As the evening wore on, Jane Street’s worries that other high-frequency trading firms might be doing the same trade eased. “Markets were moving at the speed of CNN, not the speed of data,” said Sam. “We were confident we had better info than the market. We had a sense that if anyone else was doing this, they were very small.” Seven times that eveni

Everything about him was peculiar, starting with motives—or at least what he believed his motives to be. He didn’t come right out with all of it on our walk, maybe because he realized how implausible it’d sound to a total stranger. He needed infinity dollars because he planned to address the biggest existential risks to life on earth: nuclear war,

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Now he had a machine for creating wagers in which both parties enjoyed positive expected value. That machine was named Asher. Interns were lined up to take the bet. “People get so obsessed with free dollars when you frame it correctly,” said Sam. He was by then in full obsessive gaming mode. “There was nothing that was going to stop me. If I’d have

Pressed, he suggested I call his brother, who was now employed by Sam to distribute Sam’s money to political candidates. Gabe, three years younger, told me that I was wasting my time. “We weren’t close growing up,” he said, when I reached him. “I don’t think Sam liked school that much, but I don’t really know. He kept to himself. I would interact w

Plus he’d already tried and failed to do it. Back in May 2018, in Berkeley, Sam had asked Gary Wang to write the code for a bitcoin exchange, and within a month Gary had done it. CryptonBTC, it was called. They put it out on the web without any idea how to attract attention to it. No one showed up to trade on it. It was as if it had never happened.

It was never clear where Alameda Research stopped and FTX started. Legally separate companies, they were both owned by the same person.

Sam later couldn’t remember exactly why he’d agreed to fly to Asia in the first place. It wasn’t to see sights in which he had zero interest. Flying frightened him so badly that, before takeoff, he had to medicate himself and listen to soothing music. “Viscerally I’ve never believed that a hunk of metal would fly,” he said. The stated purpose of hi

A year into his new life in the Bahamas, Nishad Singh had stepped onto that beach just once, and then only because some relatives were visiting. That was once more than Sam, and likely Gary too.