Inside FTX’s All-Night Race to Stop a $1 Billion Crypto Heist

By the evening of November 11 of last year, FTX’s staff had already endured one of the worst days in the company’s short life. What had recently been one of the world’s top cryptocurrency exchanges, valued at $32 billion only 10 months earlier, had just declared bankruptcy. Executives had, after an extended struggle, persuaded the … Read more

‘A Galactic Embarrassment’: The Crypto World Is Already Sick of SBF’s Trial

The trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, now coming to the end of its first week, is far bigger than just crypto. Reporters from the largest media outlets (including WIRED) have flocked to New York to cover it, TV stations are airing feature-length documentaries on the fall of the crypto exchange, and X (formerly Twitter) … Read more

Everybody’s Talking About the Wrong Sam Bankman-Fried Book

Lewis got more access to Sam Bankman-Fried than anyone, but his book doesn’t tell a new story. It’s a perfectly serviceable primer for people who haven’t been following the FTX saga (I’ll probably give it to my dad, and he’ll probably love it) but for readers who have been following this case, it’s a familiar … Read more

Sam Bankman-Fried Made Reasonable Business Decisions, Lawyers Claim

Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange FTX may have lost at least $8 billion in customer money, but he “didn’t intend to defraud anyone,” his defense team said Wednesday during the opening arguments of his highly anticipated trial. Though legal experts had long speculated that Bankman-Fried, or SBF for short, would take a “blame the lawyers” approach, … Read more

Sam Bankman-Fried Is a Terrible Client

In the weeks after Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange began to crumble last November, he chose to ignore the most basic piece of legal advice: Say nothing, or risk incriminating yourself. He took media interviews. He appeared on podcasts. He tweeted incessantly. He started his own Substack. He promised to testify in front of Congress, … Read more