Michael Lewis Was Charmed by Sam Bankman-Fried – But So Was Everyone Else

Many crypto insiders hate Sam Bankman-Fried. Now, they have turned their wrath on the author Michael Lewis, who on 60 minutes referred to FTX as “a great real business.”

“If no one had ever cast aspersions on the business, if there hadn’t been a run on customer deposits, they’d still be sitting there making tons of money,” Lewis continued, sparking an uproar on crypto Twitter. Because even if the former FTX CEO didn’t have malicious intent, he’s still associated with the disappearance of billions of dollars and regulators’ growing disdain of crypto. So why does Lewis appear to be on his side?

Emily Parker is CoinDesk’s executive director of global content.

This question wouldn’t matter so much if Lewis’s book, “Going Infinite,” hadn’t come out on the first day of Bankman-Fried’s trial, and if Lewis himself hadn’t described his book as “a letter to the jury.” And even if Lewis doesn’t convince the jury, his fame and accessible writing style could certainly sway mainstream public opinion.

To be fair, Lewis’s book is more nuanced than his media sound bites. He does not paint a particularly flattering picture of either FTX or its sister company Alameda Research, which was allegedly gambling away FTX customers’ money. “It was never clear where Alameda Research stopped and FTX started,” Lewis writes. He refers to a document that describes how “more than $10 billion that was meant to be custodied by FTX somehow had ended up inside Sam’s private trading fund.”

But the bigger question is: Why did this all happen? Overall, Lewis does seem to view Sam as an agent of chaos rather than someone with criminal intent, which is essentially what Sam’s defense is saying. The basic argument is that billions of dollars is a lot of money and it can be quite tedious to keep track of it all. Sam was messy, inconsiderate and a nightmare of a manager, Lewis seems to believe, but not a thief. (For some counterarguments, see David Z. Morris’ scathing CoinDesk article, “FTX’s Collapse Was a Crime, not an Accident.”)

Nor does Lewis portray Sam as a particularly nice guy. Despite his commitment to “effective altruism,” he seems to have little to no empathy for other human beings. But, Lewis says, “with him it was never personal. If he stood you up, it was…