From the #1 best-selling author of The Big Short and Flash Boys, the story of …
When I heard Michael Lewis had been following SBF as the subject for a new book before FTX collapsed, I thought (like many others) he was in the pound seats and lucky he hadn't prematurely published the book. Unfortunately, it became apparent that FTX being exposed as a massive fraud had done nothing to dent Lewis's admiration for SBF - I was able to read a copy from my local library rather than supporting the author responsible for this sycophantic fantasy.
The book seems to spend a lot of time suggesting that Sam is just a misunderstood, well-intentioned individual. Even if you didn't know anything about its subject, from Lewis's own account you would struggle to come to any conclusion other than that SBF cared about anything or anybody but himself. FTX ultimately crashed because he didn't (or couldn't) keep track of his own money or his customers' and he …
When I heard Michael Lewis had been following SBF as the subject for a new book before FTX collapsed, I thought (like many others) he was in the pound seats and lucky he hadn't prematurely published the book. Unfortunately, it became apparent that FTX being exposed as a massive fraud had done nothing to dent Lewis's admiration for SBF - I was able to read a copy from my local library rather than supporting the author responsible for this sycophantic fantasy.
The book seems to spend a lot of time suggesting that Sam is just a misunderstood, well-intentioned individual. Even if you didn't know anything about its subject, from Lewis's own account you would struggle to come to any conclusion other than that SBF cared about anything or anybody but himself. FTX ultimately crashed because he didn't (or couldn't) keep track of his own money or his customers' and he spent it as if he had an unlimited supply of it. But in this book, the author reaches so far he must've put his back out in the process. He writes ridiculous statements about how SBF and his parents weren't interested in money, about how people told Sam he didn't need to be so honest, how his political donations and lobbying efforts on crypto regulation weren't for his own benefit, that he didn't need a CFO because he know how much money they had and that Sam could've transformed Twitter and connected it to all other social media by putting it on a blockchain. He also is at pains to describe CZ as a stupid and unimaginative baddie (not like our stable genius hero Sam) - if he wants to a chalk up a score between the two he should maybe look at how CZ has been able to walk away from Binance with his freedom and presumably billions in the bank while Sam is left to rot in the jail for probably the rest of his life.
At least the following sentence jumped out at me for being accurate since we saw plenty of it at his trial: "Tossed a question he didn't want or know how to answer, Sam simply turned it into one that he was happy to answer."
Like most other comments you'll probably read on this book, if you're interested in SBF you'd have much more fun reading Zeke Faux's Number Go Up and you're a lot more likely to learn something than you will from Going Infinite.
Silicon Valley tries to disrupt the world — and the world says “no.”
Facebook: the …
Enthusiastic Fediverse poster David Gerard has made a career out of exposing cryptocurrency incompetence through his blogs ( davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain) and toots ( @davidgerard@circumstances.run ). This book is a longform exposé of Facebook's disastrous attempts to climb onto the cryptocurrency bandwagon with a fantasy called Libra. Like his previous book which more generally covered Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, this is a witty read as informed as it is humourous. There were a few moments which dug a bit more deeply into the financial system than I was completely comfortable with but maybe I'm just an idiot. The whole sorry affair is somewhat succinctly summed up in the following couple of sentences:
"Facebook was forced to transform its great plan into PayPal-but-it's-Facebook -- or Libra wouldn't allowed to exist. Though the back-end system would still run on a blockchain -- for no functional reason, but they could say it was on a blockchain." …
Enthusiastic Fediverse poster David Gerard has made a career out of exposing cryptocurrency incompetence through his blogs ( davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain) and toots ( @davidgerard@circumstances.run ). This book is a longform exposé of Facebook's disastrous attempts to climb onto the cryptocurrency bandwagon with a fantasy called Libra. Like his previous book which more generally covered Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, this is a witty read as informed as it is humourous. There were a few moments which dug a bit more deeply into the financial system than I was completely comfortable with but maybe I'm just an idiot. The whole sorry affair is somewhat succinctly summed up in the following couple of sentences:
"Facebook was forced to transform its great plan into PayPal-but-it's-Facebook -- or Libra wouldn't allowed to exist. Though the back-end system would still run on a blockchain -- for no functional reason, but they could say it was on a blockchain."
