I think he knew. I think there is a world in which Sam told himself when he started to do the wrong thing, when Alameda and FTX started to make decisions that were wrong. Some part of his mind justified it to himself because he could foresee a future in which they got through this hump. And at the end of the day, they built up such a giant war chest and did so much good for the world that this moment of harm or sort of risk that they had imposed on their customers was worth doing morally because the later good they would do was worth so much. That's the way he thinks. Like you know, but this kind of worldview allowed him to justify these
Longtime crypto reporter Brady Dale has beat Michael Lewis to market with the first book on the dramatic collapse of FTX. In stores today, “SBF: How the FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto’s Very Bad Good Guy,” tells the tale of the outsized role that Sam Bankman-Fried played in the FTX-Alameda death spiral. Drawing on years of reporting and interviews with SBF himself, the book charts the rise and fall of the one-time crypto wunderkind. “It became clear to me that Sam got really addicted to fame,” said Dale.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Show highlights:
- Brady’s background and how he came to cover crypto
- how covering the space for a crypto outlet is different from a more mainstream publication
- how Brady was able to finalize his book so fast
- what Brady’s favorite parts of the book are
- who was really responsible for the collapse of the FTX empire
- whether Sam Bankman-Fried will plead guilty
- whether FTX will make a comeback
- how SBF thinks differently from other people, and how it led to his downfall
- why Brady thinks the “dot-com bust” for crypto has yet to arrive
- whether crypto has betrayed its cypherpunk ideals
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Guests:
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Brady Dale, writer and reporter at Axios, and author of “SBF: How the FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto’s Very Bad Good Guy”
Previous coverage of Unchained on Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX:
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