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The definitive take on the crypto boom and bust of the last half-decade. Expansive, compelling, nuanced and eminently entertaining, it explains and de-mystifies the cult of crypto by following the trajectory of its most enigmatic and magnetic of participants, Sam Bankman-Fried. This 30-year old, self-trained and unproven Californian had ridden the crypto wave by convincing professionals and amateurs alike to invest billions upon billions into his fund. He was feted by celebrities as well as smart investors and small family funds. And then the bubble burst. Financial Times journalist Joshua Oliver introduces readers to the people and ideas that made SBF's remarkable trajectory happen and reveals the hype machine that allowed him to flourish.

\"There's no good outcome. I mean, he's probably going to jail,” author Michael Lewis said of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in a Post Live event.

\"As cryptocurrency rose in popularity during the pandemic, new converts bought into the idea that crypto would not only make them rich, but would usher in imminent revolutions across art, finance, politics, and gaming. Cryptocurrency caught the zeitgeist through figures like FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who only two years later would be convicted of one of the most calamitous acts of financial fraud in US history. During his meteoric rise, Sam Bankman-Fried outflanked idealists in the movement like Vitalik Buterin, who sought to build fairer, more democratic systems through Ethereum. Bankman-Fried pursued a growth-obsessed, by-any-means approach to crypto, which proved seductive to those who just wanted to get rich. But this Silicon Valley-like approach also drove the creation of a spate of high-risk financial instruments that mirrored those of the 2008 financial crisis. Accused of misleading investors and mishandling funds, Bankman-Fried became a target of prosecutors. Now, Cryptomania unfolds the tumultuous twenty months inside this male-dominated, overhyped industry that led to its downfall. Drawing on exclusive reporting and an extensive network in the global NFT community, Andrew Chow chronicles the battle for crypto's soul, and the human toll of its economic meltdown--from the conmen and eccentrics driving the bubble to the victims caught in its burst\"-- Amazon.com.

FTX CEO John J. Ray III, who is guiding the collapsed crypto company through bankruptcy, testified before the House Committee on Financial Services on Dec. 13.

The high-octane story of the enigmatic figure at the heart of one of the 21st century's most spectacular financial collapses '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.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze FTX cryptocurrency frauds. FTX is a former cryptocurrency exchange platform that went bankrupt because of fraud in 2022. Design/methodology/approach Using a qualitative method and a case study of FTX, the authors document the multiple fraud schemes perpetrated. The authors collected media and research articles that discussed the FTX case. The authors analyzed 18 articles. Findings Based on this case, the authors highlight the governance and ethics weaknesses in the FTX environment. The authors also discuss cryptocurrency risks and regulation of cryptocurrencies. The FTX affair has shaken up the international regulatory world, which has been seeking solutions to protect customers and investors and helping banks take positions since 2022. Originality/value This study contributes to the fraud literature by deeply examining cryptocurrency fraud risks. In addition, the findings could help financial institutions and guide them in the cryptocurrency world.

Chapter 11 of the 'Bankruptcy Code' is often justified by vague assertions that reorganizing troubled companies is in the \"public interest.\" There has, however, been surprisingly little effort to consider seriously what this public interest is, how it should be operationalized, or who should pay for it. Based on a case study of the controversial bankruptcy of crypto complex FTX, this article develops a three-part typology of public interests at stake in chapter 11 and shows how they can conflict with one another and with private interests: (1) the paramount public interest in the integrity of the judicial process; (2) bankruptcy-specific public interests in maximizing value through efficient, consolidated proceedings; and (3) \"other\" public interests, such as the prosecution and defense of serious crimes. We place FTX's counsel, Sullivan and Cromwell (SandC), at the center of this triptych. We present evidence indicating that SandC had undisclosed potential conflicts of interest due to apparent errors, omissions, and deceptions in their work for the company and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, before, at, and during the bankruptcy, thereby undermining the first-order public interest in procedural integrity. SandC's role as debtor's counsel has cast a troubling shadow over puzzling and costly decisions in the case, thereby undermining a second, bankruptcy-specific form of the public interest: maximizing an estate's value. SandC often justified its actions by reference to the third, \"other\" facet of the public interest. Namely, SandC touted that it supported the prosecution of disfavored insiders such as Bankman-Fried. But that pricey task - for which SandC billed millions of dollars - may have distorted the prosecutions without producing observable economic benefit to the bankruptcy estate. FTX is a cautionary tale about the power that lawyers have to frame, control, and profit from claims about the public interest in chapter 11. An examiner appointed late in the case largely exonerated SandC, although he engaged little of the evidence we present. This is not surprising because SandC's resistance to that intervention left a narrow scope and little time for his investigation. We situate our findings in a nascent body of literature exploring the public interest in bankruptcy. We suggest that the experience with SandC in FTX May reflect larger patterns in reorganization reminiscent of historical concerns about distorted incentives in restructuring processes. To ameliorate these concerns, we offer guidance to improve the functioning of the principal custodians of the public interest in chapter 11. Courts should more carefully police pre-bankruptcy connections of estate professionals and should use preliminary examinations more frequently. We further believe that the United States Trustee should have greater independence from other government actors so it can fulfil its watchdog mandate without compromise.

Federal securities law creates a divide between the haves and the have-nots: On one side are the wealthy, who can invest in private companies; on the other side stand the rest of us, noses pressed up against the glass. Ordinary (or retail) investors are on the outside looking in because generally they can only invest in companies after they have gone public. Even the traditional process of going public typically keeps coveted initial public offering (IPO) shares in the hands of the rich. Put differently, even as a private firm debuts on the public markets, the wealthy take their cut before everyone else can get a taste. Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) invert the traditional process by using a merger, rather than an IPO, to bring a private company public. In doing so, they allow the public access to those private companies the conventional IPO denies them. But today SPACs are in decline, due in part to pressure from scholars and regulators who argue that SPACs are nothing more than back-door IPOs. Bucking the dominant narrative, we argue that SPACs are more than disguised IPOs. Indeed, their innovation is to radically expand the investment opportunities available to ordinary investors. Thus, SPACs offer a rare chance to reevaluate core assumptions underpinning the U.S. public securities markets - chief among them, that the law must prevent average investors from investing in anything but publicly traded securities. SPACs create a revolutionary public market in information about still-private companies, a situation unseen since before the Securities Act of 1933. In this Article, we use hand-collected data to empirically examine what this public market for private firms looks like. We argue that, with much-needed reform, SPACs could offer a viable, valuable, and more democratic alternative to the traditional IPO.

Purpose This paper reviews the recent collapse of two cryptocurrency enterprises, FTX and Celsius. These two cases of institutional bankruptcy have generated criminal charges and other civil complaints, mainly alleging fraud against the CEOs of the companies. This paper aims to analyse the fraud leading to these bankruptcies, drawing on key concepts from the research literature on economic crime to provide explanations for what happened. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a case study approach to the question of how large financial institutions can go off the rails. Two theoretical perspectives are applied to the cases of the FTX and Celsius collapses. These are the “normalisation of deviance” theory and the “cult of personality”. Findings In these two case studies, there is an interaction between the “normalisation of deviance” on the institutional level and the “cult of personality” at the level of individual leadership. The CEOs of the two companies promoted themselves as eccentric but successful examples of the visionary tech finance genius. This fostered the normalisation of deviance within their organisations. Employees, investors and regulators allowed criminal and highly financially risky practices to become normalised as they were caught up in the attractive story of the trailblazing entrepreneur making millions in the new cryptoeconomy. Originality/value This paper makes a contribution both to the case study literature on economic crime and to the development of general theory in economic criminology.

Washington Post reporters Tory Newmyer, Julian Mark and Peter Whoriskey explain what led to the stunning collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.