I’ve been knee-deep in all things SBF, FTX, and Effective Altruism over the last year or so. If you’re interested in this topic at all, but have no interest in wading through the millions of pieces of content that exists, this is a “you’re welcome” post.
Here, I curate the scads of content that I’ve been through. A Cliffs Notes version, if you will.
Books
Whether you “read” books through your auditory or visual interface, you can focus on just two: Michael Lewis kicks it through the uprights (of course, he does) with “Going Infinite,” and so does Brady Dale with “SBF: How the FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto’s Very Bad Good Guy.”
If you’re just looking for the interesting, salacious-adjacent, mostly human, partially f’nancial story, go with Lewis’s. He’s just so damn good at rooting out and then telling a story. A true master of the art, and I enjoyed his take on it immensely. You’ll know why SBF is in jail after this. I listened to this one, and I highly recommend it that way.
Dale’s is equally interesting but from a different angle. He dives deep into what happened on the crypto side. The other stuff, too, but he nicely fills the crypto mechanism gaps that Lewis (purposefully) left out. Listen, crypto is nerdy, geeky, engineery shit. And you do not need to know what the hell happened in the Crypto Winter and leading up to it to know why FTX failed and SBF went to jail. But if you do, Dale does a masterful job at unwinding it all and laying it out. Plus, he’s got a different style, and I really enjoyed it. He’s a hardcore (crypto) journalist, so it has the reporter kind of efficiency. But he coupled it with his snarky and maybe a bit cynical perspective. I read this one with my eyes, and I recommend the same for you. It’s a little too techy for listening.
Podcasts
You couldn’t go wrong by just searching your favorite podcast app for “Michael Lewis” and then choosing one of your favorite interviewers. He’s done interviews on many of the big-name podcasts, but unfortunately, not Joe Rogan. I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Lewis is a member of the anti-JRE tribe. Regardless, I found the Freakonomics interview very compelling.
Michael Lewis used his own “Against the Rules” podcast (the sub-title to the SBF series is “Judging Sam”) to somewhat live-cast the trial. I found it interesting and worthy. Not all of the episodes are required, so feel free to skip around. Lewis isn’t the star and only appears in a few of them, but his reporter/producer (Lidia Jean Kott) does a great job manning the con. Lewis does, though, interview Brady Dale in one of the episodes and that’s how I found Dale’s book.
The Wondery series called “Spellcaster — the Fall of SBF,” which is one of the big ones (maybe the biggest) is worth a listen. The host has some inside connections that are interesting and it’s a good mix of story telling with dry details.
Articles
I’ve read a million online articles. Everything from the mainstream media to the fringe, to just bloggers like me.
If you just want the highlights and a little perspective on why it happened, I think my series of articles is brief but useful. OK, that’s shameless self-plugging, but I guess if you’re already at this sentence in this article that I’ve written…
You can use your favorite media outlet, and they likely have an article. I like this one from Investopedia because it presents the whole thing like a timeline — just the facts, ma’am.
The tribes are hilariously hypocritical. Like just plain bald-faced about it all. I like to read the MSM takes on it simply for comic-relief. Mostly the headlines. The meat of the articles themselves are usually less tribal, but they’re not immune. So, the left media has turned SBF from a mimetic symbol of “how we should all live our lives — someone truly doing good in the world” to the poster child for “criminal and evil capitalism.” The right media has turned SBF from a mimetic symbol of “the embodiment of evil leftist political funding and communism” to an almost sympathetic character.
If you got here, I hope you found this helpful. If so, don’t hesitate to let me know john@johnmaconline.com.
