3.2. The Digital Monkey Eats the Banker

The Hack: November 2022, Nassau, The Bahamas

In November 2022, the world of cryptocurrencies, which had until recently seemed invulnerable, collapsed. Epicenter—that was how the crypto exchange FTX, founded by 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, was described. Only yesterday, his portraits graced the covers of Forbes and Fortune; he was called the "new Rothschild," a "genius of the crypto industry," "the man who would save the world with the money of the future." He gave interviews to glossy magazines, donated millions to effective altruism, and met with politicians and regulators.
Today, he is arrested in the Bahamas. Eight billion dollars in client funds have vanished. The exchange's assets are frozen. Millions of people around the world have lost their savings. The cryptocurrency market, once valued in the trillions of dollars, collapsed, taking with it not only money but also belief.
Images circulated globally: a disheveled young man in an orange prison jumpsuit, led in handcuffs from a courthouse. The very same "genius" who sought to restructure the global financial system had been reduced to an ordinary criminal. The boy who played at being a god turned out to be an old-school fraudster.
But the story did not begin here. It began a year and a half earlier, in a different place and a different atmosphere.

The Hack: March 2021, London, Christie's Auction House

On March 11, 2021, Christie's auction house accomplished what would later be called either "the biggest scam in art history" or "the greatest breakthrough"—depending on whom you ask. Lot number 999 was unusual in every respect. It was not a painting, not a sculpture, not an installation. It was a file. A JPG image, 21,069 by 21,069 pixels, a collage of 5,000 images that the artist under the pseudonym Beeple had created over 5,000 days.
The work was titled "Everydays: The First 5000 Days." Three months before the auction, no one would have paid a cent for these same pictures online. They could be downloaded for free, copied, saved to a hard drive, printed, and hung on a wall. They had no value whatsoever—except for the value ascribed to them.
But on March 11, 2021, something occurred that made philosophers, economists, and art historians take notice. Bidding opened at $100. Within minutes, the price surpassed one million. By day's end, the lot sold for $69 million.
Sixty-nine million dollars for a file that anyone could download. Sixty-nine million dollars for an image that does not exist in the physical world. Sixty-nine million dollars for a digital signature on a blockchain certifying that this particular file is the "original."
The buyer, Singaporean investor Vignesh Sundaresan, received not a painting, but a certificate. Not canvas and paint, but an entry in a distributed ledger. Not an object, but a signifier.
A scene worthy of the brush of Hieronymus Bosch: people in tuxedos (the old world) sell something intangible (the new world) for money that does not truly exist (cryptocurrency) to a man who paid with digital tokens obtained from selling other digital tokens.
The digital monkey ate the banker.

The Crisis of Value Theory: From Aristotle to Marx and Back

A philosophical understanding of these events necessitates a return to a fundamental question: what is value? From where do things derive their worth?
In his Politics and Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguished two types of value: use-value (the worth of a thing for use) and exchange-value (the worth of a thing for exchange) (Aristotle, 1983; 1984). This distinction remained fundamental for all subsequent economic thought. A thing can be useful but have no exchange-value (air). It can have exchange-value but be useless (luxury goods).
For Aristotle, the source of value was labor and need. Things are exchanged because people need them, and the proportions of exchange are determined in some way that Aristotle could not fully clarify.
Adam Smith and David Ricardo developed the labor theory of value: the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor necessary for its production (Smith, 2007; Ricardo, 2007). Labor is the source and measure of value. This theory helped explain why some goods are more expensive than others: more labor is expended on them.
Karl Marx radicalized this theory by introducing the concept of "abstract labor"—labor in general, irrespective of its concrete form (Marx, 1988). Value, for Marx, is the "crystallization of abstract human labor." It was precisely this concept that allowed him to build the theory of surplus value and explain the mechanism of capitalist exploitation.
But Marx was perceptive enough to see the paradox: value is a social relation that takes the form of a property inherent in an object. Commodity fetishism is the situation in which social relations between people assume the fantastic form of relations between things (Marx, 1988, p. 82). People think gold is valuable in itself, but its value is actually the result of a complex network of social relations.
Georg Simmel, in The Philosophy of Money, went further: money is not merely a medium of exchange but a form of social relations, a crystallization of trust (Simmel, 2004). Money is worth exactly what people believe it is worth. This belief is not arbitrary—it is supported by the state, law, and tradition. But ultimately, money is an "absolute means," a form devoid of its own content.
Cryptocurrencies have taken this logic to its extreme. Bitcoin is backed neither by gold, nor by the state, nor by legal tender status. Its value is a pure function of belief. People believe Bitcoin is worth a lot, and therefore it is worth a lot. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a closed loop with no outlet to any "objective" reality.
Jean Baudrillard, in Simulacra and Simulation, offered a concept without which the crypto-phenomenon cannot be understood (Baudrillard, 2015). Baudrillard identified three orders of simulacra, succeeding one another in history:
First-order simulacra (from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution): counterfeits, imitations, copies. They still refer to an original, acknowledging its existence even while reproducing it.
Second-order simulacra (the industrial era): mass production, copies without an original. A factory-made product does not imitate a unique object—it reproduces a standard. The distinction between original and copy loses meaning.
Third-order simulacra (contemporaneity): models, codes, signs that precede and constitute reality. The map precedes the territory. Hyperreality replaces reality.
NFTs are the perfect third-order simulacrum. They do not imitate reality (like first-order simulacra) nor reproduce a standard (like second-order simulacra). They produce reality out of themselves. A file that can be copied infinitely attains the status of "unique" thanks to an entry in a blockchain. Uniqueness is not a property of the object, but a function of the accounting system.
Cryptocurrencies are simulacra of the same order. They refer to no "real" wealth—neither gold, nor commodities, nor state guarantees. They refer only to themselves, to their own code, to their own algorithm. Bitcoin is expensive because the algorithm prescribes its scarcity. This scarcity is not physical (there could be an infinite number of bitcoins, like forks), but algorithmic, codified.

A Critique of the Substantial Ontology of Value

The collapse of FTX and the fall of the crypto market are often interpreted as the bursting of a "bubble," a return to the "real" economy. This interpretation is comforting but philosophically naive. It presupposes the existence of some "objective" value to which we return after the collapse of illusions.
But no such "objective" value exists. Value is always a social construct, always a function of belief, always the result of complex social relations.
The U.S. dollar is backed not by gold (the gold standard was abandoned in 1971) nor by commodities, but by faith in the U.S. government, in the American economy, in the fact that taxes must be paid in dollars. This faith is supported by the army, the police, the courts, and the entire power of the state. But it is still faith.
The euro is backed by faith in the European Union, in the German economy, in French taxpayers. This is no less "virtual" than faith in Bitcoin—the euro simply has more "believers" and a better-organized system for maintaining that faith.
Cryptocurrencies attempted to create value without the state, without violence, without tradition—pure value based solely on algorithm and the voluntary belief of participants. The FTX collapse demonstrated not that this is impossible, but that it requires an infrastructure of trust just as complex as that of traditional money.
Sam Bankman-Fried turned out to be a fraudster not because cryptocurrencies are an illusion, but because he violated the rules of the game that millions were playing. He used trust to steal. But the game itself—the game of value-as-convention—continues.
The most profound analysis of the crypto-phenomenon lies not in the economic, but in the anthropological plane. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies exhibit all the characteristics of a religious movement.
Prophets: Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's creator, whose identity remains unknown. He disappeared after creating the system, leaving his followers a sacred text and an algorithm. His anonymity lends him the features of a mythical figure—he is everywhere and nowhere, he died and was resurrected in the code.
Sacred Texts: The Bitcoin white paper—nine pages that defined a new faith. Commentaries upon it, forks, upgrades—the theological literature interpreting the revelation.
Temples: Mining farms—vast hangars housing thousands of computers "mining" Bitcoin. These are modern cathedrals where the sacrament of producing value from electricity and algorithm is performed.
Priests: Miners, developers, exchange owners—a caste of initiates who understand the complex ritual and profit from it.
Believers: Millions of people who have invested money in cryptocurrencies. They may not understand the technical details, but they believe. They believe in the prophet, in the sacred text, in the priests, in the promised salvation.
The Fall: The FTX collapse is the moment of the Fall, when one of the priests was revealed to be a deceiver. Eight billion dollars disappeared not because the market fell, but because trust was betrayed.
This religious analogy is not accidental. Cryptocurrencies reproduce the structure of faith that Émile Durkheim considered fundamental to any society: the distinction between the sacred and the profane, collective representations, rituals ensuring solidarity (Durkheim, 1998). Bitcoin is sacred; fiat money is profane. Mining is a ritual uniting the community. The FTX collapse is a profanation requiring purification.

The Paradox of Trust: Code vs. The Human

The original pathos of cryptocurrencies was formulated with ultimate clarity: "Don't trust people, trust code." Bitcoin was created as a system designed to eliminate the human factor. Algorithm, not bankers, determines issuance. Code, not politicians, guarantees the immutability of rules. Mathematics, not trust, ensures security.
The FTX collapse showed that this pathos founders on a simple reality: people are still necessary. Exchanges, wallets, on-ramps and off-ramps—all are managed by people. People write the code, people execute it, people hold the keys, people make decisions. The algorithm may be ideal, but the interface between the algorithm and the world is human. And humans can make mistakes, they can cheat, they can steal.
Sam Bankman-Fried did not hack the code. He did not violate the algorithm. He simply exploited the trust of thousands of people in himself, in his exchange, in his name. He did what fraudsters have done throughout the ages: promised one thing and did another. The code did not protect against greed.
This is the profound irony of the crypto-revolution. It began as a revolt against the human factor, an attempt to replace people with algorithms. And it ended with a classic financial pyramid scheme, where one man stole billions from trusting investors. The code did not help. The algorithm did not save. Human nature proved stronger than mathematics.

Value as Convention

The cryptocurrency bubble and the FTX collapse lay bare a fundamental truth that economic science often tries to mask with mathematics and statistics: value is a convention. A social contract. A collective belief.
Aristotle thought value was rooted in need and labor. Marx, in abstract labor and social relations. Simmel, in trust. Baudrillard, in simulation. Cryptocurrencies have confirmed the validity of each perspective.
Yes, value requires labor—mining consumes electricity, demands equipment, effort. Yes, value is a social relation—Bitcoin is worth what people are willing to pay for it. Yes, value requires trust—people believe Bitcoin will retain its value. Yes, value is a simulacrum—Bitcoin refers to nothing but itself.
But the main lesson of the crypto-epic is not this. The main lesson is that one cannot escape human nature. No algorithm can replace trust. No mathematics can negate greed. No code can protect against folly.
Cryptocurrencies attempted to create a world where rules are set by mathematics, not by people. But people still ended up at the center. People write the mathematics. People execute the rules. People break the rules. People believe. People betray. People lose faith.
And when faith collapsed, billions vanished. Not because they were stolen (though they were stolen, too), but because what made them money—trust—disappeared. Without trust, Bitcoin is just numbers on a screen. Without trust, the dollar is just colored paper. Without trust, the entire financial world is just a complex system of self-deception.
The crypto-phenomenon exposes the structure that remains in the shadows of classical economic theory: the conflict between faith and knowledge as a constitutive condition of value.
In this conflict, there is always tension. Tension between knowledge (algorithm, code, mathematics) and faith (trust, expectation, hope). Tension between rational calculation and irrational excitement. Tension between rules and their violation.
This tension is ineradicable. It cannot be "resolved" by any final solution—neither by total algorithmization (which would eliminate the human factor but is impossible), nor by a return to "real" money (which is itself based on faith).
It can only be sustained—in a mode of constant renegotiation of boundaries, constant balancing between trust and control, constant awareness that any value is a temporary, fragile crystallization of collective belief.
Sixty-nine million dollars for a file that can be downloaded for free. Eight billion vanishing in a single day. The digital monkey eating the banker. All of this serves as a reminder that value resides not in things, but in us. In our faith, in our trust, in our willingness to play by rules that we ourselves have created and we ourselves can break.