On the identical day that Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial on federal fraud expenses begins, the best-selling creator Michael Lewis is about to publish a broadly anticipated ebook on Tuesday about Mr. Bankman-Fried’s failed cryptocurrency trade, FTX.

Mr. Lewis, the creator of “The Blind Facet,” “The Massive Quick” and “Moneyball,” spent months interviewing Mr. Bankman-Fried and different high FTX executives, and had entry to the corporate’s headquarters within the Bahamas for the ebook, “Going Infinite.”

The ebook options beforehand unreported particulars about Mr. Bankman-Fried’s empire, from its founding within the Bay Space to its epic collapse within the Bahamas final yr. Listed here are some takeaways.

Is Bankman-Fried responsible?

Mr. Lewis doesn’t supply a “sure” or “no” reply. He depicts Mr. Bankman-Fried as delusional and sometimes callous in his therapy of colleagues, a younger entrepreneur who “thought grown-ups have been pointless” and left messes for different individuals to scrub up.

However Mr. Lewis additionally expresses skepticism about the attorneys and executives who have been introduced in to handle FTX’s chapter and have develop into a few of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s fiercest public critics. Towards the top of the ebook, Mr. Lewis writes that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s explanations for the collapse of FTX, as implausible as they sound, have “remained irritatingly troublesome to disprove.”

Early days at Alameda

Mr. Bankman-Fried began his first firm, the hedge fund Alameda Analysis, alongside Tara Mac Aulay, an Australian mathematician who moved in the identical philanthropic circles. At one level, Mr. Bankman-Fried “revealed his romantic curiosity in her,” earlier than shifting consideration to her buying and selling expertise, Mr. Lewis writes. Ms. Mac Aulay stop Alameda throughout a employees exodus in early 2018 that got here to be generally known as “the schism.” The fund was shedding cash: At one level, $4 million in digital cash merely disappeared from its accounts.

In accordance with the ebook, Ms. Mac Aulay grew to contemplate Mr. Bankman-Fried “dishonest and manipulative,” and different senior figures at Alameda accused him of mismanagement. (The lacking cryptocurrency ultimately turned up at a South Korean trade.)

“I made individuals hate one another somewhat extra and belief one another rather less,” Mr. Bankman-Fried later wrote of the break up. “I severely curtailed my very own future capability to do good.”

Political ambitions

When FTX was thriving, Mr. Bankman-Fried turned a prolific political donor, contributing greater than $5 million to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 presidential election effort. He additionally held conferences with Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority chief, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. And in response to the ebook, Mr. Bankman-Fried explored “the legality of paying Donald Trump himself to not run for president.” Some advisers to Mr. Bankman-Fried knowledgeable him that Mr. Trump’s value was $5 billion, Mr. Lewis writes.

Relationship with Caroline Ellison

One in all Mr. Bankman-Fried’s closest enterprise associates was additionally his on-and-off girlfriend, Caroline Ellison. After FTX imploded, Ms. Ellison pleaded responsible to fraud and agreed to cooperate with the federal prosecutors who’ve accused Mr. Bankman-Fried of stealing funds from prospects to finance political donations and different lavish spending.

Mr. Lewis cites quite a few messages that Mr. Bankman-Fried and Ms. Ellison exchanged about their relationship. In a single, Ms. Ellison described issues that Mr. Bankman-Fried had finished and that bothered her, together with “telling me that he felt conflicted about having intercourse with me, then having intercourse with me, then ignoring me for a couple of months.”

In a memo to Ms. Ellison, Mr. Bankman-Fried laid out the professionals and cons of continuous a romantic relationship together with her. The professionals included that she was sensible, spectacular and a superb particular person, and that he loved having intercourse together with her. Among the many cons have been the uncomfortable energy dynamics within the relationship, in addition to the potential for damaging publicity if their courting life ever turned public.

“In a number of methods I don’t actually have a soul,” he wrote. “My emotions are pretend, my facial reactions are pretend. I don’t really feel happiness. What’s the purpose in courting somebody who you bodily can’t make comfortable?”

Panic within the Bahamas

Mr. Lewis frolicked with Mr. Bankman-Fried at FTX’s headquarters within the Bahamas simply hours after the corporate filed for chapter in November. He describes a panicked textual content that Mr. Bankman-Fried acquired from Nishad Singh, a high FTX government who later pleaded responsible to fraud.

“Are you able to make it you, otherwise you and Gary who individuals blame?” Mr. Singh wrote, referring to a different government who has pleaded responsible, Gary Wang.

Later, in response to the ebook, Mr. Singh requested Mr. Bankman-Fried in particular person, “How will we all be sure we are saying the opposite ones are harmless?” (A footnote says that account of the dialog got here from Mr. Bankman-Fried.)

FTX’s chapter

After FTX filed for chapter final yr, a veteran company turnaround skilled, John Jay Ray III, took over the corporate. Mr. Lewis attracts from a collection of unusually candid interviews he performed with Mr. Ray, who has stated little about FTX exterior authorized filings and congressional testimony.

Within the interviews, Mr. Ray described Ms. Ellison as “chilly as ice” and an “apparent full weirdo,” utilizing an expletive for emphasis. He additionally famous that FTX had invested $500 million in Anthropic, a synthetic intelligence start-up, earlier than dismissing the challenge as “only a bunch of individuals with an concept. Nothing.”

A number of weeks after that interview, Mr. Lewis writes, a bunch of corporations together with Google invested practically $500 million in Anthropic, elevating the worth of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s stake to $800 million. Mr. Lewis criticizes Mr. Ray’s dealing with of the chapter, likening him to an “beginner archaeologist” who had stumbled upon artifacts he didn’t perceive.

Different tidbits

The ebook is stuffed with different colourful particulars that make clear Mr. Bankman-Fried’s persona and the way he managed his enterprise empire.

• When he labored on the high-frequency buying and selling agency Jane Avenue Capital, some executives have been “disturbed by Sam’s indifference to different individuals’s emotions,” Mr. Lewis writes. They cited an incident by which Mr. Bankman-Fried publicly humiliated one other dealer in a fancy playing sport that was in style in Jane Avenue’s places of work.

• Mr. Bankman-Fried paid the comic Larry David $10 million to seem in a now-infamous Tremendous Bowl business for FTX. The corporate additionally tried and didn’t sponsor stadiums utilized by two Nationwide Soccer League groups, the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs and the New Orleans Saints.

• The architects designing a brand new FTX headquarters within the Bahamas have been requested to construction the facet of the constructing so it will evoke Mr. Bankman-Fried’s “unruly hair.”

• Mr. Bankman-Fried couldn’t title two of the individuals on FTX’s three-person board of administrators. “The principle job requirement is that they don’t thoughts DocuSigning at 3 a.m.,” he stated. “DocuSigning is the primary job.”