Tom Brady’s surprising friendship with Sam Bankman-Fried revealed

Sam Bankman-Fried is the subject of a new book by American author and financial journalist Michael Lewis. However, you don’t have to wait until tomorrow’s release to get all the juicy revelations.

lewis appears in 60 minutes October 1 to talk about the book, titled Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of the New Tycoons. In an interview with Jon Wertheim, The 62-year-old shared the story of his time with Bankman-Fried, aka SBF. The fraud trial of Bankman-Fried, who founded bankrupt cryptocurrency company FTX, is set to begin on October 3.

One of the most shocking insights from the interview included Bankman-Fried’s close friendship with football legend Tom Brady. Lewis said the two became friends and the former NFL quarterback “admired” Bankman-Fried after the tech entrepreneur paid Brady $55 million in endorsement fees.

“I think Tom Brady thinks he’s a very interesting guy. I think he likes hearing what he has to say,” Wertheim said.

“He really liked Tom Brady. And Sam wasn’t a big jock… the nerd of all nerds. Like, even nerds wouldn’t hang out with this nerd, he was just a nerd.

“Somehow, the quarterback likes him. Somehow he likes the quarterback.”

However, the collapse of FTX and subsequent fraud allegations ended the friendship, with Lewis describing Brady, 46, as “devastated”.

“I think as time went on he wasn’t able to get a really good explanation for what happened,” Lewis continued.

“I think he just thought, ‘He cheated on me. I’m angry. I don’t want anything to do with it anymore.'”

Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on December 12, 2023, and the U.S. Department of Justice charged the 31-year-old with defrauding investors. Before getting into legal trouble, the MIT graduate – known for his eccentric personality and raunchy attitude as well as his commitment to “effective altruism” – signed up to donate the majority of his fortune to charity and Financially support liberal commitments. Media companies and political candidates.

In 2017, Bankman-Fried founded cryptocurrency trading company Alameda Research.By this point, he had amassed a huge fortune by exploiting the difference in Bitcoin prices between Asia and the United States

In 2019, he founded a second company, FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange and hedge fund with former Google employee Gary Wang. By 2021, Forbes Bankman-Fried’s net worth is estimated to be approximately $26.5 billion.

However, FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022. After reports emerged that Bankman-Fried transferred approximately $10 billion of FTX customer funds to Alameda, customers rushed to withdraw $6 billion from the organization.

Subsequently, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that Binance would sell off FTT tokens (the currency used to access FTX services) due to “worrying trends” in Bankman-Fried’s business. This caused more traders to withdraw their funds, causing FTX to go bankrupt.

After his arrest, the SEC alleged that Bankman-Fried used FTX funds to repay Alameda’s debts and expenses, defrauded investors, and defrauded Alameda’s clients by misrepresenting the status of the hedge fund.

On December 13, Bankman-Fried was separately charged by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, accusing him of amassing $1.8 billion in equity for FTX while concealing the transfer of funds to its sister company.

Weekly newspaper Bankman-Fried and Brady have been contacted via email for comment.