Lewis bought extra entry to Sam Bankman-Fried than anybody, however his ebook doesn’t inform a brand new story. It’s a superbly serviceable primer for individuals who haven’t been following the FTX saga (I’ll most likely give it to my dad, and he’ll most likely adore it), however for readers who’ve been following this case it’s a well-recognized yarn. Stale, even. Part of that is the inevitable consequence of selecting a topic who loves the highlight; for those who’ve learn any of the prodigious reporting on SBF from the The New Yorker, Vox, Bloomberg, New York magazine, The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Forbes, and so forth and so forth, there’s no massive ah-ha second available, only a few reasonably fascinating new anecdotes advised in a fascinating approach. Anyone who has learn something about Bankman-Fried is aware of the identical broad strokes moving into as they do going out.

What’s worse, Going Infinite suffers immensely by comparability to a different new ebook protecting the SBF saga. Bloomberg reporter Zeke Faux’s rollicking Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall, which got here out in September, is the far superior information to understanding the FTX debacle and Bankman-Fried himself.

It is value noting that each Faux’s and Lewis’ books open with the writers confessing that they’d been initially taken in by SBF and describe conversations they’d had with him earlier than his downfall, however there’s a key distinction. Lewis recounts how impressed he’d been with out hinting that he not feels that approach. Faux takes a unique method. The opening line is a quote from Bankman-Fried: “I’m not going to lie,” SBF guarantees Faux. “This was a lie,” Faux writes. This accomplishes two issues: First, it alerts instantly to the reader that Faux now will get it, that he is aware of Bankman-Fried was stuffed with it. Second, it’s humorous.

The Credulity Police may definitely ticket Faux for some transgressions; as he confesses in Number Go Up, he’s the writer of a softball profile of SBF for Bloomberg Businessweek, one wherein he didn’t even contemplate scrutinizing how FTX labored as a enterprise. (He additionally finally ends up spending $20,000 of his personal cash on an NFT and will get swept up in that scene’s ridiculous enthusiasm.) But Faux breezily fesses as much as all the pieces, emphasizing that he wasn’t onto Bankman-Fried earlier than the remainder of the world. “I’d like to tell you that I was the person who exposed it all, the heroic investigator who saw through one of history’s greatest frauds,” Faux writes. “But I got tricked like everyone else.”

Instead of treating Bankman-Fried like an interesting puzzle to pore over, Faux pegs him as a cross between a nerd and a troll. Instead of protecting focus solely on SBF, he locations the ex-FTX CEO inside a broader menagerie of crypto freaks, together with Heather Morgan, additionally recognized by her rap identify “Razzlekhan.” Like Bankman-Fried, Morgan was an odd child who grew as much as be a clumsy grownup who lived eccentrically, beloved consideration, and finally discovered herself pleading “not guilty” to jaw-dropping monetary crimes. (Morgan and her boyfriend were arrested for allegedly laundering $4.5 billion in stolen cryptocurrency.)

Shortly after Morgan’s arrest, there was a rush of curiosity in turning her story into content material—a Netflix documentary from the Tiger King crew is within the works, along with a podcast and a fictionalized collection. Faux factors this out for instance of how frenzied public curiosity in crypto true crime had turn into, not as proof that there are layers to Morgan which can be value a lot cautious consideration. He presents her appropriately: as an audacious buffoon, no extra and no much less.