The power vacuum at the top of the crypto industry

San Francisco: The price of Bitcoin is surging again. Major financial firms are showing renewed interest in digital currencies. And crypto fanatics are celebrating the end of a long period of depressed prices and business collapses.

But the sudden explosion of optimism has come at a turbulent moment for the cryptocurrency industry.

The last time crypto prices were skyrocketing, the industry’s most influential executives were Sam Bankman-Fried and Changpeng Zhao, rival billionaires whose online sparring could move markets. Now Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX crypto exchange, and Zhao, who ran the world’s largest crypto firm, Binance, both face prison time after parallel falls from power.