From reports I've heard floating around, Alameda was making >$1M per day doing their good ol' prop trading. If that's true (and that's a big if) then all SBF had to do was simply stick to the playbook. Do you prop trading on the side, help customers transact crypto via FTX.
This is not DeFi. This is CeFi that caters to crypto. The major DeFi apps have had no problems this cycle.
So perhaps not surprisingly, Uniswap - which is a preeminent DeFi app - now has deeper liquidity on many important trading pairs than the largest CEXes:
Some how a bunch of cex's behind the doors lending ops now is defi?
Meanwhile, some how magic internet money (abracadabra.money), with people bitching about their bad debt on chain for months is still solvent, while ftx is dumpsterfire...
How do you even mess it up this badly?