Sam Bankman-Fried went on trial this week on charges of fraud and money laundering, in connection with his $32bn cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Digital asset mania has vaporised billions of investor dollars over the past five years.

From the #1 bestselling author of The Big Short and Flash Boys, Michael Lewis’s Going Infinite, is a structured biography-cum-fly-on-the-wall tale, tracing 31-year-old Bankman-Fried’s journey from friendless nerd to unflappable Wall Street Trader, business tycoon  and finally accused felon and clearly explains the market failures and other complex ideas. The high-octane story of the enigmatic figure at the heart of one of the 21st century’s most spectacular financial collapses, explains Bankman-Fried’s weakness for vegan snacks, puzzles, and his seventh-grade views about abortion and his romantic correspondence with Caroline Ellison, the former head of his Alameda Trading business. She has pleaded guilty to  fraud and is expected to be a star witness against him. Who was this Gatsby of the crypto world, a rumpled guy in cargo shorts, whose eyes twitched across TV interviews as he played video games on the side, who even his million-dollar investors still found a mystery? What gave him such an extraordinary ability to make money – and how did his empire collapse so spectacularly?

Lewis reconstructs  peripatetic existence as Bankman-Fried refused to give FTX employees job titles or clear reporting lines and shifted its headquarters from California to Hong Kong and finally to Bahamas. Lewis had the pleasure of even travelling in Bankman-Fried’s plane as the entrepreneur sought to convince Washington policymakers in July -22 that he was the face of “responsible “ crypto, while FTX employees were losing track of investments and catastrophically allowing Almeda to “borrow” client money to make risky trading bets.

There should be a global crusade to shake up conventional fiancé that sweeps in libertarian conspiracy nuts, greedy finance bros and central bankers.  

Lewis paints the picture portrait of a preternaturally gifted ‘thinking machine’, and wild financial roller-coaster ride, this is a twenty-first-century epic of high-frequency trading and even higher stakes, of crypto mania and insane amounts of money, of hubris and downfall. No one could tell it better.

Going Infinite by Michael Lewis, Allen Lane £25/Norton $27 272/288 pages.