When the cryptocurrency exchange FTX opened its US headquarters in Chicago last May, Mayor Lori Lightfoot heralded it as a win for communities that historically had been denied access to quality banking and financial services. She announced that FTX would donate $1 million to help expand a program to provide formerly incarcerated Chicagoans with a universal basic income. She called the initiative “a mechanism and a tool to bring historically underrepresented and ignored populations into the world of crypto so they can take ownership and control over their own financial destiny.”

Seven months later, the crypto bubble had burst, and FTX had filed bankruptcy without having donated enough money to even get the program off the ground.

Many cryptocurrency and financial technology (“fintech”) firms paint themselves as champions of financial security for black and brown people who have been excluded and underserved by traditional banks and lenders. In reality, these institutions are another set of unregulated or under-regulated corporations trying to make a profit by extracting wealth from poor and working-class communities of color. Rather than putting formerly incarcerated Chicagoans in “control over their own financial destiny,” Mayor Lightfoot instead left them at the mercy of alleged fraudster and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.