The Crypto Con Years Aren’t Over Yet

The most famous of the fraudsters—though far from the only one—was Sam Bankman-Fried of crypto exchange FTX.

The cryptocurrency bubble of 2021 and 2022 made fortunes for a few and lost fortunes for many. Crypto exchanges advertised at the Super Bowl. Murky shadow banks backed all manner of dubious enterprises. The gospel of the blockchain was promoted around the world on the basis of a number going up. 2023 produced numerous books that follow such phenomena.

The cryptocurrency bubble of 2021 and 2022 made fortunes for a few and lost fortunes for many. Crypto exchanges advertised at the Super Bowl. Murky shadow banks backed all manner of dubious enterprises. The gospel of the blockchain was promoted around the world on the basis of a number going up. 2023 produced numerous books that follow such phenomena.

The most famous of the fraudsters—though far from the only one—was Sam Bankman-Fried of crypto exchange FTX.

There seemed an obvious candidate to provide the definitive story of the crypto bubble. Michael Lewis, renowned author of The Big Short, was in the right place at the right time. He embedded himself with Bankman-Fried and FTX in April 2022—just before the bubble popped, as all bubbles must. When FTX collapsed in November 2022, the financial world was delighted to hear that Lewis was on the case and eagerly awaited his dissection of crypto. But with Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, Lewis has fallen in love with his subject.

Lewis seems to have decided early on that this would be the story of a radical financial genius—and he refused to pivot when events told a different tale. He meets Bankman-Fried for the first time and falls for him utterly. He tells a friend who was thinking of investing in FTX: “Go for it! Swap shares with Sam Bankman-Fried! Do whatever he wants to do! What could possibly go wrong?”

It shouldn’t have been at all hard to see that something was not quite right with Bankman-Fried and FTX.