Sam Bankman-Fried | "Don't Miss Out" | 2

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It's December 21st, 2022 in a courtroom in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas.

Sam Bankman-Fried stands before a magistrate.

All other eyes in the room are on Sam, though.

Giving people his undivided attention has never been one of Sam's strengths.

Even in important meetings, he usually likes to have his computer open so he can play his favorite strategy game.

But he doesn't have a computer anymore.

In fact, he hasn't had access to any kind of technology since his arrest nine days ago.

So Sam has no choice but to pay attention to what's going on around him.

The court proceedings don't take long.

Sam's attorney tells the judge that Sam isn't fighting extradition to the United States, and that's that.

Once the hearing's over, Sam's escorted from the courtroom by several armed guards.

Outside the building, a swarm of journalists and photographers are waiting for him.

They call out questions and snap pictures as Sam's led to a car.

The 30-year-old is bundled into the back of the dark vehicle, and the car steers carefully away from the courthouse.

Beside the SUV, a couple of policemen on motorcycles keep the photographers back as they navigate through Nassau's thick traffic.

But instead of going back to the jail where Sam spent the last week, they take a different path through the city.

Sam watches the streets slide by, part of him wondering if he'll ever come back here, but most of him just wishing he had his phone again.

Being cut off from the Internet for the last week or so has been torture.

Eventually, the SUV rolls to a stop at a private airfield where a jet's waiting.

It stares already in place.

It's there to take him back to America.

Sam's lawyers have told him this is the right thing to do.

He couldn't fight extradition forever, and hopefully cooperating with the authorities will reflect favorably on him later.

The whole day has been one of the rare instances of Sam listening to the advice of others.

Even though following his own instincts is what got him into this mess, he's still certain that he knows best.

But, in this specific case, the only thing Sam knows best is exactly what happened at his companies, and where so many billions of dollars disappeared to.

There's been plenty of speculation in the last few weeks, but Sam Bankman-Fried is one of the only people who knows the whole story, and now everyone's waiting for him to tell it.

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From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz and this is American Criminal.

By the end of 2018, Sam Bankman-Fried's plan to make a billion dollars was picking up steam.

His crypto investment firm, Alameda Research, was attracting big money, even after a leadership scuffle that saw half the employees walk out.

The hedge fund's average return on investments for the year was around 110%, and Sam felt confident enough to leave his team behind in Berkeley, California.

They could handle the day to day while he traveled to Hong Kong to be close to where crypto was growing the fastest.

The truth was, although Sam had only been building his business for a year, he was already losing interest in Alameda.

Those impressive sounding 110% returns were just too low.

From the start, Sam was determined to make as much money as he could as quickly as possible, before he reached middle age and got complacent.

If he was going to maximize his positive impact on the world, he needed to try a new strategy.

Sam's new plan proved a winner.

Within just a few years, he made the billion dollars he'd once dreamed of, and much, much more.

His astronomical wealth won him revered status as one of his generation's great minds, but Sam still wasn't satisfied.

There was more he could do, more of the world he could conquer.

So he set out to change the rules of the game.

He wanted to prove that he was the best player, the most honest, the one to trust.

But in the end, it turned out that he was none of those things.

And Sam's meteoric rise set him up for only one thing, a catastrophic fall.

This is episode two in a three-part series about Sam Bankman-Fried.

Don't miss out.

It's December of 2018, four years before Sam Bankman-Fried's appearance in the Nassau Courthouse.

Sam's in his new Hong Kong apartment, studying the spreadsheet.

He has his back turned to the distractions offered by the city views outside the window.

He has to concentrate on these numbers.

By this stage, Sam's investment firm, Alameda Research, seems to be doing well.

By volume, the firm is responsible for about 5% of the world's total cryptocurrency trades, which is huge, considering the business is only a year old.

And with average returns sitting at around 110%, Alameda's staff have got plenty to celebrate.

They've generated something like $30 million in profits this year alone.

But Sam's not happy.

Those numbers are only good if you don't know what he knows.

For starters, nearly all of the money Alameda uses to invest is borrowed.

And their lenders, mostly people within the effective altruism community, are charging incredibly high interest rates.

So half Alameda's profits are going right back to their debtors.

Then there are the administration costs of running the firm, payroll, operating expenses, transaction fees.

Plus the couple million in severance Sam had to pay half his staff when they walked out in April.

It all adds up.

And when he looks at the bottom line, he's left with profits of just $1.5 million.

For a first year startup, that's great.

But Sam could have made almost as much on his own if he'd stayed working on Wall Street for another couple of years.

And given that this is the result of the hard work of over a dozen incredibly smart young people, it feels like a waste.

To people like Sam, maximizing impact is everything.

And $1.5 million makes him feel like he's squandering everyone's potential for a pittance.

Closing his laptop with a snap, Sam thinks about what his next move should be.

He has to grow the business.

For the most part, Sam's been content for Alameda to fly under the radar, to find new investors thanks to word of mouth.

But not anymore.

They need to do more trades, get a higher profile, attract more investors.

And they need to do it now.

It's time to go on the offensive.

It's January of 2019, when Sam and Alameda Research make their big public debut.

That month, one of the world's biggest crypto exchanges, Binance, hosts a conference in Singapore.

And Sam insists on Alameda being one of the sponsors.

So the firm splashes out 150k for the honor.

It's 10% of their profits.

But Sam understands that they have to spend some money if they want to make even more.

And the return for this investment should be sizable.

The sponsorship buys Sam an appearance on stage with Binance's billionaire CEO, Cheng Pen Zhao, who goes by CZ.

While the conference helps put Alameda on the map within the crypto industry, it's not enough for Sam.

Things are still moving too slowly.

With enough capital on hand, making crypto trades can turn solid profits, if you know what you're doing.

Arbitrage trades, which exploit inefficiencies in the market, were a great way for Alameda to make money in its earliest days.

Sam was able to take advantage of price differences between countries to turn relatively huge profits with minimal risk.

But bigger Wall Street firms and other mainstream investors are wading into the world of crypto currency now.

And having more and bigger fish in the pond is squeezing those market inefficiencies, so they're smaller and smaller, making it much more difficult for Alameda to exploit them.

There is an upside to more players getting into the game, though.

All these new investors use crypto exchanges like Binance to make their trades.

And these exchanges charge fees for every transaction that happens on their platforms.

That's part of the reason why people like CZ are so rich.

His business is practically a money printing machine.

Now, Sam wants one of his own.

But he doesn't want to just copy CZ.

He wants to surpass him.

In 2019, the majority of the world's exchanges still have their limits.

They only do spot trades, which are transactions involving the simple buying and selling of cryptocurrencies.

But some investors want more and have started trading crypto futures as well.

Futures started out as a way to ensure balance in commodities markets.

Basically, a futures contract is an agreement to buy an asset at a locked-in price at a certain point in the future.

So, for example, a farmer could know that they would have a buyer for at least a portion of their harvest, which would save them worrying about price fluctuations in the market.

If prices fell before the contract was up, the farmer would do well out of the transaction, because the buyers already agreed to a higher price.

If they rose above the price of the contract, then the buyer would be the one who got the better end of the deal.

Eventually, though, futures contracts became a core piece of the investment world.

Investors now don't need to actually own or want to buy the commodity they have a futures contract on.

They're simply placing a bet on where prices will be in, say, six months and are on the hook for the money they wager.

And they don't even need all of the money.

Plenty of futures investors leverage their money, which means they pay only a small fraction of the contract price up front directly to a broker.

This allows investors to make big bets without needing the funds to back them up.

That leaves the brokers exposed, though, because if a futures contract loses too much money, investors may not have the funds to pay off the losses.

So to protect against the risk of default, the brokers contribute to a form of insurance, a collective fund there as an extra stopgap for when people can't cover their own losses.

Things are different when it comes to crypto futures, though.

The decentralized and largely anonymous nature of the market means that when losses happen, it's harder to claw back the money that's owed on contracts.

The only real solution to that is what's known as socialized losses, where everyone on the exchange pitches in to cover those deficits at the end of each day.

It's not an ideal system, but it's all there is.

In early 2019, Sam Bankman-Fried wants to create something better, a crypto futures exchange without those socialized losses.

Customers will still be allowed to leverage a small amount of money to make big bets on futures, but the system will track everyone's position by the second.

As soon as a customer starts losing too much money, the system will automatically liquidate part of their investment to cover the dip.

It will mean potentially huge losses for individuals, but on the whole, the theory is that people will be better off.

Sam thinks it should be an appealing idea to investors, but for a crypto exchange to be successful, it needs a large customer base.

More customers means more trades means more fees for the exchange.

The issue is that Sam's not a charismatic guy.

He might be smart, but he's worried that he won't be able to attract customers to his new business.

The crypto world and its collective money tends to follow big successful personalities.

So Sam decides to pitch his idea to existing crypto moguls instead.

He hopes they'll like the concept enough to buy in and pay Sam and his team to build and run the exchange.

Then, those backers can leverage their existing cloud in the industry to bring in the customers needed to make the exchange a success.

But no one's biting.

Either they don't like the idea, don't think it can be done, or don't want to pay Sam the $40 million he's asking for.

So with no other options, Sam decides to press forward on his own.

He has his Chief Technology Officer, Gary Wang, start coding the exchange, which leaves Sam to deal with the small matter of financing.

By this stage in 2019, the crypto market is swelling even larger.

Plenty of people see it as a way to get rich with little effort, not just by investing but by creating the things that others will invest in.

One of the best ways to do that is to create a crypto token, then offer it for sale in an initial coin offering or ICO.

Unlike cryptocurrencies, crypto tokens aren't intended for use as a form of currency.

They're just an intangible asset, closer to owning stock in a company.

Investors can buy and trade them betting on their values going up or down.

But unlike company stock, crypto tokens aren't tied to the success or popularity of a business.

Everything seems to hinge on word of mouth, meme culture and FOMO, the fear of missing out.

But the US government considers crypto tokens so similar to stocks and bonds that US-based companies aren't permitted to offer them.

Those companies have access to traditional investor markets after all.

If they want to sell an abstract idea as an asset, they can go public and sell shares.

Sam's exchange though isn't going to be based in the US, so he's free of those regulations.

As long as Sam's company, which he's named FTX, short for Futures Exchange, doesn't allow American customers to trade on the platform, they're free and clear.

In other words, an ICO seems like a great way to get people to give Sam their money to help fund his newly launched exchange.

So in early May 2019, he mends 350 million tokens he calls FTT.

These will have at least some functionality beyond existing as an asset on a spreadsheet.

In addition to being sold and traded on the crypto market, FTT will be given out to customers who trade on FTX.

If those customers then hold on to their FTT, they'll get a discount on their fees for using Sam's exchange.

So FTT acts as a kind of loyalty system that incentivizes people to do more business on the platform.

And to ensure that the value of the token always moves up, FTX will set aside a third of its annual revenue to buy back FTT from investors.

FTX will then delete these from the blockchain, thereby reducing the number of tokens in existence and driving up the value of those that remain.

Initially, some of the tokens are offered to FTX and Alameda employees for five cents apiece.

Then, certain influential people within the crypto community are allowed to buy FTT for ten cents.

But most don't take advantage of the early offering.

They probably should have, though.

There's soon a lot of excited chatter in the crypto community about Sam's new exchange.

Not long after FTT is made available to the public on the FTX platform, its value rises over a dollar.

Anyone who did buy before the public offering now owns an asset worth 10 to 20 times what they paid for it.

Just like that, Sam has millions of dollars to fund his fledgling crypto exchange.

FTX is only a few months old and is already looking like it has a bright future, just like Alameda.

But while Sam felt restricted by what he could earn with his first business, he can already see that the sky is the limit with FTX.

Still, even in his wildest dreams, Sam can't imagine just how big things will get.

It's August of 2019, four months after Sam Bankman-Fried launched his new crypto exchange.

In the Hong Kong head office of FTX, 27-year-old Sam is at his desk as usual.

When he worked in California at Alameda Research, it was a constant struggle just to get everyone on the same page.

Sam had needed to send out memos explaining his behavior and why he didn't show a lot of emotion.

What's worse, he had to ask his employees to work long hours instead of them just doing so on their own.

Here in Hong Kong, though, he's assembled a group of people who all seem to operate on his wavelength.

Just beyond the walls of Sam's office are several rows of FTX employees, people in their 20s mostly, all of them quietly typing, immune to the sounds of office life.

Nothing matters but their work.

Nothing matters but crypto.

Now, reading through the document he's just opened, Sam feels vindicated in all his decisions, in his insistence that his staff stay late, in his unwavering commitment to effective altruism.

His dedication to the cause is finally paying off.

Scrolling back to the top of the page, he skims the document again, wanting to be sure he's got the figures right.

It's an official offer from CZ, the CEO of Binance, to buy a 20% stake in FTX for $80 million.

Binance is an established institution in the crypto world, and CZ is one of its richest, most influential figures.

But even knowing that, what makes this offer so appealing to Sam is that just months earlier, CZ declined Sam's offer to invest in and fund all of FTX for half that amount.

Now, he's come crawling back.

Sam has always had a hard time understanding why people smile.

But right now, he can almost see the appeal.

$80 million is a lot of money to own just 20% of a brand new company.

And it essentially puts FTX's total value at $400 million, which is massive for such a young startup.

But before long, it's clear that CZ made the right call.

In fact, he got himself a bargain.

Because within its first 18 months, FTX grows from new kid on the block to the world's fifth largest crypto exchange.

Between the summer of 2020 and spring of 2021, FTX holds four rounds of fundraising.

Those net the company $2.3 billion in investments from over 100 different venture capital firms.

No one gets as big a chunk as CZ, though.

Sam quickly realizes that FTX is much more valuable than that first investment suggested.

In exchange for that $2 billion, Sam parcels out just 6% of FTX.

But while investments of this size would usually buy some level of influence at a traditional company, like voting rights or a seat on the board of directors, that's not the case here.

There isn't a board.

There are no votes.

Sam refuses to allow anyone else to have control over FTX.

He doesn't want any kind of oversight.

It's his company.

He makes the decisions.

That's the whole point of cryptocurrencies after all.

The absence of regulation, governmental or otherwise.

Oversight, however, is something that Sam could probably do with by this stage.

As the majority owner of both Alameda Research, a crypto investment firm, and FTX, a crypto trading platform, he almost defines the term conflict of interest.

Alameda kicked in millions of dollars to help get FTX off the ground and now holds a large chunk of FTT tokens as collateral.

That's all pretty well known and doesn't raise so many eyebrows.

What does stir up questions is the fact that, in theory, Alameda's traders could get information from their colleagues at FTX on what market participants and rivals are doing on the exchange.

That kind of information could be used to make big profits.

And that's not the only way Sam's loading the dice.

Special coding ensures that Alameda's trades on FTX are given priority over others that take place on the platform.

In a game where fractions of a second can make a huge difference in how much money is won or lost, that kind of preferential treatment gives Sam's trading firm a huge advantage.

What's more, Alameda's exempt from FTX's liquidation protocol.

Whereas other FTX customers automatically lose money on trades that start going south, Alameda can make larger, riskier trades without necessarily paying for it.

They can just get the benefit of bigger profits.

So FTX is effectively a casino where Alameda can look at their rivals' cards whenever they want and get to play their own hand faster.

And if they still lose, well, the damage is as minimal as it gets in crypto.

So Sam and his two companies are hopelessly entangled, but few people have noticed yet.

There's just too much excitement about the potential of cryptocurrency.

COVID-19 may be ravaging other industries in 2021, but as the pandemic keeps much of the world at home, more and more bored people with an internet connection are dipping their toes into the crypto pool.

They see friends netting profits of hundreds or even thousands of dollars buying and selling crypto assets, and they figure they'll do the same.

Even if these plucky new investors don't make money, exchanges like FTX still win.

They're taking a tiny fraction of each trade, and the more trades that take place, the more attention people give the whole thing.

But this crypto-mania isn't restricted to Joe and Jane normal.

In May of 2021, the president of El Salvador announces that his country will adopt Bitcoin as its national currency.

According to the president, Bitcoin will solve many of the nation's problems, including the number of young people who turn to crime, and the many immigration issues plaguing El Salvador.

For a country at risk of defaulting on its foreign debts, Bitcoin is apparently a lifeline.

At the crypto conference where the president makes this announcement, some of the excited attendees weep with joy.

To be honest, they're not all that concerned about whatever economic and social problems El Salvador is trying to combat.

They're invested because this is the kind of large-scale shift in world economics cryptocurrency advocates have been waiting for.

And if it's successful, those early adopters are sure they'll be making big profits.

Ultimately, though, it's a move that doesn't pay dividends for anyone.

Not for crypto investors and not for El Salvador.

Some retailers in the Central American nation start accepting Bitcoin as payment, but most businesses prefer cash over the hassles of dealing with QR codes and digital wallets.

It's too slow and plenty of locals just plain don't trust the idea of digital currency.

In the end, Bitcoin never really takes off in El Salvador.

At least not as quickly as some might have hoped.

But despite the reluctance and outright disdain locals show for Bitcoin, the president continues pushing the idea, determined that it will turn things around for the country someday.

Although things don't go as planned in El Salvador, cryptocurrencies continue to rise in value around the world.

And Sam is eager to take advantage.

He spends his days promoting both of his companies.

But FTX starts taking up more and more of his time.

And eventually, he realizes that splitting his focus isn't good for either business.

So he names two new CEOs to head up Alameda.

His sometimes-girlfriend Caroline Ellison and Sam Tribucco, a trader who joined the company around the same time as Caroline.

Though people notice that once Tribucco is in his new role, he all but checks out of the company, leaving Caroline to do the job on her own.

If Sam knows anything about that, he doesn't let it distract him from his favorite child.

With someone else running Alameda, Sam's free to concentrate on FTX full-time.

The problem now is that crypto might be getting too big.

At least it is for some governments.

By the summer of 2021, it's been close to three years since Sam first flew to Hong Kong and decided to set up shop in the city.

Now, though, things don't look as promising as they once did.

From country to country, each nation approaches the crypto industry with different attitudes.

Certain jurisdictions welcome the arrival of a new financial market, however volatile it might seem.

To others, though, that volatility and the potential for bad actors to take advantage of investors is reason enough to be more wary.

So, more and more crypto exchanges are moving their operations to stay ahead of unfriendly governments who want to regulate their operations.

Even Binance, which is the top dog, bounces around with surprising regularity after facing opposition from governments in the US, France and Belgium.

Sam himself isn't all that worried about these regulators coming after FTX, but plenty of people on his team are.

They even come up with a plan to get Sam out of Hong Kong in case the Chinese government decides to crack down.

But for his part, Sam's more annoyed by the strict COVID protocols still in place in Hong Kong.

When people come to see him, they have to quarantine for two full weeks first.

And if Sam needs to travel for a face-to-face, he's cut off from his own office for two weeks when he gets back.

It's no way to run a booming startup.

But logistical problems and travel restrictions are the least of Sam's concerns.

The company might need to relocate someday.

But for now, Sam's concentrating on becoming bigger than any other exchange on the market.

He wants FTX to become the indisputable leader, to be the name people think of when they talk about crypto.

But to do that, they're going to need something that makes FTX stand out as different than its rivals.

Better even.

It's a tall order.

Binance has been around for longer, and their lead is intimidating.

But Sam knows that Binance doesn't always play by the rules.

And that's something FTX can use to its advantage.

They might not be able to go toe to toe with Binance just yet, but if the crypto landscape were to become suddenly less welcoming for shady dealers, and better yet, if FTX is the only one who leads that crusade, then maybe Sam might just come out on top.

It's the beginning of 2021 at FTX's offices in Hong Kong.

28-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried is meeting with his marketing and publicity teams.

Sam, long ago, surpassed his dream of making a billion dollars, his lofty goal fueled by a desire to help as many people as possible.

As the owner of two wildly successful crypto businesses, he's a multi-billionaire now, on paper at least.

Much of his wealth is in the form of FTT, the token Sam floated to fund the FTX exchange back in 2019.

These tokens exist as little more than numbers on a spreadsheet.

Still, Sam's able to point to his huge piles of FTT and borrow billions of actual dollars against them.

So he's not short on cash, he just wants more.

Hence the meeting with his advisors.

Sam figures that if FTX is going to become the world's number one crypto exchange, it needs an edge.

Something to make the company the indisputable leader in the field.

Sam figures that the best way to win the game now is to change the rules.

So he announces to his team that he wants the US government to step in and regulate the crypto industry.

That's a bold move.

Until now, crypto's biggest draw for its most fervent investors has been the fact that it isn't regulated.

But that's kept most of the US market walled off from FTX.

The exchange does have a smaller US-based iteration, but it only offers a reduced selection of services, which limits the amount of money Sam can earn from those customers.

If the US Government Securities Exchange Commission, or SEC, starts overseeing crypto trading in America, FTX will be able to offer customers in the states access to all its services.

But it's not just the lucrative potential of this market that's led Sam to embrace government regulation.

He figures that SEC oversight will make people feel more comfortable sinking their money into crypto.

Because despite the industry finding early success because of its lack of regulation, that same thing is likely what's kept most ordinary people away.

So Sam and his team lay out a plan for getting regulators on board.

Sam wants the politicians to see that FTX is willing to do what it takes to become the most transparent, legally correct exchange in the world.

The thing is, Sam's trying to make FTX look like the most law-abiding exchange there is while its biggest rival Binance owns 20% of the company.

And while the stake bought by CZ doesn't give Binance any controlling interest in FTX, it doesn't look good.

Not in Sam's mind anyway.

Binance might be big, but they're shifty.

So as part of FTX's charm offensive, Sam decides that it's time to buy back Binance's share of the company.

He gets in touch with CZ, the exchange's owner and CEO, to set up the deal.

Just three years ago, CZ paid $80 million for 20% of FTX.

If Sam wants that share back, he's going to have to pay.

A lot.

CZ's ask is $2.2 billion.

Sam doesn't blink.

He agrees to the sale immediately.

And why wouldn't he?

He's got money to burn.

FTX is on a roller coaster that only goes up, and Sam is determined that that won't change.

It's the summer of 2021, and FTX has, through sheer force of will, turned itself into an almost household name.

The company has done deals with celebrities and athletes like basketballer Steph Curry, football player Tom Brady, and Brady's supermodel wife Giselle Bündchen.

Sam's firm even pays $135 million to buy the naming rights to a basketball stadium in Miami, which becomes FTX Arena in June of 2021.

Sam might not personally understand the appeal of the personalities he's roping in, but he knows that they can help broaden FTX's brand beyond the crypto faithful and the extremely online.

But celebrity endorsements aren't the only thing FTX is investing in.

In August, Sam decides that Hong Kong isn't the best place for the business anymore.

FTX's new home will be the Bahamas.

The government there is excited about hosting a new financial powerhouse.

Plus, it's closer to the US so Sam can fly to Washington to meet with lawmakers at the drop of a hat.

After the move, Sam directs his team to scoop up real estate in the Bahamas for the company's new office, as well as living quarters for the employees who are relocating there.

They don't skimp, spending hundreds of millions on the properties, including a penthouse apartment in an exclusive resort community for the ultra wealthy.

Sam's headline-making success has turned him into the unofficial face of all cryptocurrencies.

His meteoric rise in the field is an irresistible draw for journalists, while his unruly cloud of curls and uniform of cargo shorts and t-shirt have made him a recognizable avatar for armchair investors everywhere.

He doesn't look like a billionaire, nor does he act like one.

He's awkward and unpretentious, which most people decide is charming.

The fact that he tells everyone he's planning on giving away his billions only adds to his mystique.

When asked what's motivating that plan, he tells journalists about his belief in the effective altruism community.

But Sam hasn't given away much of his fortune to charitable causes yet.

When the company launches its foundation, Sam boasts that FTX, its affiliates and its employees have donated over $10 million to quote, help save lives, prevent suffering and ensure a brighter future.

But given the vast sums FTX deals in, $10 million seems like a drop in the bucket.

After all, Sam abandoned a Wall Street job that would have seen him earning that much every year, all because he wanted the scope to earn and donate more money to charitable causes.

Now, having created a company worth billions, the amount he's giving back seems meager.

He does direct money elsewhere, but it's not to strictly charitable causes.

Sam was one of the biggest donors in the 2020 presidential election, and he continues to back politicians he approves of with hefty campaign contributions.

His reasoning is that he can manipulate the board so that the right people are in positions of power to affect lasting change.

But others wonder if it's more about making powerful friends in Washington, who will back FTX's expansion into America.

By the end of 2021, there's a million customers using the limited US version of FTX, and millions more from around the globe on the international platform.

But it's not enough.

Sam insists that if he's going to change the world, really change it, then this needs to be more than just a business.

Sam wants FTX to become a global movement.

So in April of 2022, he hosts the Crypto Bahamas Conference, a splashy stunt designed to send the message that crypto is about to reshape the world and that FTX will be at the forefront of this financial revolution.

Among the famous faces who show up to the conference are Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom, while former US President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair suffer through an awkward on stage interview with Sam.

As the conference wraps up and the summer of 2022 inches closer, it seems like Sam's ascension is unstoppable.

He's made his billions many times over and is only picking up steam.

But nothing good can last forever.

No one yet sees that the foundations of Sam's crypto empire are incredibly fragile.

Sam isn't worried, though.

Risk isn't something he's particularly afraid of.

He once told his sometime girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, that if he could flip a coin and one side made existence twice as good for everyone on Earth and the other side destroyed the planet completely, he'd happily take the chance.

Multiple times.

But Sam doesn't realize that his fate and that of his customers isn't bound to a coin flip.

Everything's resting on a bubble.

And it's about to pop.

From Airship, this is episode 2 in our series on Sam Bankman-Fried.

On the next episode, the crypto market tumbles, destroying billions of dollars in investment.

And with one of his companies in trouble, Sam makes a call that will cost him everything.

We used many different sources while preparing this episode.

A few we can recommend are Going Infinite by Michael Lewis, and Number Go Up by Zeke Fox, as well as Reporting in the Financial Times and by the Wall Street Journal.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details, and while in some cases we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited and produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio Editing by Mahammad Shahzaib.  

Sound Design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callen.

Special thanks to Richard Metcalfe.

Managing Producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsay Graham for Airship.