
T been a run on customer deposits, they'd still be sitting there making tons of money, Lewis said, sparking an uproar on crypto Twitter. Even if the former FTX CEO did not have malicious intent, he's still associated with the disappearance of billions of dollars and the growing disdain of crypto by the government. Why does Lewis seem to be on his side?
In summary, Lewis appears to view Sam as an agent of chaos rather than someone with criminal intent, which is essentially what Sam's defense is saying. The basic argument is that billions of dollars are a lot of money and it can be quite tedious to keep track of it all. Sam was messy, inconsiderate and a nightmare of a manager, Lewis seems to believe, but not a thief.
Lewis describes how one of Sam's colleagues rationalized his behavior: In other words, Sam might have caused a lot of damage, but it wasn't on purpose. Lewis went on to say that he set out to establish FTX as the world's most regulated, most law-abiding, most rule-following crypto exchange. We all know how it turned out.
The research for the book was written before the fall of FTX and the revelations that followed it, which means that some opinions did not age well. The world has since learned that Sam's father wanted to earn another $1 million salary from FTX and enlisted his wife to help.
Lewis's narrative of FTX's precipitous downfall, and in particular of the role of CoinDesk, the company where I work, is a deeply personal one. On November 2, 2022, CoinDesk published an article showing that Alameda's balance sheet was largely made up of FTT, a token Sam minted out of thin air. The move raised questions not just about Alameda's viability, but also about its relationship with FTX. CZ then tweeted that Binance was liquidating its FTT. It was not long after that, FTX was renamed FTX.
My colleague Ian Allison's report, which was widely attributed to FTX's collapse, has won several significant awards. But it's not loyalty to coindesk that makes me think that Lewis plays down the article's revelation in a rather curious way. He waves it off with, ''in and of itself the article struck people inside of FTX as of no more than prurient interest. Despite the massive attention the article received at the time, the book only cites one sole reaction: another crypto journalist's snarky congratulations on knowing something we knew two years ago. In a footnote, no less. Lewis's criticism of the Alameda balance sheet is that it is a relatively trivial matter that was already known. The balance sheet was a big deal, and for good reason. The first time FTX's once untouchable empire was cast out, it was the first time any serious doubt was cast on its once untouchable empire.
Lewis fully admits that he first fell in love with Sam's charms. He even told his friend something like, but really, can you blame him? Sam had everything under his control. FTX's marketing crew appeared to have sounded out Louis Vuitton about creating a red-carpet worthy version of Sam's T-shirt and cargo shorts look. And while many of the crypto world reviles Sam now, there were almost no dissenting voices when FTX was flying high.
The bottom line is that a company should never have had such great power, especially in an industry that is supposed to be about decentralization. If crypto was working as it should, then one person would not have been able to do so much damage.