Stealing The Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia By: David Morris

Author: David Morris

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 what happens when abstract theories gain real power — and who’s really paying the price?