Going Infinite
The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
With a new afterword on Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial and its aftermath
One of the New Yorker’s Best Books of 2023 • One of PureWow’s 42 Books to Gift in 2023 This Year • One of Fortune’s Best Crypto Books of 2023
“Going Infinite is in many ways Lewis at his best. He marshals a complex global story without losing sight of the delightful and revealing human details. He is a world-class noticer.” —Jesse Armstrong, writer and creator of HBO’s Succession, Times Literary Supplement
“A stupefyingly pleasurable book to read.” —Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker
“Going Infinite is an instant classic.” —Helen Lewis, The Atlantic
“Going Infinite is wildly entertaining, surprising multiple times on pretty much every page, but it adds up to a sad story, even a tragedy, for its central character and for all the people who lost so much thanks to his actions.” —John Lanchester, London Review of Books
“Will join Digital Gold as one of the all-time best crypto books.”—Jeff John Roberts, Fortune
“A wry, engaging writer and a gifted storyteller.” —Julia M. Klein, Los Angeles Times
“It may be easy to take for granted how entertainingly [Michael Lewis] pulls it off again in Going Infinite.” —Brett Martin, GQ
From the best-selling author of The Big Short and Flash Boys, the story of FTX’s spectacular collapse and the enigmatic founder at its center.
When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?
In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own—until it all came undone.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Author of ’80s Wall Street memoir Liar’s Poker and trading exposé Flash Boys Michael Lewis is the perfect person to take us on the wild ride of Sam Bankman-Fried’s doomed FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Known for wearing cargo shorts, playing video games during meetings, and loudly endorsing a philosophy called effective altruism, Bankman-Fried never seemed like your typical financial hustler, even pledging his own fortune to charity as FTX amassed billions. But when FTX took a turn, it erased the life savings of nearly everyone who believed in him, resulting in a host of fraud and money-laundering charges. Having enjoyed years of intimate access to Bankman-Fried before his arrest, Lewis surprised us by describing him as an eccentric character somewhere between a sociopath and Mr. Bean. Could the wunderkind’s entire downfall come down to optimism, ignorance, and bumbling inexperience? Going Infinite is a fascinating look at one of the biggest scandals of the crypto era.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The spectacular collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and its eccentric billionaire founder Sam Bankman-Fried is sifted in this rollicking investigation. Bestseller Lewis (The Big Short) casts Bankman-Fried as a stranger-than-fiction figure with no social instincts (he had to train himself to display facial expressions when coworkers complained about his unchanging blank gaze), a gift for making complex financial trades with iffy data under severe time pressure, and a philosophy of "effective altruism" that prodded him to accumulate an 11-figure fortune in order to give it away to good causes. (One save-the-world project was offering Donald Trump money to not run for president in 2024, Lewis reports, a scheme that fizzled when Trump allegedly demanded a $5 billion payment.) Lewis's narrative is a symphony of comedic discordance—a scene of Bankman-Fried frantically playing video games while Vogue editor Anna Wintour lobbies him to attend the Met Gala is a gem—that coalesces into a reconstruction of FTX's labyrinthine bankruptcy. Striking a remarkably sympathetic tone, Lewis even implies Bankman-Fried was railroaded and his misdeeds blown out of proportion. ("From a distance, it became almost taboo to raise any doubts about the nature of Sam's crime. Up close, it was hard not to have such doubts.") The result is a vastly entertaining and sure to be debated saga of money-making at its weirdest.
