Review of Michael Lewis’s Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
Michael Lewis’s Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon delves into the personality of Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of the now bankrupt FTX crypto exchange and Alameda Research, exposing the once-time world’s youngest billionaire as the Crypto-King with No Clothes… or maybe just in a rumpled t-shirt, cargo shorts and limp white socks.
Author Michael Lewis is a prolific and award-winning writer in the realm of business, finance, and economics—with an innate skill to find the human factor at the core. He was born in 1960 in the city of New Orleans, LA, to community activist Diana Monroe Lewis and corporate attorney, J. Thomas Lewis. He attended Isidore Newman, a co-ed nondenominational private school in New Orleans, then went on to Princeton University and graduated with a B.A. in art and archaeology in 1982. With no particular job prospects, Lewis enrolled in the London School of Economics, and received an MA in economics in 1985. With economics degree in hand, Saloman Brothers hired him as a bond salesman for their London office, infusing Lewis with a bounty of material for his itch for writing, both as a journalist for heavy-hitters such as The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, and as a prolific non-fiction author.
Lewis’s first book, inspired by his experiences in the mortgage-backed bond world, was Liar’s Poker (1989), followed by (abbreviated list): The New New Thing (1999), Moneyball (2003), The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (2006), The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (2010), Flash Boys (2014), The Fifth Risk (2018) and The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (2021). The Blind Side, Moneyball and The Big Short were all adapted into successful feature films.
Lewis has a storied career of exposing the idiocy and, at times, the insanity beneath the Fellini-like spectacles of the top 1% of society. But in October, 2023, Lewis dropped his book, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, based on the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX until it all came tumbling down. In Going Infinite, Lewis describes Bankman-Fried as a brilliant man-child playing a high stakes game of ‘King of the Mountain’ atop a pile of crypto coins.
Cryptomania
There’s always the ‘new thing’ in the world’s financial systems, but the advent of unregulated cryptocurrencies adds a new level of volatility in our financial systems—sadly, we ever appear doomed to repeat history. As early as the 1600s, a hysteria blossomed in The Netherlands with a Dutch tulip market frenzy, affectionally dubbed, Tulipmania, in which fortunes were won and lost with the toss of a bulb. Seems bizarre, but with the array of crypto coins, it’s as if this new game is played with an ever changing ‘Tulip’, creating a multi-dimensional roller-coaster of mania.
From what I can discern, the major difference between the events leading up to ‘The Big Short’ and the Great Recession, versus the cryptocurrency meltdown, is that the crypto tycoons haven’t really cracked the US market and, at least as yet, haven’t fully seeped into the lobbyist system compared to the deep reach of Wall Street. However, the silver-lining of the FTX trial and conviction may be setting a legal precedence before the crypto lobbyists get a foothold into Congress.
Going Infinite
Lewis’s book begins by excavating Bankman-Fried’s childhood of isolation and game playing; a kid raised by professorial parents, perhaps in an atmosphere where reality and accountability were less valued than gaming… or the rule of law. As the story progresses, Lewis paints a portrait of Sam Bankman-Fried as, in some form or fashion, a savant man-child on a spectrum, who then surrounds himself with a motley crew of tech geeks—none of whom seem to truly understand the nuts and bolts of running a billion-dollar enterprise. However, these courtiers, after the money disappears, ultimately turn on Bankman-Fried, celebrating his demise like the kiddoes in William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies. Though under appeal at the time of this writing, the jury in the New York court case found Bankman-Fried guilty on all counts—but whether he purposely defrauded his investors through FTX and Alameda Research or that the business was grossly mis-managed is almost beside the point—the money is still in the ether. Or in someone’s offshore account.
So, at the end of the day, what is Sam Bankman-Fried’s true personality—is he a misunderstood genius, clueless as to corporate governance—or is he a sociopath and conman? Two things can be true at once. As Lewis unveils his deep-dive into Bankman-Fried, he portrays an intriguing young man running a multi-billion-dollar crypto business like a complex game, making up the rules as he went along. Christina Rolle, the Bahamas chief financial regulator, instrumental in effecting the country’s ‘open for business’ crypto stance, was quoted in Lewis’s book, as the end of FTX was near:
“It’s not hard to see you are being played by him [SBF], like a boardgame.”
It appeared that everything and everyone in Sam’s life was simply a game to be played.
Was the world simply distracted by the metronome of Bankman-Fried’s bouncing knee, seeing the ‘cool’ image rather than the man? In the financial world, due diligence is a basic requirement to analyze the veracity of company assets—and yet, if the assets are in crypto, evaluating worth can be as deceptive as a game of three-card monte. But, hey, that’s how the crypto cookie crumbles…
K.E. LANNING is an author and award-winning screenwriter, including a climate-fiction trilogy titled, The Melt Trilogy: A Spider Sat Beside Her, The Sting of the Bee, and Listen to the Birds. She has two works of commercial literary fiction in progress: Where the Sky Meets the Earth and The Light of the Sun. In addition, she’s published a series of book reviews and author interviews, including authors Emily St. John Mandel, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hugh Howey, Margaret Atwood, Andy Weir, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Cixin Liu.