I spent the last few days reading Michael Lewis’ Going Infinite and this is my review of that book.

First off, this book is very well written. Michael Lewis does a fantastic job of explaining the character who is Sam Bankman-Fried. Page after page, I was enthralled at the story. From the millions of dollars being thrown around, to the odd demeanor of Sam himself. This book truly is captivating and illuminating.

When I first heard of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX in the news, I was a little confused. I wasn’t quite sure what had taken place and honestly, I didn’t even really know much about FTX nor Sam, much less a scandal that had taken place. After reading this book, it’s pretty clear why I was in the dark. Sam’s rise was geometric. It wasn’t a slow gradual climb, but more of a lightspeed, ripple in time type of growth.

Even before FTX, Sam was working in an obscure, very secluded trading firm called Jane Street Capital. Fast forward 5 years and Sam would have taken what he learnt from Jane Street, formed a company called Alameda Research, raise hundreds of millions of dollars from a group of people that practice effective altruism, create a crypto exchange, make millions of dollars on a day-to-day basis, increase the GDP of the Bahamas exponentially, have strange relationships with normal people, wealthy people and everyone in between and then have it all come crashing down. What a roller coaster of a ride! I believe this book is going to one day be turned into a movie. The modern-day Wolf of Wall Street.

One of the biggest takeaways I got from this book, is there is money out there. This is coming from a guy that is actively looking to raise capital to acquire a company. If you ever thought there wasn’t enough money to go around, read this book, it’ll change your mind. The amount of money that is tossed around is amazing. This book reinforced this idea that I have. That is, if you have a good idea, are willing to work at it and present yourself correctly, you can find money for your deal. The funny thing is, Sam was weird, didn’t present himself correctly and he still raised hundreds of millions of dollars. If he can do it, you can to.

I rate this book a 9/10. Great story, great writing, great characters. A real page turner. Also, the fact this happened so recently is amazing to me. A lot of books/movies come out decades after the incident. This is fresh and modern. Well done Michael Lewis. Well done!

-Kelvin Harrylall