Going Infinite : The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

The bestselling author of The Big Short and The Premonition spins a breathlessly exciting true story with his characteristic pace and panache as he charts the meteoric rise and dramatic fall of enigmatic crypto-currency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried.

‘I asked him how much it would take for him to sell FTX and go do something other than make money. He thought the question over. “One hundred and fifty billion dollars,” he finally said—though he added that he had use for “infinity dollars”…’

Sam Bankman-Fried wasn’t just rich. Before he turned thirty he’d become the world’s youngest billionaire, making a record fortune in the crypto frenzy. CEOs, celebrities and world leaders vied for his time. At one point he considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there.

Then it all fell apart.

Who was this Gatsby of the crypto world, a rumpled guy in cargo shorts, whose eyes twitched across TV interviews as he played video games on the side, who even his million-dollar investors still found a mystery? What gave him such an extraordinary ability to make money – and how did his empire collapse so spectacularly?

Michael Lewis was there when it happened, having got to know Bankman-Fried during his epic rise. In Going Infinite he tells us a story like no other, taking us through the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own. Both psychological portrait of a preternaturally gifted ‘thinking machine’, and wild financial roller-coaster ride, this is a twenty-first-century epic of high-frequency trading and even higher stakes, of crypto mania and insane amounts of money, of hubris and downfall. No one could tell it better.

MEDIA REVIEWS

When the stories of our times are told, there will be no more seminal documents than the books of Michael Lewis. * Guardian *

I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it. * New York Times Book Review *

In the hands of Michael Lewis, anything is possible. * Sunday Times *

He is so good everyone else may as well pack up. * Evening Standard *

Life is what happens between Michael Lewis books. -- Michael Hofmann