The world is sick of SBF’s trial
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, written in the brains of Sam Bankman-Fried
Imagine if, for a moment, you could imagine that one of the world’s most beloved and successful journalists had been involved in Simpson’s world. Imagine that this writer had been writing a biography of a famous football player for months, only to find himself writing in the back of a white Ford Bronco, staring at the road and wondering when he would see it again. Simpson had been talking to him while he was in jail. Gobsmacking access. He just released a book that was destined to be a best seller and started sparring with two people over jury selection. Imagine, in other words, the luckiest journalist in the world.
This never took place, of course. My Crazy-Ass Summer With OJ is a film that may prove to be a blockbuster. It happened to Michael Lewis, like the financial-world version of the above events. His new book, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, is a behind-the-scenes look at how disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried made and lost a fortune through his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX and wound up on trial (right now!) It was the worst financial fiasco in modern history.
Lewis entered a buzzsaw with Going Infinite. Prior to the book’s publication, he gave an interview to 60 Minutes in which he insisted FTX was a “great real business” and appeared strikingly sympathetic to Bankman-Fried. (For someone who wrote about the perils of SBF’s lack of media training, it’s clear Lewis could’ve used a refresher.) Early critical reactions to the book have largely been stinging—I recommend reading cryptocurrency journalist Molly White’s review—and tend to ding Lewis for refusing to see his subject as a villain instead of an antihero.
So the overwhelming public response to learning that Lewis had been tagging along with Bankman-Fried as his crypto world crumbled was that of unbridled excitement. It was assumed that he would get the goods. Apple was so confident it reportedly paid $5 million for the rights to Lewis’ account before it even existed. Michael hasn’t written anything yet, but the story has become too big for us to wait, so he decided to sell the project in November 2022.
If there’s one thing the SBF saga underlines, though, it’s how fast fortunes can change. There was an ugly dispute this summer between the subjects of the book The Blind Side and the white family who cared for the poor black teenager. Former NFL player Michael Oher sued the Tuohy family, alleging that they’d lied to him and profited off a sham relationship. Lewis has made things worse for himself by suggesting that Oher is acting this way because of brain damage he sustained playing football, which casts a shadow over The Blind Side.
It’s true that Lewis does not insist upon his subject’s criminality. Indeed, he is willing to entertain Bankman-Fried’s defense that the colossal money loss stemmed from negligence rather than malice. Still, Going Infinite is not actually the work of drooling credulity that Lewis’ most astringent critics see it as. Overall, it portrays Bankman-Fried as an arrogant weirdo who leans into his personal eccentricities to distract from his moral slipperiness. Lewis quotes from his former FTX COO, who was a critic of Bankman-Fried’s character, and quotes Bankman-Fried’s dickhead memos to his girlfriend. He has no compassion.
There is a main issue with going Infinite, it is not that it neglects to end with something blunt force like he was a bad guy. The problem is that it simply doesn’t deliver on its potential.
Bankman- Fried – the first criminal trial for fraud in a high-frequency financial investment model – is a sideshow?
Although the outcome of the criminal trial will have little effect on the trajectory of the businesses that survived the shock, Acheson said it was a sideshow. “It’s the stuff of a very juicy story, that’s why it has held everyone’s attention for so long … It’s the gossip we all pretend not to be interested in,” she says. “But closure will allow the industry to move on.”
Bankman- Fried is facing seven counts of fraud at this first trial. He is accused by the US Department of Justice of misappropriating billions of dollars’ worth of customer deposits—which was allegedly used to bankroll a lavish lifestyle and buy political influence—and lying about the way his business operated.
