👇 1) Eighteen months ago, at the FTX Bahamas conference, my former and current boss shared the panel with Three Arrows Capital’s Su Zhu. All three were crypto billionaires, but despite the panel being postponed by 15 minutes due to low attendance, the room was still only 30% full. If there was some alpha at that conference from real players, it was in that session. But many missed the session as most of the panelists were ‘low-key.’
👇 2) A few hours later, the room was packed with Sam nervously stuttering and reading his prepared questions to Tony Blair and Bill Clinton – both had nothing to say. The session was awful to watch. Blair said he only heard about crypto from his son before he walked onto the stage, and Clinton said he ‘loved the Caribbean’. Both were only there to collect the money, and so were many others.
👇 3) However, the person in love with SBF was undoubtedly Michael Lewis. He bought into Sam’s spiel. You could see how he looked at him and how he phrased his questions. Despite 100+ private meetings, Lewis would still not admit that Sam could be guilty. Instead, ‘I want to tell a different story’. The crypto community is shocked by his lack of whistleblowing – despite Lewis’ unlimited access – and his new book portraying Sam as a ‘misunderstood human being’.
👇 4) Some compare Lewis’s style to a biased author and a journalist with an agenda. His one-sided reporting of Flash Boys, glorified ‘Investors Exchange’ (IEX) – the main ‘character’ of the book or of ‘commercial heroism’ others claimed. Rumors circulated that Michael Lewis had an undisclosed equity stake in IEX.
👇 5) Many will be surprised to hear that FTX bought a $270m stake in IEX, potentially helping FTX legitimize them for domestic trading in the US. There may have been an agenda for writing this book. Barbara - Sam’s mother - might be proud. Maybe there is a connection with Lewis being the ‘bridge’. Several people expected Lewis to pivot his ‘Going Infinite’ ending as the evidence of intended fraud by Sam appears overwhelming.
👇 6) Barbara believes that ‘don’t blame the criminals for their crimes’, a moral compass that certainly has influenced her son. While Sam’s dad, Joe Bankman, was instrumental in setting up and managing the firm's legal structure. Sam’s defense will try to argue that his actions were based on solid advice from his lawyers – they are to blame, not him.
👇 7) Another defense strategy will be to blame the fraud on Caroline Ellison, who was over her skis running Alameda – when Sam Trabucco, her co-CEO, made a timely exit before everything went under. I wonder where he is. Will he be the whistleblower who leaked Alameda’s balance sheet and the prosecution's star witness? All three other senior Alameda guys (Ellison, Singh, and Wong already pleaded guilty). Trabucco was undoubtedly instrumental in Alameda.
👇 8) The evidence indicates that Alameda withdrew $8bn in Q3 2021 and deployed this capital into risky crypto bets when Ethereum was around $3,300. They looked good for a month when Ether climbed to $4,600. Fast forward to the Terra/Luna implosion and the aftershocks; those bets were nearly worthless when Ether dropped to $1,000. It is challenging to imagine that the Terra/Luna event happened only a month after the FTX Bahamas conference when FTX was already multiple billions in the hole.
👇 9) But Sam kept the show going. While the celebrities were cozying up to Sam, one of his earliest investors pulled the plug as ‘Sam became inaccessible’; he would walk away with $1bn in profits. Foresight or common sense – everybody else blindly followed the money. Anyway, I am glad for him as he is a super nice guy and wanted to support Sam early on, but he noticed the change in attitude.
👇 10) If you want to read an unbiased account of Sam Bankman-Fried (and the rest of the crypto industry), I suggest the book ‘Crypto Titans: How trillions were made and billions lost in the cryptocurrency markets’.
All the evidence is presented there.
