२ ऑक्टोबर, २०२३

"He wore what he always wore: a wrinkled T-shirt and cargo shorts. His bare knee jackhammered up and down at roughly four beats per second..."

"... while his eyes darted left and right and collided with his interviewers’ gaze only by chance. His general demeanor was that of a kid pretending to be interested when his parents hauled him into the living room to meet their friends. He’d done nothing to prepare, but the questions were so easy that it didn’t matter. Crypto Wunderkind, read the Bloomberg chyron, while the numbers on the left of the screen showed that, in just the past year, bitcoin’s price had risen by more than 500 percent. That first TV show Natalie watched from her own desk, but later, during future interviews, she’d walk around behind Sam to confirm that, yes, his eyes moved around so much because he was playing a video game. On live TV!"

It's a long article, and Lewis has a whole book: "Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon." — #CommissionsEarned.

"Often, on live TV, Sam would not only play a video game but respond to messages, edit documents and tweet. The TV interviewer would ask him a question and Sam would say, 'Ahhhh, interesting question' — even though he never found any of the questions interesting. And Natalie knew he was just buying time to exit whatever game he was playing and reenter the conversation. Natalie didn’t know how a person was supposed to behave on live television, but she suspected it wasn’t like this.... Sam was odd on TV, but he was also odd in real life.... She decided against media training — or anything that might make Sam seem less like Sam...."

२१ टिप्पण्या:

RideSpaceMountain म्हणाले...

If you care about this story and have been following it you really need to see Patrick Boyle's recent QRD on SBF's parent's involvement...the defrauded should frickin' sue them and Stanford as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLvOT2AldwM

All of this rigamarole for a pocket full of Adderall and a girlfriend that looks like Woody Allen after a sex change. Proof positive rich people have shit taste.

Enigma म्हणाले...

What Tycoon?

Was SBF a not-too-bright patsy set up as a dark money funnel, and as the fall guy if things went wrong? Was his rise orchestrated by the same people who put Jeffrey Epstein out there? Epstein was dead...

Goofy eccentric...matches the Bill Gates tech tycoon stereotype...fooled casual investors...

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

I thought this was going to be about Fetterman...

Kakistocracy म्हणाले...

The predominant investment thesis for Cryptocurrency is that someone else will take it off your hands at a higher price. That's it.

The problem with cryptocurrency is it’s not currency. It is not backed by the full faith and credit of a nation state. It is just a digital unit of account with nothing behind it other than the greater fool theory.

gilbar म्हणाले...

isn't Adderall WONDERFUL??
In the Bad Old Days, scammers would have to snort line after line of coke to work 24/7..
But NOW; just pop a few pills every few hours; and you're GOOD TO GO!

William म्हणाले...

Well, he doesn't look like a conman, and it probably wasn't an act. That was perhaps what made it so convincing. Elizabeth Holmes took the trouble to look focused and adopt some of Steve Jobs' mannerisms. I think that might have been an act. Nowadays, I understand she's warm and fuzzy. Bernie Madoff had the best con. It went on for years. He looked respectable and solid. This was a guy I'd be comfortable parking my money with.....It's instructive and edifying to note that some of the people who are hastening to send Trump to prison for his "con" were the ones who were most vociferous in support of the above mentioned charlatans. I don't think anyone who bought a condo in The Trump Tower lost money on the deal, plus they got to live in a nice apartment.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves म्हणाले...

His money paid for democrats. WaPo should be happy.

btw- Fried will probably skate.

Ampersand म्हणाले...

There are vast numbers of males under 40 who find video games so fascinating that they expend much of their intellectual capacity on the effort to achieve meaningless victories. I don't get it. What's going on inside?

Saint Croix म्हणाले...

Michael Lewis is almost always a fun read.

Liar's Poker is fantastic. And then his sports books, The Blind Side and Moneyball. And The Big Short.

He's so big now that Hollywood is turning his stuff into movies.

Saint Croix म्हणाले...

He's cynical but also funny. One of my favorite non-fiction writers. If you haven't read Liar's Poker, I would start with that one. Brilliant.

MB म्हणाले...

a girlfriend that looks like Woody Allen after a sex change

I read a description of her once - the girl who would have played the caterpillar in the school play - and I can never unsee that.

RideSpaceMountain म्हणाले...

"I read a description of her once - the girl who would have played the caterpillar in the school play - and I can never unsee that."

DO NOT GOOGLE "PINNING THE WEASEL". I REPEAT DO NOT GOOGLE "PINNING THE WEASEL". Consider yourself warned.

MadisonMan म्हणाले...

Thought this was gonna be about Fetterman. (I see Joe Smith beat me to this conclusion)

Big Mike म्हणाले...

No one ever seems to have asked how a person could be a financial super genius and spend all his time playing video games. Dr. Michael Burry (he graduated from med school), the character played by Christian Bale in the movie “The Big Short,” was an odd individual by any measure, but instead of spending his time playing video games he was diving into the details of the subprime mortgage market.

Big Mike म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Saint Croix म्हणाले...

I want to see Radical Wolfe.

It's a doc based on a Vanity Fair article by Michael Lewis.

I'm not a big reader of Wolfe, but Radical Chic is so funny. I read somewhere that the doc takes shots at Wolfe for that one. But it's his strongest work!

madAsHell म्हणाले...

Has anyone noticed the Autism??

Dave Begley म्हणाले...

With this puff piece and puff book, Michael Lewis has ruined his reputation. Sad.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

His money paid for democrats. …

btw- Fried will probably skate.


@Hunter’s Hooker, you’re right, of course. Siphoning off your client’s money to pay for the election of Democrats is better than paying protection money to the Mafia.

Jay Vogt म्हणाले...

. . . Sooooo many interesting characters in this one beyond SBF and Caroline Ellison (who appears to have flipped - curious about the deal that she got).

Of course, his mom & dad as other have mentioned above.

However, I'm awfully curious about the in-house Doctor/Coach, Dr. George Lerner from the Baylor med school. He's got to have some interesting stories and potential for some really wild wrong-doings. He might be able to hold on to doctor/patient privilege for a while. Ya never know.

Also there's a few weird bankers out there that dived in. For me, I'm most interested in Jean Chalopin, an okay French cartoonist who apparently purchased a miniscule Washington state bank named Farmington State Bank (renamed Moonstone Bank) just across the boarder from Idaho so that his son could turn it into a crypto-bank. It didn't go so well. They killed the bank from top to bottom. Pretty clear they ran money around for the FTX/Alameda Research team. I'll bet they have some interesting stories too.

boatbuilder म्हणाले...

I caused my wife annoyance in excess of the usual level, when I pointed out, at the close of the "Moneyball" movie, that the Red Sox did not win the World Series in 2004 because Billy Beane told them to draft Kevin Youkilis, but because they had assembled a substantial collection of talent by paying top dollar for estabished stars Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Curt Schilling and Johnnie Damon, as well as their own guy Nomar Garciaparra.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, though. Especially if your wife likes Brad Pitt.