The Box

An empty office with floor-to-ceiling windows at sunset: a beanbag chair lies by a long desk of monitors, cans and cables, with palms and sea outside. — A beanbag chair by the desk. Bankman-Fried slept on one right in the office, and journalists adored the detail.

Thirty-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried went around in rumpled shorts and a T-shirt, slept on a beanbag next to his desk and never combed his mop of curls. Journalists adored these details. In 2022 his fortune was estimated at more than $20 billion, his exchange FTX was considered the most reliable in the industry, and he himself went to Washington to explain to congressmen how cryptocurrencies ought to be regulated. He was the son of two Stanford law professors, had a physics degree from MIT and had spent several years trading on Wall Street at Jane Street, one of the smartest and most secretive firms in the world.

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