I keep on being told that it’s time I took crypto seriously. Crypto, goes the refrain, has “gone mainstream” — from BlackRock to UBS, every major investor is at the very least “exploring” it these days, while the big firms have tens of millions of retail investors each.

Governments are bullish, too: Britain is taking a “forward-looking approach” with the chancellor hoping to turn the country into a global crypto hub, putting the UK right up there with El Salvador, where bitcoin is now legal tender. I can joke, but if I haven’t bought into crypto, then the joke is actually on me, or so people keep saying.

And yet, try as I might to take it seriously, I keep on coming up against new ways to find crypto absurd. This week the comedy came courtesy of the nominatively determined Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO and founder of crypto exchange FTX, a company recently valued at $32bn. On Monday, Bankman-Fried, himself recently valued at $24bn, appeared on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast and was asked to explain how a newish crypto phenomenon called yield-farming works.