Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

The book was delivered in a dirty condition. Black marks on the front and back pages. Dirt on the pages and creases on the front cover.

A page turner from start to finish, the book is light on the crypto explanations but heavy on the human element. Michael Lewis ended up turning his unprecedented access to Sam Bankman-Fried before his fall from grace into a riveting book that joins the pantheon of his other great works. In other works, if you loved his previous books, you will love this one too. And if you have never read a book by Michael Lewis, I envy the treasure you are about to find for the first time.

Going Infinite? More like Going to barely scratch the surface... It pains me to give this such a poor score as I'm an avid Michael Lewis reader, and I sincerely believe he demonstrates in this book, in terms of sheer prose and story telling prowess, he's on the top of his game... Having said that it seems like he's incapable of writing critically about his protagonist. I wasn't expecting him to villainize SBF, but I was expecting depth and introspection...instead I got bloated descriptions on how quirky SBF is. To name a few instances of this; we get detailed descriptions on Storybook Brawl (the video game SBF played while engaging in Bloomberg live interviews and important meetings), how quaint it is he stumbles out of vehicles with a rumpled suit under his arm without shoes or a belt cause someone told him Mitch McConnel "cares about how he looks", or detailed memos of cost-benefit analysis of office sexual affairs, and there's even a Rosebud moment with a stuffed toy called Manfred (I kid you not). I understand Lewis is trying to paint a picture here and I did find the sections on Jane Street, Effective Altruism and the John Ray investigation fascinating...but I really feel let down by this book and to a certain extent I feel non the wiser. It's worth a read for the prose or if you have a great deal of interest in this Crypto catastrophe...otherwise give this a skip

“Going Infinite” is the story of the people behind the crash of the crypto exchange FTX around November 2022. FTX was founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), who at one time was reported to be the wealthiest person under age 30 in the world. At that time, he reportedly was worth about 23 billion US dollars. Michael Lewis embedded himself for almost 2 years into SBF’s world and was able to observe the complex financial business of digital currency and in particular the financial empire SBF created (and eventually destroyed). Lewis has an exceptional ability to observe, study, and provide analysis of complex institutions and the highly specialized individuals who create and work in such institutions. Good examples of Lewis’s penchant for such chronicling would be his books Liar’s Poker (Wall Street Investment Banking) and say Moneyball (How metrics evolved into analytics and were introduced into sports). Lewis is exceptionally effective in interpreting the jargon and technical language of a specialized complex social/economic/scientific entity and writing about it in a way that a lay person can comfortably understand. For example, there are few uses of the term “blockchain” in Lewis’s narrative of the crypto business! However, when he does define it, the concept is clear to anyone who has, say has had a bank account. The story is focused on SBF and how he evolved into the King of Crypto. And just since publication of the book (winter 2023) he is now a convicted felon serving a long jail term in a federal prison. The irony is striking. SBF the son of upper-class parents with exceptional mathematical, analytical , and video game skills which set him apart from his peers such that his socialization was nonexistent. His motivations for accruing such huge wealth are not what we would suspect of a person so driven to accumulate an “infinite” fortune. He is a person who cares very much about mankind but has little interest in people. Read the book to understand the implied contradiction. The story traces his journey as a kid growing up in the video-gaming age in California, graduating from MIT with degrees in mathematics and physics and then gravitating to Wall Street, where he becomes professional trader and is encompassed in an environment of similarly smart and sometimes socially maladjusted people. Lewis profiles the team SBX assembled around him to build FTX. Most of these people were somewhat different (almost all with high intellect) but maybe a couple of standard deviations (socially) from the norm. SBF’s management style was not just unorthodox but almost non-existent. His lack of attention to US government trading regulations and laws eventually led to his downfall. Lewis meticulously details the events and the people dynamics immediately prior to the downfall of FTX.

una storia incredibile raccontata benissimo come al solito da Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is the BEST. Another classic from the author