Obviously, FTX is (or rather was) in a very different line of business than Theranos. But the crypto currency exchange and the diagnostic company shared several characteristics that led to their very high profile implosion.
First both were operating on a relatively new technology space that very few people understood. That made it much easier for their founders to spin a wildly over-optimistic yarn without fear of contradiction. Those yarns may well had strayed into falsehoods in both cases too.
Second, both had young, apparently brilliant founders that may wanted to believe in. America is plagued by the cult of personality and hero-worship, and both Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes, managed to convince a lot of seemingly smart people to buy into their stories. With a posse of powerful influential but largely uncomprehending bakers, they were able to weather headwinds that would have sunk less well protected firms far earlier. And that unnatural longevity increase the scale of the damage inflicted when they eventually imploded.
If is fitting and not entirely surprising that high profile founders ended up failing in such spectacular fashion.. But until people, particular the influential (who by dint of their prior accomplishments, often overestimate their abilities) learn not to be take in by "bright young things" with an appealing story and do a little more due diligence fueled by a good does of skepticism, we'll be here again before too long.
