Celebs’ role in crypto debacle

FTX’s collapse leads to scrutiny over the promotional part A-listers played.

Strolling out of a football stadium, Tom Brady makes his pitch for the crypto trading platform FTX.

“It’s better,” the revered quarterback says as he reviews a skyward-bound investment portfolio on his phone. “And I like better.”

The advertisement, posted to FTX’s Instagram account in September, wasn’t the first time Brady had thrown his formidable weight behind the tech company — but it was likely the last.

A month and a half later, a balance sheet leaked from Alameda Research, a trading firm that FTX’s former chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, cofounded, triggering a meltdown of epic proportions.

The Bahamas-based FTX is now bankrupt, and Bankman-Fried sits in Palo Alto under house arrest as he faces charges of fraud. Some of the wunderkind’s closest confidants have flipped on him; he’s pleaded not guilty.

If the collapse has not totally subsumed Brady, he hasn’t gotten out fully unscathed either. The pro athlete is among several celebrities being sued in a class-action lawsuit alleging that they helped to promote the sale of unregistered securities in the form of yield-bearing FTX accounts.

The litigation, filed in Miami, has cast a spotlight on the important role that high-profile athletes, actors