This central section of
the book is its weakest. Lewis does not understand cryptocurrency—he admits
explicitly, in a bizarre footnote, that he finds crypto “elusive” to understand—and
makes a poor guide for an already convoluted tale. Despite his formidable
narrative gifts, it’s quite difficult to follow what exactly is happening,
when, and to whom. There is also a preponderance of minor characters who show
up, get a pocket biography of a page or a paragraph, and settle into some
indeterminate role in the Rube Goldberg ecosystem of FTX and its sister trading
firm, Alameda Research. It is difficult to figure out who is a bit player and
who is truly important to the business. Maybe none of them is.
To be fair, some of this muddiness
may be the inevitable outcome of trying to narrativize the creation a genuinely
chaotic, ad hoc organization, whose ostensible founder and leader spent half
his time locked in a dirty office playing games and half his time flying around
the world without bothering to tell his staff where he was going. He leaves the
management of his people to other people, who leave the management of people to
other people. No one seems to sleep, but no one ever seems to work. He meets
with actually influential people—Anna Wintour! Mitch McConnell!—but little ever
seems to come of it, except when he hires a cadre of feckless and greedy celebs
to shill his product. We learn about his massive political contributions, but,
in a classic case of grifters grifting each other, everyone seems perfectly
happy to exchange money and then do … nothing. Of more recent revelations, most
glaringly the
personal, political and financial involvement of SBF’s parents
in the entire enterprise, we learn nothing at all.
Lewis is back in his
element in the gripping but too-brief concluding section. Soon after SBF has established
a vast empire of real buildings and temporary huts in the Bahamas at the
short-lived height of his empire, the whole thing comes crashing down. FTX is already
shaky internally, when a rival crypto magnate, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao,
sparks a run on FTX’s customer assets. FTX can’t keep up with the withdrawals.
The house of cards collapses in a single weekend. Law enforcement—Bahamian and
American—arrives and jockeys for territory and jurisdiction. Employees, many of
whom took all of their compensation in now worthless FTX tokens and assets,
flee the island. Lewis is there when it happens, and finds himself wandering
the abandoned, trash-strewn jungle compound like Marlowe in the world’s
dorkiest adaptation of Heart of Darkness. He does have a wonderful eye
for the perfect absurd detail, for example, a sole remaining employee, a young
Chinese woman, who has stayed on this windy compound because she has two cats
but has so far been able to get permission only to bring one of them back to
China with her. And I must say, the book’s final sentence, and final image, is itself
a marvel of withheld payoff.