Summary of Going Infinite By Michael Lewis: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

By Willie M. Joseph

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Summary of Going Infinite By Michael Lewis: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

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Going Infinite is a psychological portrait and financial rollercoaster ride by Michael Lewis, detailing the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, the world's youngest billionaire and crypto's Gatsby. The book explores high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system, providing insights into Bankman-Fried's life and the challenges he faced before his collapse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: Oct 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223125624

Willie M. Joseph

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PREFACE

Sam Bankman- Fried, a crypto exchange founder, was first introduced to the author by a friend who was about to close a deal with him. Sam had been around for only two and a half years and had spent most of his time outside the United States. His circumstances, including being a bit odd and spending most of his time outside the United States, made him seem less known.

During a walk with the author, Sam shared incredible information about his life, including the sums of money he had accumulated and the hundreds of millions being thrown at him by Silicon Valley venture capitalists. He mentioned that it would take him $150,000 to sell FTX and go do something other than make money. Sam's motives were to address the biggest existential risks to life on earth, such as nuclear war, pandemics, and artificial intelligence. He also wanted to tackle smaller problems like the Bahamas, which had recently moved its entire company from Hong Kong to the Bahamas due to the crackdown on cryptocurrencies by the Chinese government.

Sam was unusual in his approach and had no interest in money. He was willing to answer any question about the crypto industry or his business, but his ambition was grandiose. The author was sold by the end of the walk and asked the author to swap shares with Sam Bankman- Fried. However, they realized they hadn't even begun to answer their friend's original question: Who was this guy?

ACT I

YUP

Natalie Tien, a young woman raised in Taiwan by middle-class parents, discovered crypto at the age of twenty-eight. The price of bitcoin had risen almost twentyfold, and daily trading volumes had boomed. As new crypto currency exchanges emerged across Asia, many young Asian women were trying to meet the requirements for positions. Natalie took a different approach, reading everything she could about cryptocurrencies and blockchains. She was struck by how few people who worked in crypto could explain what a bitcoin was.

By June 2020, Natalie was working for her second Asian crypto exchange when she heard about the opening at FTX. FTX hired her quickly after a single interview, and she became the company's forty- ninth employee. Sam Bankman- Fried, the head of the company, was different from other exchanges, as he was chiefly interested in neither money nor women. Natalie found herself trying to persuade Sam that he should talk to journalists while also trying to persuade them to talk to him.

On May 11, 2021, Sam Bankman- Fried made his first television appearance on Bloomberg TV. He sat at his trading desk and talked into his computer screen to two female reporters on Bloomberg TV. His demeanor was that of a kid pretending to be interested when his parents hauled him into the living room to meet their friends. The numbers on the left of the screen showed that bitcoin's price had risen by more than 500 percent in just the past year.

Sam Bankman- Fried, a 21-year-old crypto investor, was a surprise to Forbes magazine when he was listed as the richest person in the world under the age of thirty. He had not been on the Forbes list of people whose fortunes they should track until 2017, when he could not have told you what a bitcoin was and in any case he had been worth approximately zero dollars. Inside of three years, it appeared that Sam had created a business so valuable that his share of it implied that he was now the richest person in the world under the age of thirty.

The Forbes wealth analysts had always tried to keep things simple: assets were worth only what other people were willing to pay for them. However, with these new crypto fortunes, the Forbes approach to wealth only got you so far. Sam and Natalie worried that they would publish a number that would require him to explain more than he wanted to explain. He walked the Forbes people through what they knew or thought they knew, but he didn't send them the list of the one hundred or so businesses he'd acquired over the previous two years.

In November 2021, Forbes listed his net worth at $22.5 billion, a notch below Rupert Murdoch and a notch above Laurene Powell Jobs. This was roughly what you get if you simply agreed with the world's leading venture capital firms that FTX's crypto exchange business by itself was worth $40 billion. Sam owned 60% of FTX, which was worth $24 billion. In the forty years since Forbes began tracking rich people's money, he was an outlier.

Sam, a prominent figure in the crypto world, was a media whore who was open to talking to anyone, as long as they could play video games. Natalie, the head of public relations for a multinational corporation, had to adapt to this new role by becoming Sam's personal scheduler. By the end of 2021, Natalie knew where Sam was at any given moment and how to get him to do what he needed to do.

Despite her ability to predict Sam's actions and why, Natalie found herself unable to predict his location or time. Sam would be anywhere, at any hour, and had difficulty sleeping. Natalie had to set alarms multiple times to stay updated on Sam's schedules, which were often not agreed upon.

Sam's approach to commitments was another challenge. Natalie mapped out every minute of Sam's days, including meetings with other CEOs, celebrities, and rulers of small countries. She put nothing on Sam's schedule that he had not agreed to, and he treated everything on his schedule as optional. When people asked Sam for his time, they assumed they asked a yes or