When Michael Livieratos saw quarterback Tom Brady in a commercial for the cryptocurrency trading platform FTX, he knew exactly where he wanted to put his $30,000 crypto investment.
“As a New England Patriots fan my entire life, you can imagine the influence that Tom Brady would have,” said Livieratos, a 56-year-old legal clerk who lives in Connecticut. He soon moved nearly all his money from another crypto exchange to FTX.
Then FTX filed for bankruptcy in a spectacular collapse that vaporized at least $10 billion in assets, according to bankruptcy filings, including all the money Livieratos had on the platform.