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 asks: what happens when abstract theories gain real power -- and who's really paying the price?