Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

If you’ve read George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm, you don’t need a reference for this quote. It’s one of the most memorable out there. And the novella itself is the finest example of a circular narrative—the story starts with a dream of a better world, which inspires many to rebel successfully, and ends with the status quo anyway.

I also know some of you have already guessed what today’s edition is about. So yes, we’re going to be looking at the rise and fall of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which filed for bankruptcy last week. 

For something that’s causing as much talk as it is, FTX is an extremely young entity. But in the crypto space, it was big. Founded in 2019 and peaking in 2021, it had over one million users and was the world’s third-largest crypto exchange by volume. 

And so its collapse has been proportionately noisy. 

But the parallel I want to draw with Animal Farm this week isn’t really about FTX and what it meant for crypto. Instead, we’ll be looking at the socio-economic movement that enabled its rise, inspired its founder, and is currently going through its own moment of crisis. 

Because FTX’s story is also the story of Effective Altruism. 

And just like Animal Farm, it is coming a full circle.

FTX, EA, and the elusive dream of an equal world

So, what is Effective Altruism? 

We’ll get to that, but first, a note. I will be unpacking both FTX and EA’s stories using two long-form pieces. The first was published in late September by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, one of FTX’s biggest investors. 

‘Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex—And Maybe You Should Too’ was a long meandering profile of FTX’s founder, a.k.a. SBF. The article ran over 70 pages and 14,000 words(!!). Anyway, enough has been said about how incredibly badly that piece has aged, and it has now been removed from the website. 

The second was published by The Economist earlier this week: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?