Sbf: How the Ftx Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto's Very Bad Good Guy

by Brady Dale, Ray Greenley (reader)

A first-hand look at the extraordinary collapse of FTX, Alameda Research, and Sam Bankman-Fried In How the FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto’s Very Bad Good Guy , accomplished crypto reporter Brady Dale presents an engrossing take on the spectacular and sudden implosion of FTX, Alameda Research, and their associated companies, as well as the criminal indictments of Sam Bankman-Fried and several of his associates. In the book, you’ll go beyond the salacious details and tawdry gossip to grasp the real lessons to be learned from one of the most dramatic corporate failures in living memory. The author An extraordinary account of almost unimaginable wealth, greed, and hubris, SBF is a can’t-miss account of a fascinating corporate tragedy that continues to unfold to this very day.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Biography

Audio CD

Published May 23, 2023

About the author

Brady Dale grew up in Pittsburg, Kansas. He is a journalist in Brooklyn.

Reviews

[Josh Rosenblatt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don’t waste your time reading this book. Between the research, writing, and editing it’s clear this book was almost as much of a money grab as many crypto tokens. My chief complaints here (aside from the book revealing no new insights or information) are that it contained mostly filler stories, felt promotional, and was VERY poorly edited. Further, there were many times the author lost credibility (e.g. calling all, not just crypto, market caps nonsense and likening them to GDP). All of the books shortcomings were amplified by the unsuccessful attempt to write like Michael Lewis (to whom the book was strangely dedicated.

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This reads as a book for crypto enthusiasts. Dale seems as interested in advocating for crypto without explicitly advocating for crypto, as in telling the story of FTX and SBF.

I learned a lot of the things that happened in public view, but I did not learn almost anything about the unseen machinations of SBF and FTX and Alameda, which seems like the most important part of this story.

At one point Dale writes "crypto had almost become boring..." before expressing his renewed excitement in the return to more trades, more tokens, more people getting rich quick. At the beginning of the book Dale offers that crypto is like a game for a lot of people, and to understand the thrill all one needs to do is buy in a bit, literally by making some trades.

This book seems as much about Dale and his personal journey from an attempt to "do good" to an attempt to rid himself of the guilt and self-loathing of his baser impulses; he never digs into how much the crypto space, even at its least scammy, is mostly speculative gambling.

[Ru · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling story of the rise and fall of SBF, with brilliantly-laid out context and timelines. Also one of the best explainers of the general world of cryptocurrency, it's pros and cons, applications and drawbacks, characters and criminals. Even if you don't like that particular subject matter, this book is for fans of white-collar crime and corruption in big business.

[Manuel Del Río Rodríguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

First thing to say: this is a nice and interesting book about crypto and SBF's rise and fall. I am at odds about how to rate it, so I'll just make a short list of pros and cons, and then give you a concluding assessment:

Pros:

-if you don't know much about the topic, you will learn a lot, and explained in an understandable way, about crypto and the main events it has been through in say, the last 4 or 5 years.
-chapters are very short, and read well as independent pieces for the most part
-the author knows how to write well and interestingly. It is seldom a dull read
-many chapters come along with inserted boxes that explain more technical aspects in an accesible way
-some of the chapters are more polished and read really well (like the conclusion and the beginning).
-Some topics that get covered, I really had very little idea about, so they were instructive (and didn't appear in the typical news articles on the fall of SBF, like the whole Sushiswap affair, or Solana).

Cons:

-The book seems to have been written rather hastily, in a bid to be the first SBF volume in the market and to profit thereof. This has come with some negative downsides: a lot of the chapters feel like recycled articles (the author is a crypto journalist at Axios) and some non-trivial amount of information seems a bit dated, in view of what has been published since the presumed time the book was finished (December 2022).
-Continuity between chapter sometimes leaves a bit to be desired. Like, threads go on, but you don't really get a uniform, lineal, easy-to-follow narrative throughout. And you could say it kind of forks between 'things happening in crypto' and 'things related to Sam and his businesses'. The second aspect gets underplayed, which feels weird in what is supposedly a biography of SBF.
-The book is allegedly centered on SBF -as I mentioned, it really isn't that much-, but it would be much more interesting and illustrative if it had also explored some of the very important secondary characters, like Caroline Ellison, CZ, Wang and Singh...

To conclude: I would definitely recommend this read, but I feel it is overall lacking much because of the circumstances in/for which it was written, which is why I have only given it 3 stars.

[Mark Sibold · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps an overly critical review, but warranted in my view. I purchased the book very excited to learn about the FTX debacle and SBF. Almost immediately upon beginning to read, I was disinterested—not necessarily in the subject matter, but in the way the book is written. I was hoping for a book on the level of “Smartest Guys in The Room” or “Den of Thieves”, but this fell well short of those. My hypothesis (I very well may be wrong) is that this book was an attempt to be first in releasing a story of the drama. The focus instead should have been on releasing a high quality story of the FTX saga and SBF.

In the movie, “Margin Call”, the CEO states perhaps the most famous line of the movie when the board is arguing about whether to sell millions of dollars of toxic securities in the market before the financial crisis: “be first, be smarter, or cheat.” In that instance, the bank decided to “be first” and it served them well—at least in that they avoided bankruptcy. Here, I don’t think being first offered the same advantage; it would have been advisable to wait, draw on more sources, and present a more compelling, comprehensive account.

[Bradley Rettler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brady Dale has a deep understanding of both of the contributing causes of the FTX collapse — the cryptocurrency space and Sam Bankman-Fried. This is a great book for anyone who wants to know more about the particular events that led to FTX’s failing or the psychology and motivations of its founder. (It’s also really funny, and easy to read.)

[Philip Rudy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very short TLDR: The first book on SBF might turn out to be the best. Everyone from “normies” to “crypto missionaries” can benefit from this story.

I wrote a full review of the book here:

https://medium.com/coinmonks/sbf-book...

[Raghu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, if you were following Brady Dale then you already know the content. The interesting part is how the flow was stitched together. Even thought I knew the background and extensively followed Brady, I still enjoyed the book.
If you are new to crypto or DeFi, this is a great book start.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly good read considering how quickly it was produced. Brady Dale does a great job summarizing the events leading up to the implosion of FTX in November, 2022.
Personally, I was already engrossed in the headlines back then, so there was not a ton of new information for me. However, I did enjoy Brady's commentary on how journalists failed to check their own biases when interviewing SBF and his evisceration of Peter Singer and the Effective Altruist movement, aptly deconstructing their sophistry. Notably, he called out the bias of Matt Levine when interviewing SBF on the Odd Lots podcast, as Levine prompted and nudged SBF to say what Levine wanted to hear, namely that all of DeFi yield farming was a Ponzi game, when SBF knew that what he was saying was inaccurate and a calculated cynical take to gain politicial favor. In addition, near the end of the book, Brady simply and elegantly destroys the Effective Altruist 'utilitarian calculus' delusion by pointing out our knowledge and ability to ascertain outcomes will always be noisy. Thus, because the distribution of "utopian endings" will necessarily be trounced by the dystopian ones due to imperfect knowledge as to the intended and unintended outcomes of our actions, the "expected value" of commiting fraud on the path to utopia we can expect will be morally (and financially) bankrupting. This is just a way to restate common sense that the overly educated seem to be itching to wipe from their memory: the ends can never justify the means.
If I had to ding the book for anything, it's that the author inserts his own reactions as part of the plotline. I understand after watching his interview with Laura Shin on Unchained that this book essentially morphed out of already written articles, but I felt some of it was too "Substack-Conversational" for a book—a format that, ideally (in my opinion), should stand on it's own, apart from the author. Personally, I do like the author's flaire, but everytime I see a sentence starting with "As I wrote in Slack..." it makes it harder to recommend to others as the "canonical textbook" to read about the Fall of FTX. Especially since we know more books and other media will be coming down the pike.
That being said, I'll repeat my opening, kudos for printing it out so quickly, that alone makes it impressive.

[Chin Joo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book was released in a haste to catch the train while everything was hot with FTX and SBF. Unfortunately, this results in it not being well-thought through or research (as the facts are still emerging) which leads to a severe lack of information to put into a book on FTX or SBF. As such, the first half of the book was padded with general crypto history and technology information.

[Andres Kull · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring. Don’t easte your time. Zero bit of new and interesting information that you already didn’t know by following crypto news before and at the time of FTX collapse. If you think the book will let you understand SBF, there is nothing that helps you.

[Brady Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked it a lot but I wrote it. So.

[Shane Cummiskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could’ve been better

[Justin J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a very bold attempt to describe everything that is thought to have happened leading to the $10B hole. Bold because not all of the facts are known. Bold because deFi and crypto can be Byzantine to the uneducated or inexperienced. Bold because when the trial comes everything written here might be wrong. I think the author did a great job front end loading the unknowns in the forward.