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    Michael Hiltzik: How Sam Bankman-Fried exploited the 'effective altruism' fad to get rich and con the world

    by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times Nov 22, 2022 6 minutes
    FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried attends a press conference at the FTX Arena in downtown Miami on Friday, June 4, 2021.

    The most uplifting aspect of the Sam Bankman-Fried story was always that he guided his way to a putative cryptocurrency fortune of more than $16 billion by following a philosophy of charitable giving known as "effective altruism."

    Interviewers were dazzled by Bankman-Fried's account of the epiphany he experienced over a lunch with Will MacAskill, around the time he was graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    A British philosopher, MacAskill advocated a version of "effective altruism" asserting that, if life's purpose was to do good, then the moral imperative is to make as much money as one can, and then give it away. MacAskill compressed this viewpoint into the edict, "earn to give."

    According to Bankman-Fried, the encounter inspired him to alter his post-graduation goal away from joining a nonprofit and toward going into finance, eventually founding what was one of the world's leading cryptocurrency firms, FTX.

    Adam Fisher, the author of published in September by the venture firm Sequoia Capital, which invested in FTX, asked

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