Stealing The Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia [Paperback]

When does a philosophy become a conspiracy?

In 2024, Sam Bankman-Fried — once hailed as the future of finance and one of the richest men in America — was sentenced to 25 years in prison for stealing $11 billion and collapsing over a hundred companies. Stealing the Future is the inside story of that unraveling, told by a member of the CoinDesk team that first broke the case.

But this is more than a true crime story.

It’s a journey into the tangled web of tech-utopianism, libertarian idealism, and the seductive ideologies of Silicon Valley — from Effective Altruism to transhumanism — that helped cloak one of the biggest financial frauds of the 21st century.

As these philosophies increasingly fuel the global far right, Stealing the Future asks: what happens when abstract theories gain real power — and who’s really paying the price? Stealing the Future nails Sam Bankman-Fried for what he truly is: an overly-confident, ineffective and amoral narcissist.
– Paul Dylan-Ennis, Assistant Professor, School of Business, University College Dublin

Sam Bankman-Fried was Bernie Madoff cosplaying as Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. Too many people who should have known better fell for his act, enabling one of the largest financial frauds in American history. The inimitable David Z. Morris offers a high-minded take on this tragic farce, exploring the wide-eyed philosophies that SBF used (and perhaps twisted) to rationalize his destructive behavior.
– Marc Hochstein, Vice President for Research, Galaxy Digital; Former Deputy Editor-in-Chief, CoinDesk

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