Going Infinite
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon is a 2023 book by Michael Lewis about Sam Bankman-Fried, a fraudster who founded the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The book's publication date, October 3, 2023, coincided with the beginning of Bankman-Fried's trial on seven counts of fraud and money laundering. On November 2, 2023, in the case of United States v. Bankman-Fried, Bankman-Fried was convicted of all seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
32mentions
31people
2023–2025years
13% recommend78% neutral9% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I like Matt Levine's take on Going Infinite:
> Many of the reviews that I have read of the book complain that Lewis does not sufficiently explain that Bankman-Fried is Guilty and Bad, Actually, but that is not the book that he wanted to write or the one I want to read. He wanted to understand and explain Bankman-Fried’s psychology and tell a good story. If you want to read a moral condemnation of crypto theft, you can get that anywhere. You go to Michael Lewis for character and story.
Michael Lewis does characters, not subjects.
- I have read many Lewis' books and admired his skills as a storyteller and stylist for decades. I found Going Infinite fun to read but less satisfying than The Big Short, Liar's Poker, Moneybag, etc.
As a good complement or even substitute, I highly recommend Zvi Mowshowitz's review[1] of Going Infinite. I have some familiarity with the trading world but virtually none in crypto. The book review is incredibly long but very rich in both micro details and macro perspective. Zvi seems to know what he's talking about as a former Jane Street employee who knew people in the book (including some acquaintance with SBF before he became SBF) and as a crypto trader.
[1]:https://thezvi.substack.com/p/book-review-going-infinite
- - "Going Infinite", by Michael Lewis
- "Speed & Scale", John Doerr
- "Superintelligence", by Nick Bostrom
All great reads, strongly recommended.
- Lewis has had a real knack for picking problematic protagonists in his later career:
* The Tuohy family for Blind Side
* Kahneman and Tversky --- not really problematic as people! but right in the middle of the reproduction crisis in their field
* Brad Katsuyama, yeesh, who is also the reason Lewis was set up to do a hagiography on SBF
* SBF, of course.
I agree with the "man, can Lewis write" sentiment! He can! You know who else can write, extroardinarily effectively? Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is less problematic than Lewis (I can't even imagine Gladwell dismissing Michael Oher as suffering from CTE the way Lewis recently did), but it's an article of faith here that Gladwell isn't worth reading, and not so much with Lewis.
So I think your problem with a book like Going Infinite is: SBF is obviously an interesting subject for a book, and, because Lewis was pre-sold on/to him, he had extensive access, and Lewis can definitely write. So if you're the kind of nerd we all are, you're inevitably going to get a bunch of "good stuff" from the book, and you're not so much going to get bogged down in the deeply problematic circumstances of its authorship and intent because you've already got all that context in resident set in your brain, you know SBF is a crook, you don't have to worry that Lewis is trying to paper over that stuff.
But I think when you're considering the book purely on its merits, that context starts to matter just as much as how good the writing is. This book is getting trashed for I think very justifiable reasons.
- Michael Lewis has written a bunch of books about financial crises and their origins. He wrote The Big Short for example.
If you’re into tech & startups, he wrote Going Infinite about FTX, and Flash Boys about high frequency trading.
- This is such a great piece and I admire Somers Atlantic writing. I just want to say, this process feels similar to the process Michael Lewis used in his later books, particular with "Going Infinite", where he embedded deeply and for a long time with FTX, emerging to write just as the story shifted from FTX legitimizing the world of cryptocurrency to becoming its chief villain.
So I do wonder, when you dig in that deeply before coming close to getting any work product, how do you ensure that you'll be able to cut your losses, as opposed to what Lewis did, trying (and failing) to salvage a narrative that had been demolished by events and other reporting?
