A few thoughts on how Americans thought about the crypto trial of the century.
When I first started chasing around after Sam Bankman-Fried, I had no idea where he might lead me. I certainly had no sense that I’d wind up with a ringside seat to a financial catastrophe. I had no slant or angle, much less a theory of the case. I was just curious about Sam and his bizarre situation. Inside of three years, he’d gone from socially and emotionally isolated 25-year-old with an upper-middle-class bank account to leader of a small army of math nerds and (according to Forbes magazine) not merely the world’s richest person under 30 but maybe the fastest creator of wealth in recorded history. The leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties solicited his money and his thoughts. The heads of big Wall Street banks felt a need to know him, and the leading Silicon Valley venture capitalists felt a need to invest in him. Tom Brady was hanging out with him, Taylor Swift was negotiating to endorse his crypto exchange, Shaquille O’Neal wanted to partner with him to solve the homeless problem in the Bahamas, and Orlando Bloom was asking to play him in a movie. He’d gone from having no friends as a child to having too many as an adult without ever developing a capacity for friendship.
