THE EMPIRE OF AIR: How Sam Bankman-Fried Built a $32 Billion Illusion, and Why We Keep Falling for the Next One
M. Muñoz
M. Muñoz · AI-narrated by Martin (from Google)
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4 hr 17 min
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In November 2022, a cryptocurrency exchange valued at thirty-two billion dollars collapsed in nine days, and a twenty-nine-year-old once compared to Warren Buffett was later sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. This book reconstructs, with documented courtroom detail, how Sam Bankman-Fried built FTX into one of the most trusted names in digital finance, backed by Sequoia Capital, BlackRock, and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, promoted by Tom Brady and a Super Bowl commercial, and protected by a carefully engineered image of ascetic, altruistic genius. It explains, in plain language, the four basic financial principles FTX violated: the separation between a custodian's money and a client's money, the difference between a liquidity problem and outright insolvency, the meaning of real collateral versus a self-printed token, and the danger of letting one person referee and play at the same time. Readers follow the trail of eight billion missing dollars, the bank run that emptied the exchange in seventy-two hours, the trial testimony of Bankman-Fried's closest collaborators, and the almost unbelievable postscript in which bankruptcy administrators recovered enough to repay creditors in full. It is a case study in how trust, once treated as free, always sends a bill.
In November 2022, a cryptocurrency exchange valued at thirty-two billion dollars collapsed in nine days, and a twenty-nine-year-old once compared to Warren Buffett was later sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. This book reconstructs, with documented courtroom detail, how Sam Bankman-Fried b...
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