Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) lost its credibility in the market after it was found that his company Alameda Research had significant volumes of FTX holdings. Soon after this event, the crypto community also found SBF to misappropriate and manipulate users' funds. Inevitably, it led around 130 companies launched by SBF to collapse.
Soon after the investigation, the crypto community heavily criticized the ethical operations of SBF and others, including Caroline Ellison.
However, it seems not all parties was on the same page. The media undertook several attempts to one down the intensity of the matter to wipe off the unethical operations of SBF. However, such acts of the press were condemned by the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, and Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance.
The continuous and calculative attempts of the media to "cover-up" the incident also raised widespread protests, paving the way for more criticisms by the crypto community. No wonder such testing times with several opinions instigate the public to research the matter before choosing the right and ethical side.
The recent incidents regarding Sam Bankman-Fried and his company instigated the entire crypto community, and users were no different.
Furthermore, the contradictory stands of the crypto community and media instigated them to go deep into the matter. Needless to say, crypto enthusiasts wanted to have enough knowledge about the matter, SBF, and its operations before supporting or criticizing either party.
Thus, Google saw a significant increase in search results for "SBF" as users began researching. Evidently, there's no better place to start than Google searches, which was no different in this case.
The sudden spike in Google search results for SBF seems to overpower several other controversial personalities in the crypto market.
For instance, Google Trends indicate the search appearances of SBF were 185.7% more than Do Kwon, the CEO of Terraform Labs.
Though Do Kwon experienced high search results during Terra's collapse, the figures were not even close to SBF's. It seems FTX's collapse and SBF's wrongdoings fetched him more publicity than ever!