like crazy in the media. He even said it was a ponzi scheme. Maybe he's a dumbass but he's also a criminal who was committing crimes while out there doing PR the whole time. Even during his trial he was lying so let's not act like he was in over his head and made some mistakes. He's never even owned up to it.

> He got caught up in it all and you bend, bend, bend until the next thing you know..

This denies him agency. Probably a better hypothesis is that he was a raging narcissist who thought he could swindle everyone with none the wiser, without realizing how transparent his fraud was.

It seems like for your theory to be better, it should fit the facts better (not saying it doesn't). Whether it seems agentic or not doesn't seem very relevant to whether it's what happened.

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