I liked this more than I expected to, given all the bad reviews. There’s a lot to dislike, but it’s also one of the smoothest and best-written crypto books, and is graciously free of re-explanations of tech.
Because Michael Lewis didn’t care to learn too much about them, or didn’t think people would be interested, there are very few details about blockchains, which is an absolute relief. At this point I think we’ve all probably heard too many people attempt explanation, and anyway the explanations are invariably about what the systems are supposed to do, not what they actually end up doing. POSIWID!
It has all of Michael Lewis’s star-energy writing, which is really smooth and well-edited. It has lots of fun character details and anecdotes, but enough of the overarching story to make it satsifying on a macro level too. I liked that it was narrowly focused on FTX and didn’t try to be a whirlwind tour of crypto. Lewis doesn’t talk about himself at all, besides to say how he’s traveling to and from FTX. He has a formula for this kind of book and the formula works.
And, yeah, Lewis fell for the whole thing and thinks that SBF is a well-meaning smart kid. Lewis is critical of John J Ray III’s pretty obviously-right statements. He will give an unappealing description of characters but then approve of them on the basis of their misunderstood genius.
Plus, it’s nowhere near a real accounting of the FTX bankruptcy. Sure, it was rushed to print so Lewis didn’t have access to all of the documents disclosed in the ensuing bankruptcy lawsuits, but still, there was barely an attempt to add up the numbers he did have and sort the bullshit from the reality.