Greatest-selling writer and journalist Michael Lewis, identified for writing “The Huge Quick,” “Moneyball” and “The Blind Facet,” supplied his perspective on the present monetary panorama and quickly altering world of cryptocurrency on stage as we speak at Bitcoin 2023 .
“After I first encountered the thought of having the ability to use blockchain know-how to separate monetary intermediaries, I assumed, ‘Thank God,'” Lewis stated of his realizations when he first researched Bitcoin. “There are a whole lot of pointless palms that contact cash when monetary transactions occurs. They’ve simply been baked into the system slightly onerous.”
Because the writer of “The Huge Quick,” Lewis outlined the basic inequities and short-term insurance policies of the fashionable monetary system that led to the monetary disaster of 2007 and 2008. In Bitcoin 2023, he acknowledged how Bitcoin is designed as an escape from the issues that brought about the disaster.
“In the event you return to Satoshi’s authentic paper, , line one, paragraph two, you remove the necessity for a trusted monetary middleman,” Lewis stated. “It’s clear that the very starting of the spirit of enterprise is mistrust of present monetary establishments, well-deserved mistrust, on the again of the monetary disaster.”
Throughout his books and information reporting, Lewis has been praised for his skill to condense difficult financial ideas into digestible prose and reveal systemic issues by the experiences of the people inside them. This ability set makes him uniquely certified to digest and interpret the rising cryptocurrency ecosystem, which skilled unprecedented turmoil final 12 months with the implosion of a variety of crypto initiatives, most notably FTX.
At Bitcoin 2023, he mentioned his subsequent guide and movie mission, which can deal with FTX, and described among the insights he gained from spending time with former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried earlier than and after the collapse.
“By no means in one million years did I believe I might be writing about Sam Bankman-Fried,” Lewis recalled, including that he was first requested to satisfy Bankman-Good friend by a pal on Wall Avenue and located himself intrigued by his distinctive persona. “There’s so clearly the potential for a superb film in it… so that you need to inform individuals it is on the market.”
Lewis was joined on stage by Arthur Hayes, co-founder of cryptocurrency alternate BitMEX. Hayes requested Lewis if he owned bitcoin, and Lewis stated it was “within the FTX chapter.”
Hayes and Lewis additionally touched on the present banking disaster, with Lewis sharing the view that issues have not actually modified within the institutional system since 2008 – that if something, it is worse for retail buyers.
“It appears inherently unstable proper now,” he stated. “You basically created a handful of too-big-to-fail establishments, and everybody is aware of their deposits are insured, so no different establishment can truly compete in that setting … It isn’t going to finish till there is a structural reform.”
