Laura: Why did he have to topple Binance? Because he could have still made a lot of money even if he didn't topple Binance. He was always happy to go to make the big, to bet the house. The thing he forgot is like it was fine when he was at Alameda and he was always willing to do like bet everything on one big move because that was just his money and investor money. So who cares? Laura: I'm sort of curious what folks think is one thing Sam revealed to me in our interview and I couldn't find it anywhere else. It's kind of a scoop in the book, but I'm not actually sure if it's a scoop
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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