Plenty of observers are once again invoking “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” this time in regard to cryptocurrency exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

If you recall, Hans Christian Andersen’s timeless fable got trotted out ad nauseam during the Donald Trump era. Starting in 2016, it became shorthand gesturing at the 45th president’s vacuousness and blinding self-regard, plus the media’s role in exposing it all to the public. The reference was self-flattering — “we know the truth, and the truth will set us free.” Author Michael Wolff went so far as to predict that his book Fire and Fury possessed enough of the “‘emperor has no clothes’ effect” to end the Trump presidency.

So it goes in 2022 with the reaction to the rise and fall of “SBF,” the nickname of the man behind one of the biggest acts of fraud and theft in US history — our generation’s Bernie Madoff. Bankman-Fried lied about his FTX crypto exchange, the media caught on to the grift, and now he’s sitting in prison in the Bahamas. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is the perfect parable, right? Well, yes, but not in the way you might think.