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As someone who writes a lot about crypto frauds, I see a wide range of reactions to them. One unfortunately common reaction is to blame the victim: to say they were greedy for chasing sometimes unbelievably high returns, or that they should have known the risk, or that they somehow had it coming for choosing to put money into crypto. People commonly stereotype those who hold crypto as archetypical “crypto bros”: young, braggadocious trolls trying to get rich quick by being early enough to a pump-and-dump scheme that they can later tell everyone else to “have fun staying poor” from their superyachts. Reality, as it so often is, is a lot more complicated. Shortly after Celsius declared bankruptcy, Celsius customers began writing letters to the bankruptcy judge, telling their stories and explaining how they came to have money in Celsius, and pleading for him to do everything in his power to return their assets. I was struck by the diversity of the writers: young people to retirees; Americans, Europeans, and people in developing countries; some who started with a ton of money to put into crypto and others who scraped together their portfolios a dollar at a time. Some were financially savvy — the types of people you might expect to have “known better” — others had no idea what they were doing, but were convinced to get into crypto by family or other trusted individuals. Many believed what Celsius and Mashinsky were saying, and that the promises had to be true because US regulato