Just wrapped up Going Infinite, Michael Lewis' book on Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and FTX. To my mind, this probably falls in the bottom quartile of Lewis' books, far below The Fifth Risk, The Undoing Project, Moneyball, and of course Liar's Poker. It reads like he was hanging out with SBF, maybe to do a feature piece for Vanity Fair, as he has been wont to do, then things went pie-shaped and he happened to be in the right place at the right time, so he made a book of it. The saving grace is that even Lewis's least good books are eminently readable. I just came to the end wondering if it had been a good use of my time.
The main thrust people were taking from Lewis around the time of SBF's trial is that the kid wasn't really guilty of monumental fraud because he was so clueless. Far from being a Machiavellian figure like Madoff, he was just an eggheaded autistic kid who fucked up. Which is probably true. He was probably convicted of the wrong crimes. But he needed to be convicted of some crimes because he had been so outrageously irresponsible with OPM (other people's money). You just can't do that.
Which is why the broadly deregulatory thrust of the Trump administration's take on crypto is wrongheaded. People need to be protected from dangerous stuff by some sorts of regulations. Crypto regulation should be similar to the regulation of other investible assets. And the idea that up to 10% of any public pension (like NC's) might be allocated to crypto is batshit crazy.
2 comments:
Doubt he was clueless about pursuing fraud. The actions taken to avoid regulation, the move to offshore the company and the comparative ease which which he lent funds from FTX to Alameda Research after having job experience with Jane Street makes it look like he figured out a good con.
You could be right. Hard to tell. He's in prison now and the truth likely will not impact whether Trump will pardon him or not. Trump probably hasn't thought of it yet. Or that is on his list for June or July. First he needed to have Colin McGregor and next probably Andrew Tate to the White House. SBF isn't really Trump's kind of guy.
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