Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

Sam Bankman-Fried is the protagonist of Going Infinite. Throughout the text, Lewis refers to Bankman-Fried and nearly all other characters by their first names.

Lewis describes Sam’s childhood as unconventional. Sam did not fit in with other children. He was intelligent, lacking in social skills, and felt different and separate from other people. Classmates saw him as “Smart and inoffensive and maybe not all that human” (27).

What Sam lacked in social skills, he made up for with his enthusiasm for games and puzzles. This came in handy when he entered the world of finance. At Jane Street, Sam found that his brain was perfectly suited to the complex and uncertain games of high-frequency trading as well as the world of crypto: “The games Sam loved allowed for only partial knowledge of any situation. Trading crypto was like that” (13).

As an adult, Sam generally did not adhere to social norms, and ended up offending other people, often unintentionally:

The funny thing about these situations was that Sam never really meant to cause them, which in a way made them feel even more insulting. He didn’t mean to be rude. He didn’t mean to create chaos in other people’s lives. He was just moving through the world in the only way he knew how. The cost this implied for others simply never entered his calculations (9).

This lack of awareness is connected to Sam’s apparent lack of empathy. Throughout the book, Sam is shown not to consider the effect he has on others. As the founder of Alameda Research and FTX, he followed his own instincts and pursued his own interests without much regard for how it would impact those around him. This often led him to clashes and conflicts with other individuals.

Physically, Sam is described as someone who did not care about appearance. This is evident in his unkempt hair and clothing, and overall lack of concern for grooming. During a TV interview, “Thick black curls exploded off his head in every direction [...] It was just a mess, and like everything about Sam’s appearance felt less like a decision than a decision not to make a decision. He wore what he always wore: a wrinkled T-shirt and cargo shorts” (4).

On the one hand, Sam’s disheveled appearance mirrored his views: “His whole life, as far back as he could remember, he’d been perplexed by the way people allowed physical appearance to shape their lives” (18). On the other hand, his clothing visually reflected his lack of conformity to societal norms, as well as his utterly pragmatic yet chaotic approach to life. In the same depiction of Sam’s TV appearance, Lewis describes Sam’s movements and behavior: “His bare knee jackhammered up and down at roughly four beats per second, while his eyes darted left and right and collided with his interviewers’ gaze only by chance. His general demeanor was that of a kid pretending to be interested when his parents hauled him into the living room to meet their friends” (4). Throughout the narrative, Lewis depicts Sam as hyperactive and childish, someone who struggled to sit still or focus on one thing for too long.

Sam’s philosophical views were first shaped by the philosophies of utilitarianism and effective altruism. These beliefs heavily influenced how he used the money he obtained through the crypto industry. They also determined the people he surrounded himself with; Sam decided to hire effective altruists to work at his companies because he thought that EAs would be more trustworthy and loyal.

At the start of the book, Sam is portrayed as intelligent—even a genius—as well as immature and eccentric. Lewis describes him as successful despite his unconventional approach to life and business. By the end of the book, Lewis shows that Sam’s faults led to serious consequences, though Sam maintained that he was innocent of any wrongdoings. Lewis depicts Sam as misunderstood, implying that other people took advantage of Sam and his success, and that only those with insider knowledge of Sam could view him with the proper nuance, rather than jumping to the conclusion that he must be guilty of financial crimes.

FTX was a cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. It was a futures exchange, which meant that users could trade contracts to buy or sell cryptocurrencies at a predetermined price in the future.

Unlike other exchanges, FTX did not socialize losses. Normally, an exchange spreads the losses among all its users; however, FTX was built to monitor trades every second and liquidate any trades that went into the red rather than socializing them.

The cryptocurrency associated with FTX was called FTT. FTT essentially functioned as shares in FTX. It allowed users to have voting rights in certain decisions related to the exchange.

The work environment at FTX is depicted in Going Infinite as all-encompassing: “Everything here is five times, she thought. Five times more work, five times more growth, five times more money, five times more responsibility. […] there was no room for a life outside work [and] anyone at FTX who tried to live a normal life simply didn’t stick” (3). Employees of FTX regularly emulated Sam, pulling long hours and even sleeping at the office.

Up until its collapse, FTX appeared to be a thriving and successful business, backed by prominent institutional investors and celebrities. Once it experienced a run, or a sudden rush of users trying to withdraw their funds, FTX was unable to meet the demand and subsequently collapsed. The collapse of FTX led to a significant crash in the cryptocurrency market and raised concerns about the overall resilience of the cryptocurrency industry.

Alameda Research was a cryptocurrency trading and crypto asset management firm founded by Sam. At Alameda Research, Sam employed high-frequency trading techniques that he had learned at Jane Street Capital, a Wall Street firm.

Lewis depicts Alameda as complex, enigmatic, and full of hidden financial surprises: “The closer you got to Alameda Research, the less it seemed like a hedge fund and the more it resembled a dragon’s lair, stuffed with random treasures” (6). Lewis also notes the intertwined nature of Alameda Research and FTX. From their founding, it was unclear what the boundaries were between the two entities. By the end of Going Infinite, Lewis reveals the extent of Alameda and FTX’s enmeshment: FTX loaned billions of dollars of customer money to Alameda at no cost, and much of this money ended up in an account that was considered Sam’s personal investment fund.

On paper, Caroline Ellison was the co-CEO of Alameda along with Sam, though in practice, she functioned as the sole CEO. Just as Alameda and FTX were entangled in a confusing manner, so were Sam and Caroline entangled romantically in a way that Sam refused to define.