Source: Michael Lewis shadowed Sam Bankman-Fried for the past six months and CAA is pitching Lewis' yet-to-be-written book on FTX's collapse to Hollywood buyers
Before FTX’s collapse, Sam Bankman-Fried had become a prominent voice in Washington’s crypto-policy debates, as covered in his rise as a face of crypto regulation. CAA is trying to turn Michael Lewis’s six months of access into a Hollywood-ready narrative while the collapse is still unfolding.
That access later became Lewis’s FTX book, Going Infinite, and subsequent coverage described its subject as delusional while preserving the difficulty of disproving some of his explanations. The early pitch matters because it sought to establish a screen version before the account had been settled by later reporting or proceedings.
First-order effects
CAA gives Hollywood buyers an early opportunity to evaluate a screen project based on Lewis’s firsthand reporting access to Bankman-Fried.
The agency’s Luke Skywalker–Darth Vader comparison places Bankman-Fried and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao inside a simplified protagonist-antagonist frame for prospective buyers.
Second-order effects
Lewis’s reporting becomes a commercially valuable narrative asset, while Bankman-Fried’s own later public account of FTX’s collapse competes to shape how the episode is understood.
Hollywood buyers assessing the project must weigh the value of privileged access against a story whose central figures, explanations, and legal record were still developing.
Third-order effects
If high-profile crypto collapses continue to generate books and screen projects while facts are still contested, narrative access will become an increasingly important form of influence alongside legal and regulatory accounts.
The episode fits the crypto legitimacy gap: figures once presented as policy-facing industry representatives can quickly become the subjects of competing post-collapse narratives.
The trend: Crypto’s legitimacy crises are creating a parallel market for insider-driven narratives, with agencies packaging access before the public record is complete.
Michael Lewis' next book is about Sam Bankman-Fried. Email from CAA confirms he has been embedded with him for last 6 months; note below was first sent to potential buyers for filmed rights. Scoop @TheAnkler https://theankler.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Michael Lewis has been following SBF for the past 6 months. His CAA agent just sent an email to potential buyers. No words have been written but Lewis likens SBF and CZ to “Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader of crypto.” https://twitter.com/...
Developing a diagnostic scale —Is Malcolm Gladwell using you in an example? (+1) —Is Michael Lewis in your house for some reason? (+2) —Are you holding a microphone while sharing a stage with a retired Head of State? (+3) -Is Isaac Chotiner looking to set up an interview? (+10)
“Look at all of these unknown crypto scammers blowing out billions of dollars of other peoples money, anonymity is clearly a net negative” Yeah, those unknowns with names like Sam Bankman-Fried, Su Zhu, Do Kwon, Caroline Ellison, Kyle Davies
🚨IT JUST GOT WEIRDER. 🚨Apparently @SBF_FTX *invited* author Michael Lewis (of Liar's Poker fame) to embed with him for 6 months(!). Michael was a Salomon Brothers trader. He's savvy & he *must* have figured a lot out. Oh the hubris... Oh the stories...🍿🍿 https://theankler.com/...
Hollywood abuzz Saturday “after an email spread that revealed that Michael Lewis...had embedded with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for the past six months and was making the collapsing cryptocurrency exchange the centerpiece of his next book.” https://theankler.com/... https://tw…
Writer Michael Lewis has the best topic nose of any nonfiction writer in the history of nonfiction writing. He had apparently been researching a book focused on crypto with FTX/SBF at the center. FFS, Michael. You're making everyone else look bad. https://www.fnlondon.com/...
Liar's Poker and The Big Short were major influences on my decision to write Easy Money, a book on crypto and fraud. While I'm a big fan of Mr. Lewis' work, if the take is really that SBF is Luke Skywalker then... https://twitter.com/...
“Michael likens them to the Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader of crypto” This implies that Michael Lewis thinks SBF is Luke Skywalker, no? Don't remember the bit in Star Wars where Luke loaned customer money to a related party, but admittedly I've not seen all the sequels https://tw…
The level to which SBF took an L is mind-boggling. Dude could have literally done nothing & let FTX print money in perpetuity. Hung out with supermodels, donated malaria bednets to his heart's content, etc. Instead, he became one of the most useless people in human history.
the failing on my part was assuming that FTX alabama were really god traders at scale subsidizing $10M accounts yielding 5% pa while completely liquid was an absolute abnormality, but i reasoned maybe they were just really that skilled so many “greats” have been revealed as not h…
I'm so interested in this because it's the exact reverse of The Big Short, where only a few quirky contrarians figured out the crash was coming. Here it was a bunch of quirky contrarians buying in and virtually everyone else in the world assuming it would blow up in their face. h…
So Michael Lewis was totally wrong in his initial premise and now is wrong and lazy in comparing SBF v CZ to Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader but it's fine it'll sell a million copies and define the genre. https://twitter.com/...
Hearing that Michael Lewis has been embedded with SBF for the last six months has got to be some of my favorite news of the year. I had been hoping he'd tackle crypto, and now it turns out he's got the best possible story. What a delightful addition to an already great week. http…