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Going Infinite

The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

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Going Infinite

By: Michael Lewis
Narrated by: Michael Lewis
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

'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.

©2023 Michael Lewis (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 Business International Political Science Politics & Government Professionals & Academics Money Stock Capitalism
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Critic Reviews

Going Infinite is insanely readable and I devoured it, marvelling at Lewis’s ability to pace, structure and humanise a story about something as dense and unfriendly as crypto… As with previous outings such as Moneyball (nerdy baseball stats), The Big Short (credit default swaps), and Flash Boys (high-frequency trading), Going Infinite shows off Lewis’s peculiar genius for making arcane information as transporting as fantasy fiction.
Going Infinite is a stupefyingly pleasurable book to read. It’s perfectly paced, extremely funny, and fills in many gaps in a story that has been subjected to an unholy amount of reporting... What he began with Moneyball has come into full flower with Going Infinite. Lewis has surveyed a landscape taken by convention as settled and found it destabilized, at least here and there, by uneven and unreliable information. Perhaps Lewis’s book should encourage an update, however minuscule, in our own priors.
Going Infinite is a portrait of grandiose ambitions, youthful arrogance, and the distorting power of money... [Lewis] remains the greatest living exponent of the plain style in reporting. His eye for detail is unsurpassed... And as a chronicle of collective delusion - a modern version of the Dutch tulip mania - Going Infinite is an instant classic... Michael Lewis deserves huge credit for capturing [SBF] in all his infinite weirdness... Mark Zuckerberg, another boy genius in ratty shoes, once described Twitter as a clown car that fell into a gold mine. Sam Bankman-Fried was a Seth Rogen character who fell into a tulip field circa 1634. Another one will be along in a minute. We never learn.
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 … Lewis is a generous writer with a humane intelligence, and it is to his credit that he doesn’t reach for easy cynicism or cheap effects. (Jesse Armstrong)
Lewis’ storytelling is as good as ever… In the past, Mr Lewis has focused on little-known people doing extraordinary things. This time his subject is notorious… Mr Bankman-Fried’s hyper-rationality sets him apart from everyone. He views people not as good or bad, but as “probability distributions” around a mean… By tolerating the idea that hyper-rationalists cannot make sense of the rules of the game the way most people do, Mr Lewis implicitly asks readers to reconsider whatever they thought they knew about Mr Bankman-Fried. In the court of public opinion, he is already convicted. That’s reason enough to give this book a read.
All stars
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Bit of a letdown given how interesting the story is. Lewis seems to fall for the cult of personality "Sam being sam" excuse when realistically he should be raking this guy over the coals for being a sociopathic manchild who cares zero about the impact he has on other people.

Sam being sam

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Michael Lewis has done it once again! Turned a complicated financial, technical mumbo jumbo into a story that showcases the lives of SBF and the people around him. It is hard to believe this fantastical story actually happened. It did and people have to be held responsible so that it deters people from doing this again. It’s is a brilliant listen and Michael has narrated it so well. He provides you with all the facts and it is up to you to make up your mind on all of this. Reminds me of the great gold rush! The last line on this book is a true gem. Well done Michael and I will be buying the print edition for my book collection!

Amazing insight on a unbelievable drama

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This book is well written and I found I could not stop listening. 2 days and I was done.

If we are to believe this telling of the story, I struggle to understand how the so called boy genius could run such a massive business in such an unstructured way and with so many other around him going along with it. If this is true than I guess you can say it was fraud by accident or more precisely negligence. Maybe being the smartest guy in the room can be a disadvantage.

Intriguing Story still to be finalised

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interesting insights into the rise and fall of Sam Bankman Fraud in parts, however Lewis is far too soft touch and sympathetic to Sam's effective altruist drive. Lewis is captured to the extent that he barely sees SBF for what he is - a regulation white collar criminal.

You've heard of regulatory capture - welcome to author capture

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Michael Lewis has done it again with this book giving us an insight into the FTX saga and the mind of SBF.

Fascinating read

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