The Sentencing of Sam Bankman-Fried

Stealing the Future: Chapter 1, Part 1

Welcome to the Sunday edition of Dark Markets, where I share samples-in-progress of my book on Sam Bankman-Fried. As I was finally able to announce in full this past week, the book will be published in the Fall of 2025 by Repeater Books, who you can learn more about here.

The writing schedule for the book will be fairly rapid, but very doable, given all the groundwork already in the can. I’ll deliver a manuscript in January of 2025, meaning that I’ll be writing roughly one chapter per month for the next six months. What follows is the first part of Chapter 1. As usual, I’ll remind you that this is still a draft, and includes many blank spots, quick glosses, and missing facts that will be filled in later - hence the protection provided by the paywall.

Longtime Dark Markets supporters will note that this is the second time I’ve published something called “Chapter 1” of this book. The previous iteration can be found here, along with a deeper dive into the process of book writing.

While the prior version was centered around the same scene - Sam’s sentencing hearing in March of 2024 - the new draft includes some notable changes, including a major one advised by an early reader. Awbvious, a major supporter and frequent commentator, made the point that putting myself into the story right off the bat was (to paraphrase) a little hacky and distracting, and while it took me some time to come around, I ultimately agree. If you’re a supporter with your own comments or feedback feel free to drop them here or in the Money and Death Social Club discord, which supporters can access via this post.

The new version of Chapter 1 has three planned sections. First is this quick overview set on the day of Sam’s sentencing, including introductions to Effective Altruism and Joe and Barbara Fried. Section 2 will delve into the financial details of the FTX fraud, including the role of cryptocurrency, and specifically rebut claims by Sam and others that “the money was always there.” The final section of Chapter 1 will introduce the question of Sam’s many backers and apologists, from Sequoia Capital to Will MacAskill to Michael Lewis.

And so - onward.

A courtroom sketch from SDNY on the day of SBF’s sentencing hearing.

Chapter 1: The Greater Good

Section 1: Sentences

From the 18th floor of the Thurgood Marshall Federal Courthouse, you can see the future.

From such a great height, the cars that move through New York City’s warren of streets are the size of toys, the people on the sidewalks barely visible. The city’s masses, seen from above, move not as individuals, not according to their own desires and goals, but as motes in a pattern set by some higher principle. They follow the same paths, again and again, a logical swarm, the expressions of a human algorithm. Watch them long enough, and you might not foresee any individual’s choices - but you could predict how many will turn left or right at a particular corner, the relative appeal and utility of each path.

You could also see the future from inside the courtroom of Judge Lewis Kaplan. But there a future was being decided, not merely predicted. Kaplan was not calculating the movements of a mass, or the endpoint of a trend - he was weighing the fate of one man. Sam Bankman-Fried had been convicted of one of the greatest financial crimes in history. He was a gambler, used to being the one weighing the odds. But now he himself was being weighed - and found wanting.