Michael Lewis, author of the bestselling book The Big Short, meets Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder and former CEO of crypto exchange FTX, at his California home, where he is awaiting trial.
The surprise visit, which reportedly lasted “several hours,” convinced many that the famous author may be looking to create a book based on the Sam Bankman-Fried saga and the collapse of their FTX cryptocurrency company, The New York Post reports. Tuesday.
Lewis is the author of best-selling books such as “The Big Short,” which details how the housing bubble of the late 2000s led to the financial crisis and how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane. He used analytics to gather information.
FTX, once the third largest crypto exchange in the world, filed for bankruptcy on November 11. Subsequently, it was revealed that this exchange had gained a reputation as the king of crypto bailouts during the recent crypto meltdown. Left with $9.4 billion in fund mismanagement.
Banman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas earlier this month after US prosecutors filed criminal charges against him. After a volatile week, the crypto boss was finally extradited to the US to face multiple criminal charges.
The Southern District of New York, which is investigating the collapse of FTX and its sister business Alameda, has charged SBF with eight felony counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and misappropriation of customer funds. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused SBF of “orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX.”
SBF was released last week after posting a $250 million bond in a New York court. Until now, the disgraced crypto boss has been kept under house arrest at the Bankman-Fried family’s Palo Alto home on Stanford University’s campus.
However, it is said that this is not the first time that the famous author has visited SBF. In November, The Ankler reported that Lewis had been interviewing Bankman-Fried for six months. Lewis said earlier:
“I don’t really want to say exactly what I’m going to write. But I’ve got a character I’m going to write – it’s a weird mix of Flash Boys, The Big Short and Fake Poker.”
Meanwhile, Deadline reported last month that Apple had reached a rights deal with FTX and Bankman-Fried’s latest plans to turn Lewis’s book into a movie.