Netflix's 'The Altruists' Promises More Gloss Than Governance
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The upcoming SBF miniseries risks framing a massive accounting failure as a romantic tragedy of 'effective altruism.'
The crypto world is about to get another dramatized retelling of its most infamous collapse. As Engadget first reported, Netflix has released a trailer for *The Altruists*, an eight-episode miniseries debuting November 19 that chronicles the ascent and crash of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
The series features Anthony Boyle in the role of Sam Bankman-Fried and Julia Garner as Caroline Ellison. The trailer focuses heavily on the interpersonal dynamics between the two, specifically how they met and how Ellison's "all in" mentality allegedly shaped the operation of their business.
Opinion: This is where the red flags go up for me. There is a persistent trend in media to treat the FTX disaster as a quirky character study rather than what it actually was: a systemic failure of basic financial oversight. By centering the narrative on the romantic relationship between Bankman-Fried and Ellison, the show risks reducing a massive fraud to a personality clash or a tragic love story.
According to Engadget, the series will touch upon the couple's shared belief in "effective altruism," the idea that pursuing high-income careers is justified if the ultimate goal is donating that wealth to charity. While this makes for a compelling television arc, it does little to explain the mechanics of how a company with a daily trading volume of $10 billion could vanish so abruptly.
As Engadget notes, the reality was far less poetic. Bankman-Fried founded FTX alongside Gary Wang, with the exchange originally forming within Alameda Research—a trading firm co-founded by Bankman-Fried and Ellison. The collapse in 2022 was triggered by a nosedive in the price of the native token and a subsequent liquidity crisis as users rushed to withdraw funds. This chaos revealed that $8 billion in customer money had disappeared.
In court, Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried directed her to utilize FTX customer funds to finance Alameda Research, make political donations, and purchase property. The legal outcome was definitive: Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven counts of conspiracy and fraud in late 2023 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Engadget reports that a recent attempt by Bankman-Fried to appeal this conviction was denied by an appeals court.
If *The Altruists* spends more time on the "all in" mentality and the philosophy of altruism than it does on the missing $8 billion, it won't be a cautionary tale. It will just be another glossy piece of entertainment that treats corporate negligence as a personality trait.