A great read on the rise and ultimate destruction of SBF and FTX, by the eminent writer Michael Lewis. The book reads really well and i read this in a couple of sittings. It was great to lift the lid on what really happened.
My honest takeaway is that the comments with SBF show that actually he was way way way less smarter than people made him out to be. He was in the right place at the right time and rode an incredible bull wave, however ultimately he lacked really basic business sense. He didn’t know how to manage people, build a small team around him, run any basic risk management, or negotiate strong commercial deals. The fact FTX was able to attract large investment was simply a case of the bull run attracting huge volumes, with FTX cleverly investing as much as possible into marketing. (One example of his strong business acumen he did show was when he described brand ambassadors, and how it is a winner-takes-all market, which is why he spent over the odds to sign up Tom Brady, “Who is the one footballer everyone in the world can name?”)