Lawyers, accountants and other financial professionals should have stepped in to halt the fatal mistakes going on inside crypto firms such as FTX long before they imploded, said Christy Goldsmith Romero, a commissioner with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

At the risk of offending their crypto employers, Goldsmith Romero said the experienced hands – also including the investment firms backing these companies – “need to step up, and call for compliance, controls, and other governance, without allowing the promise of riches and the company’s marketing pitch to silence their objections to obvious deficiencies.”