‘The Big Short’ author Michael Lewis is writing a book about FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried

Celebrated nonfiction chronicler Michael Lewis has spent the past six months walking the shadow of cryptocurrency tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried, it emerged Friday.

Lewis, 62, has seen his previous books The Big Short, Moneyball and The Blind Side turn into Hollywood blockbusters.

On Friday, a literary agent, Michael Snyder, informed his contacts that Lewis had six months worth of material about Bankman-Fried – who had a spectacular feud with Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao.

Zhao, head of the world’s largest bitcoin and crypto exchange, said last week that he planned to bail out Bankman-Fried’s company FTX, but then backed out, saying FTX was not stable.

Lewis compared the pair to Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

“Michael hasn’t written anything yet, but the story has grown too big for us to wait,” the agent said in his email.

Snyder continued, “His youth, early success on Wall Street, embrace of effective altruism and the establishment of a crypto empire that catapulted him into the ranks of the world’s richest people in record time, seemed more than adequate for a signature Michael Lewis- book .

“Of course the events of the past week have provided a dramatic surprise at the end of the story.”

In August, Lewis broadly discussed his new book in an interview with Financial News.

“I really don’t want to reveal exactly what I’m writing about,” he said.

“But I’ve found a character I can write about – it strangely connects Flash Boys, The Big Short, and Liar’s Poker.

“I think it’s possible that it will be framed as a cryptobook, but it won’t be a cryptobook.

“It’s about this very unusual character. You learn all about crypto and you learn what ruined the market structure in the United States and so on.”

FTX had a one-time valuation of $32 billion and significant ties to the entertainment industry.

Advertisements starring Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen, as well as Larry David, were widely promoted, and Steph Curry and Naomi Osaka received paid support.

Bankman-Fried received much acclaim as he quickly achieved superstar status as possibly the world’s first billionaire.

He was born in Stanford, California, had founded FTX in 2019 and was growing rapidly – ​​recently it was valued at $32 billion.

Bankman-Fried was the son of professors at Stanford University, who were known to play the “League of Legends” video game in meetings. Bankman-Fried attracted investment from the highest echelons of Silicon Valley.

Until last week, Bankman-Fried was seen as a white knight to the industry.

Whenever the crypto industry had one of its crises, Bankman-Fried was the person most likely to come up with a rescue plan.

When online trading platform Robinhood ran into financial difficulties earlier this year — collateral damage from the stock drop and crypto prices — Bankman-Fried jumped in to buy a stake in the company as a sign of support.

When Bankman-Fried bought the assets of bankrupt crypto firm Voyager Digital for $1.4 billion this summer, it brought a sense of relief to Voyager’s account holders, whose assets have been frozen since its bankruptcy. That rescue is now up for debate.

As the king of crypto, his influence began to spill over into political and popular culture.

FTX bought prominent sports sponsorship from Formula Racing and bought the naming rights to an arena in Miami.

He pledged to donate $1 billion to Democrats this election cycle — his actual donations ran into the tens of millions — and prominent politicians like Bill Clinton were invited to speak at FTX conferences.

Sequoia Capital, which invested in Apple, Cisco, Google, Airbnb and YouTube, described their meeting with Bankman-Fried as likely “talking to the world’s first billionaire.”

Sequoia enthusiastically invested in FTX after one Zoom meeting in 2021.

“I don’t know how I know, I just know. SBF is a winner,” Sequoia Capital’s Adam Fisher wrote in a Bankman-Fried profile for the company, referring to Bankman-Fried by its popular online name.

The article, which was published in late September, has been removed from Sequoia’s website.

Sequoia has written off its $213 million investments to zero.

A pension fund in Ontario, Canada also wrote off its investment to zero.

In a succinct statement, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund said: “Obviously, not all early-stage investments in this asset class perform as expected.”

Bankman-Fried had been the subject of some criticism before FTX collapsed.

While operating FTX largely outside of US jurisdiction from its headquarters in the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried increasingly spoke of the need for greater regulation of the cryptocurrency industry.

Many crypto proponents are against government oversight.

Now the collapse of FTX may have contributed to the call for stricter regulation.

One of those critics was Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao.

The feud between the two billionaires spilled out onto Twitter, where Zhao and Bankman-Fried together had millions of followers.

Zhao helped spark the withdrawals that doomed FTX when he said Binance would sell its holdings in FTX’s crypto token FTT.