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Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it; celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it; and TV ads hailed it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knew how it worked—but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named “digital asset”?
As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging feeling: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity—with a dash of FOMO—would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world’s new financial machinery. Faux’s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires.
Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to “ApeFest,” an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Pokémon knockoff mobile game touted by boosters as a cure for poverty. In an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring.
When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, Faux brings readers inside SBF’s penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest. Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Zeke Faux the accolade “our great poet of crime” from Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine, Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion.
As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging feeling: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity—with a dash of FOMO—would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world’s new financial machinery. Faux’s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires.
Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to “ApeFest,” an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Pokémon knockoff mobile game touted by boosters as a cure for poverty. In an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring.
When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, Faux brings readers inside SBF’s penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest. Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Zeke Faux the accolade “our great poet of crime” from Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine, Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published September 12, 2023
About the author
Zeke Faux
2 books99 followersZeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News. He’s a winner of the Gerald Loeb Award and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award and a National Magazine Award finalist. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 636 reviews
November 3, 2023
Eta: SBF convicted! Good news indeed.
I usually don't review books I read for work, but this one is very current and entertaining, so I will make an exception. (There may be more exceptions in the coming months as my work has somehow, at least temporarily, coincided with popular culture.)
Zeke Faux is currently an investigative reporter for Bloomberg, Making financial crime interesting to laymen is his beat, and he is very good at it. The in-your-face Ponzi scheme that was the NFT market, and the larger but less comprehensive Ponzi scheme that is the cryptocurrency market make for a seriously fun caper tale, though unfortunately one that funded brutal governments and human trafficking rings and left many gullible people destitute.
This book represents more than 5 years reporting on the strange underworld of crypto with its massive drug ingestion and sad parties filled with lonely people with bad hygiene and a propensity for believing in magical thinking even when they knew things were based on lies because they were the ones telling those lies. As it happens, Faux picked well in identifying two of the men he wished to focus on. Sam Bankman-Fried has become crypto's most infamous huckster. This brilliant, depressed narcissist is a perfect poster boy. Faux gives him more dimension than most of what I have read, and I was thankful for that. It added a lot to my understanding of how this unshowered, rumpled, matted man-child could also be a monumentally ballsy thief. I wish we could have learned more about his inner circle (who are all currently testifying against him), but we get a little very interesting info. Who knew such evil lurked in the hearts of math camp attendees? The other focus was on Giancarlo Devasini who somehow ended up a crypto billionaire and CEO of Bitfinex and Tether (the last man standing in crypto.) Devasini is the sketchiest person in the world as far as I can tell. (He quit being a plastic surgeon to open a business creating and selling counterfeit DVDs for Bitcoin on the dark web.) There are other major players, but these two get the most time and with good reason. Another place Faux goes is to talking about the celebrity huckstering of NFTs by people from Snoop Dog to Jimmy Fallon to Paris Hilton to Tom & Giselle. They brought the ruin of ugly monkey NFTs to the common man and made millions doing so. Shame on them. Speaking of which, a thing I really liked was that he included info about how many people invested in crypto, and especially in NFTs, for the "community" it brought them. That broke my heart. Wagering your last red cent to feel part of a group is a truly tragic brand of loneliness. That was something I had not thought about before and it made me think of all of this differently.
I like what he did here, and enjoyed every moment of it. I have read a lot about crypto over the past 5 years, and this is the most fun read by a mile. I have a couple beefs though. First, in trying to make the blockchain understandable he offers a TLDR definition of the way blockchain works that is simply wrong. I think it is misleading, and makes it easier to bring home his point that the crypto stuff was obviously a ruse. That isn't fair to the people who bought into to something far less seemingly ridiculous than what he frames here (though it was and is ridiculous even when explained correctly.) This is especially important because blockchain has many other applications, current and potential. Faux should not be slamming people for giving the public false info that hampers their ability to assess things and then give them false information that hampers their ability to assess things. The second issue is that Faux makes some really sad and ridiculous people look even stupider than they are for buying into this. Not the grifters at the head of this mess, but the people at the parties who scraped together 100k or whatever just to feel cool for 2 hours. They are sad, not funny.
Overall an informative and fun read. If you like Michael Lewis books you will like this. This is a 4+, but the fundamental misstep in explaining crypto won't let me give this a 5.
I usually don't review books I read for work, but this one is very current and entertaining, so I will make an exception. (There may be more exceptions in the coming months as my work has somehow, at least temporarily, coincided with popular culture.)
Zeke Faux is currently an investigative reporter for Bloomberg, Making financial crime interesting to laymen is his beat, and he is very good at it. The in-your-face Ponzi scheme that was the NFT market, and the larger but less comprehensive Ponzi scheme that is the cryptocurrency market make for a seriously fun caper tale, though unfortunately one that funded brutal governments and human trafficking rings and left many gullible people destitute.
This book represents more than 5 years reporting on the strange underworld of crypto with its massive drug ingestion and sad parties filled with lonely people with bad hygiene and a propensity for believing in magical thinking even when they knew things were based on lies because they were the ones telling those lies. As it happens, Faux picked well in identifying two of the men he wished to focus on. Sam Bankman-Fried has become crypto's most infamous huckster. This brilliant, depressed narcissist is a perfect poster boy. Faux gives him more dimension than most of what I have read, and I was thankful for that. It added a lot to my understanding of how this unshowered, rumpled, matted man-child could also be a monumentally ballsy thief. I wish we could have learned more about his inner circle (who are all currently testifying against him), but we get a little very interesting info. Who knew such evil lurked in the hearts of math camp attendees? The other focus was on Giancarlo Devasini who somehow ended up a crypto billionaire and CEO of Bitfinex and Tether (the last man standing in crypto.) Devasini is the sketchiest person in the world as far as I can tell. (He quit being a plastic surgeon to open a business creating and selling counterfeit DVDs for Bitcoin on the dark web.) There are other major players, but these two get the most time and with good reason. Another place Faux goes is to talking about the celebrity huckstering of NFTs by people from Snoop Dog to Jimmy Fallon to Paris Hilton to Tom & Giselle. They brought the ruin of ugly monkey NFTs to the common man and made millions doing so. Shame on them. Speaking of which, a thing I really liked was that he included info about how many people invested in crypto, and especially in NFTs, for the "community" it brought them. That broke my heart. Wagering your last red cent to feel part of a group is a truly tragic brand of loneliness. That was something I had not thought about before and it made me think of all of this differently.
I like what he did here, and enjoyed every moment of it. I have read a lot about crypto over the past 5 years, and this is the most fun read by a mile. I have a couple beefs though. First, in trying to make the blockchain understandable he offers a TLDR definition of the way blockchain works that is simply wrong. I think it is misleading, and makes it easier to bring home his point that the crypto stuff was obviously a ruse. That isn't fair to the people who bought into to something far less seemingly ridiculous than what he frames here (though it was and is ridiculous even when explained correctly.) This is especially important because blockchain has many other applications, current and potential. Faux should not be slamming people for giving the public false info that hampers their ability to assess things and then give them false information that hampers their ability to assess things. The second issue is that Faux makes some really sad and ridiculous people look even stupider than they are for buying into this. Not the grifters at the head of this mess, but the people at the parties who scraped together 100k or whatever just to feel cool for 2 hours. They are sad, not funny.
Overall an informative and fun read. If you like Michael Lewis books you will like this. This is a 4+, but the fundamental misstep in explaining crypto won't let me give this a 5.
September 24, 2023
What a great book. It takes a fundamentally incomprehensible phenomenon and turns it into a completely riveting, bleakly humorous, and appalling tale of greed and inanity. That description fails to mention outright pernicious evil doing in the shape of slave labor to perpetuate the scams fostered by crypto currencies. Crypto is truly an instance of no there there, yet that nothing gets spun into fortunes and frauds of gobsmacking dimensions.
Zeke Faux is a great writer. Throughout his globe-spanning reporting he shows his nerves of steel, his persistence, his eye for detail, and hangs on to his moral compass. Highly recommended.
Zeke Faux is a great writer. Throughout his globe-spanning reporting he shows his nerves of steel, his persistence, his eye for detail, and hangs on to his moral compass. Highly recommended.
December 12, 2023
Cryptocurrency is nothing more or less than a speculative investment market.
I've read a fair amount about cryptocurrency but don't claim to be an expert by any means. I found Number Go Up to be the best of what I've read not only for its timely investigative journalism but this was also very entertaining and engaging. This is the answer to "What should I read instead of Michael Lewis' Going Infinite" which seems to be a blunder for that author.
At any rate, the author here gives a nice personal account of his investigation into the bizarre emergence of Bitcoin and everything that has happened since. You'll get a brief history and tutorial of how crypto "works" with its origins in sanctimony and would-be economic revolution that has clearly degenerated into a speculative investment and a Ponzi scheme that has landed billionaires in jail and also the seedy underbelly where it is used in Cambodian slave enclaves to trick people all over the world. The author had several interviews and just hung out with Sam Brinkman-Fried, the now convicted FTX owner who will likely get a lengthy sentencing soon.
Crypto started as a revolution where its digital currency is open to all on the block chain, a kind of open access ledger to keep the system honest. It's weird how crypto acolytes don't seem to grasp the very fundamental reason we stopped doing the gold standard years ago: deflation. But I digress that point and move onto my next point: cryptocurrency is nothing more or less than a speculative investment. As long as the price went up for bitcoin or any of the other coins, then buying the currency was a very lucrative investment. This is why you saw crypto bros all over Tiktok and social media a few years ago talking about crypto like it was going to change the world: they simply wanted the price and demand to rise so they could cash in. And cash in they did and many made a LOT of money. Crypto’s value is in its mystique and cultural cache. This explains why the prices just keep rising with celebrity endorsements and why NFTs became so incredibly valuable.
Of course the whole thing is just a bubble.
And bubbles burst.
NFTs and crypt prices recently nose dived leaving many with total losses. And then at the same time you have Sam Bankman-Fried, the alleged crypto wunderkind, who was literally just funneling money from his crypto exchange FTX right into a hedge fund, Alameda Research, which he owned. He lost track of like 9 billion dollars. He says it was an accounting error. What the rest of the world knows is that this is just another way of saying you were running a Ponzi scheme. Either unwittingly or not, doesn’t really matter bro. It’s all just so stupid and obvious in retrospect and in prospect as well.
The author then digs deeper into what are called Pig Butchering scams where a fake romantic relationship is started (you’ve probably gotten the texts) which then leads their victims to invest in crypto. The author actually went to Cambodia and interviewed people who said they were literally kidnapped and imprisoned to run these scams behind locked doors. And then there was the point recently where the El Salvadorian president officially changed his country’s currency to crypto. Well, the author went there and guess what? Hardly anyone was accepting it. When he asked a Salvadoran woman what she thought of crypto she said something like “I don’t have any money at all, how does bitcoin help me?”
At its best crypto is a speculative investment, at its worst it's a quasi-religious utopian dream where its only real world impact has been to swindle people of their investment and help criminals launder their money. Sorry, I won’t be investing.
Great book, highly recommended.
I've read a fair amount about cryptocurrency but don't claim to be an expert by any means. I found Number Go Up to be the best of what I've read not only for its timely investigative journalism but this was also very entertaining and engaging. This is the answer to "What should I read instead of Michael Lewis' Going Infinite" which seems to be a blunder for that author.
At any rate, the author here gives a nice personal account of his investigation into the bizarre emergence of Bitcoin and everything that has happened since. You'll get a brief history and tutorial of how crypto "works" with its origins in sanctimony and would-be economic revolution that has clearly degenerated into a speculative investment and a Ponzi scheme that has landed billionaires in jail and also the seedy underbelly where it is used in Cambodian slave enclaves to trick people all over the world. The author had several interviews and just hung out with Sam Brinkman-Fried, the now convicted FTX owner who will likely get a lengthy sentencing soon.
Crypto started as a revolution where its digital currency is open to all on the block chain, a kind of open access ledger to keep the system honest. It's weird how crypto acolytes don't seem to grasp the very fundamental reason we stopped doing the gold standard years ago: deflation. But I digress that point and move onto my next point: cryptocurrency is nothing more or less than a speculative investment. As long as the price went up for bitcoin or any of the other coins, then buying the currency was a very lucrative investment. This is why you saw crypto bros all over Tiktok and social media a few years ago talking about crypto like it was going to change the world: they simply wanted the price and demand to rise so they could cash in. And cash in they did and many made a LOT of money. Crypto’s value is in its mystique and cultural cache. This explains why the prices just keep rising with celebrity endorsements and why NFTs became so incredibly valuable.
Of course the whole thing is just a bubble.
And bubbles burst.
NFTs and crypt prices recently nose dived leaving many with total losses. And then at the same time you have Sam Bankman-Fried, the alleged crypto wunderkind, who was literally just funneling money from his crypto exchange FTX right into a hedge fund, Alameda Research, which he owned. He lost track of like 9 billion dollars. He says it was an accounting error. What the rest of the world knows is that this is just another way of saying you were running a Ponzi scheme. Either unwittingly or not, doesn’t really matter bro. It’s all just so stupid and obvious in retrospect and in prospect as well.
The author then digs deeper into what are called Pig Butchering scams where a fake romantic relationship is started (you’ve probably gotten the texts) which then leads their victims to invest in crypto. The author actually went to Cambodia and interviewed people who said they were literally kidnapped and imprisoned to run these scams behind locked doors. And then there was the point recently where the El Salvadorian president officially changed his country’s currency to crypto. Well, the author went there and guess what? Hardly anyone was accepting it. When he asked a Salvadoran woman what she thought of crypto she said something like “I don’t have any money at all, how does bitcoin help me?”
At its best crypto is a speculative investment, at its worst it's a quasi-religious utopian dream where its only real world impact has been to swindle people of their investment and help criminals launder their money. Sorry, I won’t be investing.
Great book, highly recommended.
January 28, 2024
I uhhhhh. Yeah. That’s how it happened. Can confirm.
I’ve been tangential to crypto since the Silk Road days. Back when you used to be able to buy sheets of acid with bitcoin at $400 a coin, shipped to you in a cheap teapot wrapped in saran wrap (not that I would ever do that, but that’s how I would imagine it would work, hypothetically). And it’s not because I was deeply into crypto on an ideological level, it’s just that I kind of grew up on the internet and I’ve always been curious about how things like this work.
So fast forward several cycles, when Covid hit, I had gone back to school and was beyond frustrated with my CS engineering program, so I taught myself some Solidity and got deep into it. Winning a hackathon and using subsequent grant money to work on a small protocol. Eventually folding things up because I realized use cases were too far away to be practical (and because I ran out of grant money).
I’ve met a few of these guys, and this book seems to be pretty spot on for a lot of my observations of the DeFi space. I remember working away at a hacker house during Consensus and talking to the guy next to me about who was running close to $50m a day in transaction volume through his MEV strategies. I found most people to be reasonable, and was always curious about some of the largest names, which this book has demystified some.
So this is a good overview of the top line people and projects around the most recent cycle. I think, with a primary focus on DeFi and projects that went boom rather than say L1s or other projects that are still chugging along. I think the book does a good job telling that story but skims over the other parts. The NFT craze was special sort of absurd, and while there's a chapter or two, SO much was missed. I found myself pretty deep in the Solana ecosystem during that time so got to see a lot of it firsthand. 5 years ago we used to joke about "the uber for X" as a business model, I remember being at a Solana hackathon and hearing every other person pitch their idea as "NFT's for X." I think my favorite bad idea was using blockchain as a reward system for drinking energy drinks. Like bro, thats just pepsi points remade. DAO's aren't mentioned, maybe because their time hasn't quite come yet. Maybe because it's mostly a bad idea, I think it's the latter, we will see.
It's weird being in a bubble while it's happening, I'd like to think I didn't buy the hype as much as others, but there definitely was a "oh god those guys raised how much, they haven't shipped anything?!" attitude I saw from many engineer types that I found myself commonly thinking. You go to a meetup or conference and kind of instantly tell if people were larping (pretending to do something) or actually building things. Mostly by how much eye contact they made.
Mentally, I sort of split people into builders, finance people, artists, and dreamers. Dreamers being a polite way of categorizing the people who would tell you all about their idea to "reinvent" some part of the world, but with them in charge of it and they would magnanimously give you a small percent of the bounty if only you would build the whole damn thing for them. Artists being the designers and NFT people, who usually thew the best parties. Builders being the guys who could tell you about how they were bridging security protocols between disparate L1's and usually had their own personal projects called something like MEV-geth-FRV38 that just pushed $800 million in transactions through while collecting $3,000,000 in transaction fees.
And lastly the finance bros. The core of this book. Most weren't very technical. Most I met would look at you in a sort of "how much are your kidneys worth" way. I think the space attracted a lot of people who were online poker players years ago, who built the minimum necessary to extract value from the system. Theye a special type of smart, not in the raw horsepower way like some of the programmers I met, but in a "this is how to work the system" way. A lot of fanfare has been made about how sociopathy is prevalent in CEO's and such, and I think that probably had non-negligible effects here, combined with the depersonalization of the systems at play. People aren't personal when they're just wallets. And we see the effects chronicled well in this book.
Im curious to see how the space evolves because I don't think it's going anywhere. The technology is just that, technology. Having been in the weeds, I can tell you it's just a really mathematical way to try and decentralize systems. This book (again accurately IMO) points out that most of the "decentralized systems" were decentralized ponzi schemes, where the primary purpose was to extract transaction fees while everyone piled in, and to not be left holding the bag when they all inevitably bailed out. So much money piled in in such a short time, that people spent most of their energy just copying whatever was popular instead of working on useful shit.
So this is sort of the Liars Poker to me of the most recent cycle. An easy read, not very technical, with a sort of quest to find the Tether people at the center of a lot of interesting stories and a reasonable synthesis of the ride. Web3 is dead, long live whatever nonsense people think up next.
I’ve been tangential to crypto since the Silk Road days. Back when you used to be able to buy sheets of acid with bitcoin at $400 a coin, shipped to you in a cheap teapot wrapped in saran wrap (not that I would ever do that, but that’s how I would imagine it would work, hypothetically). And it’s not because I was deeply into crypto on an ideological level, it’s just that I kind of grew up on the internet and I’ve always been curious about how things like this work.
So fast forward several cycles, when Covid hit, I had gone back to school and was beyond frustrated with my CS engineering program, so I taught myself some Solidity and got deep into it. Winning a hackathon and using subsequent grant money to work on a small protocol. Eventually folding things up because I realized use cases were too far away to be practical (and because I ran out of grant money).
I’ve met a few of these guys, and this book seems to be pretty spot on for a lot of my observations of the DeFi space. I remember working away at a hacker house during Consensus and talking to the guy next to me about who was running close to $50m a day in transaction volume through his MEV strategies. I found most people to be reasonable, and was always curious about some of the largest names, which this book has demystified some.
So this is a good overview of the top line people and projects around the most recent cycle. I think, with a primary focus on DeFi and projects that went boom rather than say L1s or other projects that are still chugging along. I think the book does a good job telling that story but skims over the other parts. The NFT craze was special sort of absurd, and while there's a chapter or two, SO much was missed. I found myself pretty deep in the Solana ecosystem during that time so got to see a lot of it firsthand. 5 years ago we used to joke about "the uber for X" as a business model, I remember being at a Solana hackathon and hearing every other person pitch their idea as "NFT's for X." I think my favorite bad idea was using blockchain as a reward system for drinking energy drinks. Like bro, thats just pepsi points remade. DAO's aren't mentioned, maybe because their time hasn't quite come yet. Maybe because it's mostly a bad idea, I think it's the latter, we will see.
It's weird being in a bubble while it's happening, I'd like to think I didn't buy the hype as much as others, but there definitely was a "oh god those guys raised how much, they haven't shipped anything?!" attitude I saw from many engineer types that I found myself commonly thinking. You go to a meetup or conference and kind of instantly tell if people were larping (pretending to do something) or actually building things. Mostly by how much eye contact they made.
Mentally, I sort of split people into builders, finance people, artists, and dreamers. Dreamers being a polite way of categorizing the people who would tell you all about their idea to "reinvent" some part of the world, but with them in charge of it and they would magnanimously give you a small percent of the bounty if only you would build the whole damn thing for them. Artists being the designers and NFT people, who usually thew the best parties. Builders being the guys who could tell you about how they were bridging security protocols between disparate L1's and usually had their own personal projects called something like MEV-geth-FRV38 that just pushed $800 million in transactions through while collecting $3,000,000 in transaction fees.
And lastly the finance bros. The core of this book. Most weren't very technical. Most I met would look at you in a sort of "how much are your kidneys worth" way. I think the space attracted a lot of people who were online poker players years ago, who built the minimum necessary to extract value from the system. Theye a special type of smart, not in the raw horsepower way like some of the programmers I met, but in a "this is how to work the system" way. A lot of fanfare has been made about how sociopathy is prevalent in CEO's and such, and I think that probably had non-negligible effects here, combined with the depersonalization of the systems at play. People aren't personal when they're just wallets. And we see the effects chronicled well in this book.
Im curious to see how the space evolves because I don't think it's going anywhere. The technology is just that, technology. Having been in the weeds, I can tell you it's just a really mathematical way to try and decentralize systems. This book (again accurately IMO) points out that most of the "decentralized systems" were decentralized ponzi schemes, where the primary purpose was to extract transaction fees while everyone piled in, and to not be left holding the bag when they all inevitably bailed out. So much money piled in in such a short time, that people spent most of their energy just copying whatever was popular instead of working on useful shit.
So this is sort of the Liars Poker to me of the most recent cycle. An easy read, not very technical, with a sort of quest to find the Tether people at the center of a lot of interesting stories and a reasonable synthesis of the ride. Web3 is dead, long live whatever nonsense people think up next.
November 21, 2023
Habe bisher etwa 30% gelesen und finde es inhaltlich richtig spannend. Die Anfänge der Kryptowährungen (die vermutlich noch aufrichtig waren in ihrem Interesse ein dezentrales Finanzsystem zu kreieren) und die darauffolgende Entwicklung zu Ponzi Schemes und Betrug werden super journalistisch aufgearbeitet.
Gut geschrieben :)
Gut geschrieben :)
November 23, 2023
The book we all wanted Michael Lewis's book to be.
November 27, 2023
If you read this book looking to learn about crypto, have fun staying ignorant.
I very rarely give 1 star to a book. I only do when not only the book is poorly written but also when I have reason to suspect dishonesty from the author.
There so many things that are wrong about this book that I don't know where to start...
(1) a US-centric ego-centric gringo not getting how crypto actually helps billions of people bypass shitty monetary policy, bank requirements and capital controls in developing countries to enable saving and investing.
(2) apparently "studied crypto" for many years and didn't bother to understand the technical uniqueness of blockchains (calls them "basically a spreadsheet").
(3) stays at the salient level (loud personalities, scams, etc) and never bothers to dig deeper.
(4) calls USDT "Tethers" 🤦 and is madly obsessed with proving it insolvent (which he doesn't).
(5) completely backstabs almost everyone he talks to.
(6) is very confidently wrong about so many things that it sounds like the book was written by a hallucinating ChatGPT.
I came to this book trying to find a well written narrative about the FTX debacle, and I didn't even get that. Remind me never to read another book written by a journalist ಠ_ಠ
I very rarely give 1 star to a book. I only do when not only the book is poorly written but also when I have reason to suspect dishonesty from the author.
There so many things that are wrong about this book that I don't know where to start...
(1) a US-centric ego-centric gringo not getting how crypto actually helps billions of people bypass shitty monetary policy, bank requirements and capital controls in developing countries to enable saving and investing.
(2) apparently "studied crypto" for many years and didn't bother to understand the technical uniqueness of blockchains (calls them "basically a spreadsheet").
(3) stays at the salient level (loud personalities, scams, etc) and never bothers to dig deeper.
(4) calls USDT "Tethers" 🤦 and is madly obsessed with proving it insolvent (which he doesn't).
(5) completely backstabs almost everyone he talks to.
(6) is very confidently wrong about so many things that it sounds like the book was written by a hallucinating ChatGPT.
I came to this book trying to find a well written narrative about the FTX debacle, and I didn't even get that. Remind me never to read another book written by a journalist ಠ_ಠ
October 23, 2023
It's odd that the book is this good, considering that it's the story of a failure. Faux really wants to find something on Tether, the stablecoin company, and while he ultimately uncovers a damning scheme, they are practically the only company that survives the 2022 crypto crash intact. Yet it's the journey, not the destination, and the insane cast of characters, essential nothingness of the crypto scheme, and real damage left in its wake is more than enough to carry the story, with a healthy dose of SBF's dissembling.
October 21, 2023
If you’re already aware of cryptocurrencies being not much more than get-rich-quick schemes and the go-to currencies for criminals, there’s not much for you in this book other than the author talking about himself for 300 pages. Kudos to him for his dogged worldwide reporting, but not much comes of it. Even when he has the opportunity to tell interesting stories of effected victims (eg he meets farmers in El Salvador whose land is being taken to build Bitcoin City), he doesn’t do so and continues to make the story about himself (eg the only thing we learn about the aforementioned farmers is that he met them).
Read
March 11, 2024Investigative reporter Zeke Faux aims to connect the dots and provide an explanatory framework that shows how several bizarre and outlandish phenomena arising in the cryptocurrency landscape, such as the bankruptcy and fraud exposes of several coin types and cryptocurrency trade exchanges, the frat festivals promoting exclusivity based on ownership of exorbitantly priced digital art of grotesquely drawn apes, pay-to-play farms arising over mobile games, and prison-like labor of indentured workers lured from countries like Vietnam and Thailand to scam people for crypto, all make sense as one interconnected economic activity.
December 28, 2023
รีวิวสั้นจากนักอ่านคนหนึ่งบน Goodreads สรุปหนังสือ Number Go Up ได้โดนใจมาก คือ “หนังสือที่เราทุกคนอยากให้เล่มของ Michael Lewis เป็น” เพราะเล่ม Going Infinite ของ Michael Lewis นักเขียนในดวงใจ เขียนถึงเรื่องเดียวกันคือวงการคริปโต แต่ออกมาน่าผิดหวังอย่างยิ่งเพราะ Lewis กลายร่างเป็นแฟนบอยและกองเชียร์ของ Sam Bankman-Fried ผู้ก่อตั้งกระดานเทรดคริปโต FTX ซึ่งวันนี้ (รวมถึงก่อนที่ Lewis จะเขียนหนังสือเสร็จ) มีหลักฐานชัดเจนว่าเป็น “อาชญากร” ที่โกงนักลงทุนในหลากหลายรูปแบบ ตั้งแต่ ฟอกเงิน หลอกลวง ฉ้อโกง ฯลฯ (แต่ยังเคยพูดอย่างหน้าตายว่า “ความผิดพลาดทางบัญชี” ทำให้เขาไม่รู้ว่าเงินหลายพันล้านเหรียญหายไปไหน)
Number Go Up เขียนโดย Zeke Faux นักข่าวสืบสวนสอบสวนมือฉมังประจำ Bloomberg ที่เกาะติดวงการคริปโตมานานหลายปี เล่มนี้นอกจากจะรวบรวม��รื่องราวของ “ฟองสบู่” ในวงการ รวมถึงกลเม็ดการหลอกล่อเหยื่อของบรรดาอาชญากรทั้งหลายที่ใช้คริปโตเป็นเครื่องมือต้มตุ๋นแล้ว ยังเป็นตัวอย่างของ “ข่าวเจาะ” ชั้นดีที่เรามีน้อยลงเรื่อย ๆ ในสังคมไทย ใครที่ไม่รู้เรื่องคริปโตมาก่อนก็อ่านเล่มนี้ได้ เพราะผู้เขียนอธิบาย “วิธีทำงาน” และ “ประวัติศาสตร์” ของวงการคริปโตตั้งแต่บิทคอย์นอย่างเข้าใจง่าย เนื้อหาที่ชอบที่สุดในหนังสือคือช่วงที่เขาเดินทางไปทำข่าวเจาะในเอลซัลวาดอร์ ประเทศแรกในโลกที่ประกาศรับบิทคอย์นเป็นเงินตราที่ถูกต้องตามกฎหมาย และการเดินทางไปสัมภาษณ์เหยื่อที่หนีตายจาก “ค่ายแรงงานทาสคอลเซ็นเตอร์” ในกัมพูชา ที่เจ้าของใช้คริปโตเป็นช่องทางฟอกเงิน
ทุกบทเล่าอย่างสนุกสนานด้วยสำนวนแสบสันต์วางไม่ลง ใครที่สนใจ “ด้านมืด” ของคริปโต อยากรู้ทันผู้ประกอบการแย่ ๆ ที่ขายฝันว่าคริปโตจะสร้างยูโทเปียแต่จ้องจะหาทางต้มตุ๋นตลอดเวลา เล่มนี้เล่มเดียวก็ “เอาอยู่” มาก ส่วนตัวนอกจากจะอยากให้ทุกคนอ่านแล้ว อยากให้นักข่าวสายธุรกิจในไทยได้อ่านด้วย เพื่อไปพูดคุยกันว่าวงการสื่อในไทยจะทำ “ข่าวเจาะ” ในโลกธุรกิจเจ๋ง ๆ แบบนี้ได้อย่างไร ในยุคที่สื่อตกอยู่ใต้อิทธิพลของสปอนเซอร์ไปเกือบหมดแล้ว :>
Number Go Up เขียนโดย Zeke Faux นักข่าวสืบสวนสอบสวนมือฉมังประจำ Bloomberg ที่เกาะติดวงการคริปโตมานานหลายปี เล่มนี้นอกจากจะรวบรวม��รื่องราวของ “ฟองสบู่” ในวงการ รวมถึงกลเม็ดการหลอกล่อเหยื่อของบรรดาอาชญากรทั้งหลายที่ใช้คริปโตเป็นเครื่องมือต้มตุ๋นแล้ว ยังเป็นตัวอย่างของ “ข่าวเจาะ” ชั้นดีที่เรามีน้อยลงเรื่อย ๆ ในสังคมไทย ใครที่ไม่รู้เรื่องคริปโตมาก่อนก็อ่านเล่มนี้ได้ เพราะผู้เขียนอธิบาย “วิธีทำงาน” และ “ประวัติศาสตร์” ของวงการคริปโตตั้งแต่บิทคอย์นอย่างเข้าใจง่าย เนื้อหาที่ชอบที่สุดในหนังสือคือช่วงที่เขาเดินทางไปทำข่าวเจาะในเอลซัลวาดอร์ ประเทศแรกในโลกที่ประกาศรับบิทคอย์นเป็นเงินตราที่ถูกต้องตามกฎหมาย และการเดินทางไปสัมภาษณ์เหยื่อที่หนีตายจาก “ค่ายแรงงานทาสคอลเซ็นเตอร์” ในกัมพูชา ที่เจ้าของใช้คริปโตเป็นช่องทางฟอกเงิน
ทุกบทเล่าอย่างสนุกสนานด้วยสำนวนแสบสันต์วางไม่ลง ใครที่สนใจ “ด้านมืด” ของคริปโต อยากรู้ทันผู้ประกอบการแย่ ๆ ที่ขายฝันว่าคริปโตจะสร้างยูโทเปียแต่จ้องจะหาทางต้มตุ๋นตลอดเวลา เล่มนี้เล่มเดียวก็ “เอาอยู่” มาก ส่วนตัวนอกจากจะอยากให้ทุกคนอ่านแล้ว อยากให้นักข่าวสายธุรกิจในไทยได้อ่านด้วย เพื่อไปพูดคุยกันว่าวงการสื่อในไทยจะทำ “ข่าวเจาะ” ในโลกธุรกิจเจ๋ง ๆ แบบนี้ได้อย่างไร ในยุคที่สื่อตกอยู่ใต้อิทธิพลของสปอนเซอร์ไปเกือบหมดแล้ว :>
October 14, 2023
If you want the insight into most crypto being just a Ponzi scheme, look no further. The book explains crypto, it’s clever marketing and how most of it ultimately failed. I still remember from the pandemic years how people would waste small fortunes on crypto art. Of course they are worthless now. If nothing else, that showed that zero interest rates leads to too much risk being taken in the market.
November 3, 2023
It read like the musings of a really jealous teenager. There wasn’t a cohesive or compelling narrative aside from “I hate crypto and so should you!” All currency gets used for bad things.
Read
September 26, 2023I’m increasingly unsympathetic to Austrian economics, but I think Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) is an insightful framework for thinking about business cycles, in particular how accommodative monetary policy leads to capital misallocations and speculative frenzies. The crypto craze is a textbook example of this. I'm going to quote a section from a paper I wrote that discussed ABCT.
ABCT maintains that central banks cause business cycles by reducing interest rates below their natural level. According to French (2009), the sequence of events in the business cycle usually occurs in the following manner:
1. An economic shock occurs. The shock can be exogenous (war, pandemic) or endogenous (debt crisis, bank failure). The central bank responds to the shock by precipitously cutting interest rates.
2. As the cost of funds falls, loan demand rises and eventuates in a credit boom.
3. The credit boom facilitates numerous economic distortions:
a) It shortens consumers' time preference, artificially stimulating consumer demand, that is, consumer demand is elevated relative to demand derivative of a natural interest rate;
b) It leads to capital misallocations, e.g., (i) entrepreneurs make capital expenditures premised on elevated demand and (ii) are generally less disciplined and more speculative in their investments, given the low cost of funds;
c) It leads to consumer price inflation and asset price bubbles.
4. When the central bank raises interest rates, the credit expansion begins to contract: consumer demand falls, firms liquidate their malinvestments, inflation turns to deflation, and asset bubbles burst.
There are myriad applications for the ABCT for financial analysts and for general business decisions. Two are described here. First, it provides the analysts with a macro-framework for understanding the cyclicality of economic phenomena. The recent boom and bust is comprehended perfectly in the ABCT framework: Covid shock to the economy → Powell expands Fed balance sheet to $9 trillion → VCs lavish funds on crypto and NFTs → Nasdaq increases ≈ 130% → CPI reaches 9% → Fed begins rate hike campaign → Nasdaq falls ≈ 35% → tech companies cut their workforce → FTX and SVB fail. An understanding of the archetypal business cycle provides the analyst with a probable sequence of events and an admonishment that contractions follow expansions—that booms invariably go bust—which is contrary to the bullish sentiment, the speculative exuberance, that prevails during booms.
Second, ABCT is applicable to business executives, too, as it cautions against over-expanding business operations during a monetarily induced boom. The elevated demand is predicated on loose monetary conditions; it does not result from savings, and thus it is not sustainable. The recent layoffs in the tech sector suggest that management’s capital allocation decisions (R&D, M&As, PPE, share buybacks, labor force expansion, etc.) were misguided—they were malinvestments. And since many of the capital expenditures are non-recoverable, or difficult to liquidate, management elects to liquidate labor. All of this is to say, capital allocation decisions, being integral to business success and value creation, should be made with an awareness of the relationship between monetary conditions and the cyclicality of economic phenomena. The ABCT provides a framework for understanding this relationship and making prudent capital allocation decisions.
ABCT compliments the work of behavioral economists, such as Shiller (2015), who stress that humans are prone to cognitive biases and irrational economic behavior. The notion that human behavior is not rational is presented as a challenge to neoclassical economics, which postulates that humans are rational, utility-maximizing agents. ABCT complements the work of Shiller in two respects. First, ABCT explains why irrational financial behavior is clustered and not evenly distributed across time, i.e., it is a response to monetary inflation. [1] Second, ABCT provides Shiller’s work with a precipitating cause of speculative frenzies, namely, monetary inflation. Shiller argues that much irrational behavior is memetic and amplified by feedback loops and narrative reinforcement, but he lacks a fundamental cause. ABTC maintains that speculative frenzies are fundamentally caused by interest rate policy and credit expansion. Thus, ABCT explains the precipitating cause of speculative frenzies, and Shiller explains the mechanism that amplifies investor exuberance.
[1] This is because, by cutting rates, the Fed brings the future forward: the difference between a dollar today vs a dollar 10 years later is negligible when interest rates are held at zero. This fact is reflected in stock valuations, which discount future cash flows to derive their present value. Thus, when interest rates fall, the value of securities rise. And technology companies are especially impacted in this regard, as they tend to be growth companies with profits to be realized years in the future. Thus, they are prone to asset price inflation.
ABCT maintains that central banks cause business cycles by reducing interest rates below their natural level. According to French (2009), the sequence of events in the business cycle usually occurs in the following manner:
1. An economic shock occurs. The shock can be exogenous (war, pandemic) or endogenous (debt crisis, bank failure). The central bank responds to the shock by precipitously cutting interest rates.
2. As the cost of funds falls, loan demand rises and eventuates in a credit boom.
3. The credit boom facilitates numerous economic distortions:
a) It shortens consumers' time preference, artificially stimulating consumer demand, that is, consumer demand is elevated relative to demand derivative of a natural interest rate;
b) It leads to capital misallocations, e.g., (i) entrepreneurs make capital expenditures premised on elevated demand and (ii) are generally less disciplined and more speculative in their investments, given the low cost of funds;
c) It leads to consumer price inflation and asset price bubbles.
4. When the central bank raises interest rates, the credit expansion begins to contract: consumer demand falls, firms liquidate their malinvestments, inflation turns to deflation, and asset bubbles burst.
There are myriad applications for the ABCT for financial analysts and for general business decisions. Two are described here. First, it provides the analysts with a macro-framework for understanding the cyclicality of economic phenomena. The recent boom and bust is comprehended perfectly in the ABCT framework: Covid shock to the economy → Powell expands Fed balance sheet to $9 trillion → VCs lavish funds on crypto and NFTs → Nasdaq increases ≈ 130% → CPI reaches 9% → Fed begins rate hike campaign → Nasdaq falls ≈ 35% → tech companies cut their workforce → FTX and SVB fail. An understanding of the archetypal business cycle provides the analyst with a probable sequence of events and an admonishment that contractions follow expansions—that booms invariably go bust—which is contrary to the bullish sentiment, the speculative exuberance, that prevails during booms.
Second, ABCT is applicable to business executives, too, as it cautions against over-expanding business operations during a monetarily induced boom. The elevated demand is predicated on loose monetary conditions; it does not result from savings, and thus it is not sustainable. The recent layoffs in the tech sector suggest that management’s capital allocation decisions (R&D, M&As, PPE, share buybacks, labor force expansion, etc.) were misguided—they were malinvestments. And since many of the capital expenditures are non-recoverable, or difficult to liquidate, management elects to liquidate labor. All of this is to say, capital allocation decisions, being integral to business success and value creation, should be made with an awareness of the relationship between monetary conditions and the cyclicality of economic phenomena. The ABCT provides a framework for understanding this relationship and making prudent capital allocation decisions.
ABCT compliments the work of behavioral economists, such as Shiller (2015), who stress that humans are prone to cognitive biases and irrational economic behavior. The notion that human behavior is not rational is presented as a challenge to neoclassical economics, which postulates that humans are rational, utility-maximizing agents. ABCT complements the work of Shiller in two respects. First, ABCT explains why irrational financial behavior is clustered and not evenly distributed across time, i.e., it is a response to monetary inflation. [1] Second, ABCT provides Shiller’s work with a precipitating cause of speculative frenzies, namely, monetary inflation. Shiller argues that much irrational behavior is memetic and amplified by feedback loops and narrative reinforcement, but he lacks a fundamental cause. ABTC maintains that speculative frenzies are fundamentally caused by interest rate policy and credit expansion. Thus, ABCT explains the precipitating cause of speculative frenzies, and Shiller explains the mechanism that amplifies investor exuberance.
[1] This is because, by cutting rates, the Fed brings the future forward: the difference between a dollar today vs a dollar 10 years later is negligible when interest rates are held at zero. This fact is reflected in stock valuations, which discount future cash flows to derive their present value. Thus, when interest rates fall, the value of securities rise. And technology companies are especially impacted in this regard, as they tend to be growth companies with profits to be realized years in the future. Thus, they are prone to asset price inflation.
October 12, 2023
Number Go Up : Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall (2023) by Zeke Faux is a very interesting and often amusing view into the crypto world and the 2022 crypto bubble burst. Faux is a reporter for Bloomberg.
The book features the owner of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried, Razzlekhan, the creator of Inspector Gadget Jean Chalopin, the former surgeon Giancarlo Devasini and a cast of other crypto celebrities. NFTs and in particular the Bored Ape NFT also appear. Faux tracks crypto and its uses around the world. He also goes into the abuses of crypto and how it’s used for cyber crime and how the people who fish for marks are abused.
It’s a remarkable story. The book has so many characters and stories it does get a little overwhelming at times, but the overall picture it gives of global crypto and its uses is second to none.
Number Go Up is very much worth a read. It makes an excellent book to pair with Going Infinite by Michael Lewis.
The book features the owner of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried, Razzlekhan, the creator of Inspector Gadget Jean Chalopin, the former surgeon Giancarlo Devasini and a cast of other crypto celebrities. NFTs and in particular the Bored Ape NFT also appear. Faux tracks crypto and its uses around the world. He also goes into the abuses of crypto and how it’s used for cyber crime and how the people who fish for marks are abused.
It’s a remarkable story. The book has so many characters and stories it does get a little overwhelming at times, but the overall picture it gives of global crypto and its uses is second to none.
Number Go Up is very much worth a read. It makes an excellent book to pair with Going Infinite by Michael Lewis.
February 7, 2024
For the panic of 1819 girlies
Eight likes and I’ll ask Zeke to get coffee with me while wearing one of my Celsius HODL T-shirts
Eight likes and I’ll ask Zeke to get coffee with me while wearing one of my Celsius HODL T-shirts
March 25, 2024
Liked this a lot; was very insightful! The only thing that surprised me was Faux's suggestion that it's crazy to put faith in 'the guy who produced Inspector Gadget'. I remember Inspector Gadget being VERY successful, so I could totally imagine how people would not perceive Jean Chalopin's history as a red flag? I know I would have given him my money. (And then it would have vanished, but hey..)
September 2, 2023
This was an interesting, informative , and well written time about crypto, and SBF. While I’ve kept up with crypt news and been a long time skeptic, there was still a lot of new to me information in this book.
Thanks for the giveaway copy!
Thanks for the giveaway copy!
December 15, 2023
[int. a cafe]
PSST -- wanna get rich? Come closer. Listen up - this review is gonna be worth a lot of money. So I'm going to sell it to you. Think of it as an investment. I mean, not in the review, you're not going to own that, that would be silly because I wrote it. But what I AM going to sell you is a custom hyperlink TO this review, and that's basically the same thing right? And sure, maybe I'm going to sell a different hyperlink to somebody else that will also point back to this review, and inexplicably that will be worth more because we'll be able to track who owns each hyperlink, and the one I sold you is fresh whereas this other one was briefly sold to John Oliver before he realized this whole concept was silly and resold it. But that's not important, the important thing is that you own your own link to my review that nobody else can use! I mean, as long as you don't share that link with anybody, because if anyone else ever uses it then they become the owner of it and there's nothing you can do to get it back. This isn't a stock exchange or a bank or any of those silly "regulated" things. I mean, if you put your money in a bank instead, it's like...100x less likely to get stolen than if you buy this link to my review, and frankly that sounds boring. What's life like without a little zest, right?
I've sold you on the idea? Great! Wait, put your wallet away, money is a tool of The Man, we don't deal in that here. What you'll want to do is go across the street over there to that market that sells Ryancoin, which is exactly like money because it's pegged to the dollar, except that nobody can track who uses it or anything. It's really taken off in southeast Asia, Russia, the dark web...What? No, not because criminals engaging in scams, human trafficking, and violent shakedowns like untraceable money. It's a coincidence! Anyways so just go over there and get some Ryancoin and come back. But wait like...five minutes, I think the owner's out to lunch.
[you wait five minutes and walk over to the market, where I am waiting in a hat and fake beard]
Why yes, hello! I hear you'd like to buy Ryancoin with your real actual money, even though it's a thing I basically made up. That's great! So first, download this app onto your phone, jump through about fifty very sketchy website hurdles, and after about ten minutes of monkeying around, you have 500 Ryancoin! Wowee! Remember, this is pegged to the dollar so you can change this back into real money any time. I am definitely not printing money in the back, how dare you. That's a photocopier, can't you tell the difference?
[int. cafe]
Great! so what you do is now you hand me your phone, we'll go through another song and dance, and...hey, you have a link to the review now. But all of the people who've read the review think it's garbage, so apparently links to it are now worthless [except for that one that John Oliver briefly touched for some reason]. I don't know, I guess you might be able to sell it for like, 50 Ryancoin to that desperate mook out on the street. Definitely nobody's gonna pay you real money for it.
(...)
Oh hey, 50 Ryancoin! That's great! I'm glad you were able to get something valuable back in exchange for the link to this review. Huh? You want to change it back into real money because you're getting the distinct sense that this is all a ridiculous scam and you're upset that you lost all of your fake money betting the value of a link to this review would go up and instead it imploded? I don't understand your lack of faith -- the guy across the street bought me this Ferrari, which is a real tangible asset worth a bunch of money, and he wouldn't have been able to do that if this were a bunch of hooey, would he? ...You're still certain you want out? I mean, that's unfortunate, but that guy across the street can probably change it back for you.
[you go back across the street. After waiting several minutes, the man who looks a lot like me in a hat and fake beard comes rushing in from the back, slightly out of breath]
What? You want to change Ryancoin back into real dollars? You know, I'd love to help you out, but there's been a run on our reserves. You're saying that shouldn't matter because every Ryancoin was pegged to the dollar and guaranteed? I mean I did say that but not in like, a legally binding sense. What do you think this is, a bank? A stock exchange? It's not federally regulated, I thought I -- um, I mean, that guy in the cafe across the street, not me -- explained to you earlier why that's such a great thing. Don't you feel great? Anyway, the short version is I'm all out of actual money, so I can't actually trade back your real money at this exact moment in time. But if you just have a little patience, I'm sure more people will buy Ryancoin eventually, and then those people will think Ryancoin has value, so yours will also have value again, and then maybe you can get your money back. I dunno, I hope it works out for you.
(speeds off in a Ferrari, which is strange, because you could've sworn it was the guy in the cafe selling review links who owned the Ferrari, not the owner of the Ryancoin exchange. Oh well, you'll figure it out someday)
PSST -- wanna get rich? Come closer. Listen up - this review is gonna be worth a lot of money. So I'm going to sell it to you. Think of it as an investment. I mean, not in the review, you're not going to own that, that would be silly because I wrote it. But what I AM going to sell you is a custom hyperlink TO this review, and that's basically the same thing right? And sure, maybe I'm going to sell a different hyperlink to somebody else that will also point back to this review, and inexplicably that will be worth more because we'll be able to track who owns each hyperlink, and the one I sold you is fresh whereas this other one was briefly sold to John Oliver before he realized this whole concept was silly and resold it. But that's not important, the important thing is that you own your own link to my review that nobody else can use! I mean, as long as you don't share that link with anybody, because if anyone else ever uses it then they become the owner of it and there's nothing you can do to get it back. This isn't a stock exchange or a bank or any of those silly "regulated" things. I mean, if you put your money in a bank instead, it's like...100x less likely to get stolen than if you buy this link to my review, and frankly that sounds boring. What's life like without a little zest, right?
I've sold you on the idea? Great! Wait, put your wallet away, money is a tool of The Man, we don't deal in that here. What you'll want to do is go across the street over there to that market that sells Ryancoin, which is exactly like money because it's pegged to the dollar, except that nobody can track who uses it or anything. It's really taken off in southeast Asia, Russia, the dark web...What? No, not because criminals engaging in scams, human trafficking, and violent shakedowns like untraceable money. It's a coincidence! Anyways so just go over there and get some Ryancoin and come back. But wait like...five minutes, I think the owner's out to lunch.
[you wait five minutes and walk over to the market, where I am waiting in a hat and fake beard]
Why yes, hello! I hear you'd like to buy Ryancoin with your real actual money, even though it's a thing I basically made up. That's great! So first, download this app onto your phone, jump through about fifty very sketchy website hurdles, and after about ten minutes of monkeying around, you have 500 Ryancoin! Wowee! Remember, this is pegged to the dollar so you can change this back into real money any time. I am definitely not printing money in the back, how dare you. That's a photocopier, can't you tell the difference?
[int. cafe]
Great! so what you do is now you hand me your phone, we'll go through another song and dance, and...hey, you have a link to the review now. But all of the people who've read the review think it's garbage, so apparently links to it are now worthless [except for that one that John Oliver briefly touched for some reason]. I don't know, I guess you might be able to sell it for like, 50 Ryancoin to that desperate mook out on the street. Definitely nobody's gonna pay you real money for it.
(...)
Oh hey, 50 Ryancoin! That's great! I'm glad you were able to get something valuable back in exchange for the link to this review. Huh? You want to change it back into real money because you're getting the distinct sense that this is all a ridiculous scam and you're upset that you lost all of your fake money betting the value of a link to this review would go up and instead it imploded? I don't understand your lack of faith -- the guy across the street bought me this Ferrari, which is a real tangible asset worth a bunch of money, and he wouldn't have been able to do that if this were a bunch of hooey, would he? ...You're still certain you want out? I mean, that's unfortunate, but that guy across the street can probably change it back for you.
[you go back across the street. After waiting several minutes, the man who looks a lot like me in a hat and fake beard comes rushing in from the back, slightly out of breath]
What? You want to change Ryancoin back into real dollars? You know, I'd love to help you out, but there's been a run on our reserves. You're saying that shouldn't matter because every Ryancoin was pegged to the dollar and guaranteed? I mean I did say that but not in like, a legally binding sense. What do you think this is, a bank? A stock exchange? It's not federally regulated, I thought I -- um, I mean, that guy in the cafe across the street, not me -- explained to you earlier why that's such a great thing. Don't you feel great? Anyway, the short version is I'm all out of actual money, so I can't actually trade back your real money at this exact moment in time. But if you just have a little patience, I'm sure more people will buy Ryancoin eventually, and then those people will think Ryancoin has value, so yours will also have value again, and then maybe you can get your money back. I dunno, I hope it works out for you.
(speeds off in a Ferrari, which is strange, because you could've sworn it was the guy in the cafe selling review links who owned the Ferrari, not the owner of the Ryancoin exchange. Oh well, you'll figure it out someday)
September 22, 2023
It’s been more than 24 hours since I finished this book, but I’m not any less gobsmacked. In fact, I don’t think one is meant to get one’s head around the incredible mess that is crypto—which, at the very best of times, seems the very definition of a circus. Made-up coins with ridiculous names like Polkadot and Smooth Love Potion (and Web3 Inu, Trump coin, Potcoin, Putincoin, Garlicoin, Mafia Doge…)? Check. A former child actor and presidential candidate (lol) who, for some reason, calls himself a doula for creation? Check. Heaps of people in need of money essentially gambling and participating in Ponzi schemes to enrich crypto bros? At this point, why not: Check. An elusive former plastic surgeon and alleged pirate of Microsoft software, who’s now head of the company with the longest-lasting and seemingly most stable (questionable) stablecoin? Check. Ridiculously expensive cartoon apes, and ridiculously exclusive Ape festivals? Ok? Check. The Bahamas? Venezuela? The Philippines? Check. Drugs, the money laundering, and…uh…human trafficking? Um, wait, what? Check.
""I’m not going to lie,” Sam Bankman-Fried told me.
This was a lie."
Zeke Faux is determined, even obsessive as he tracks down some of the most colourful characters in crypto, and as he tries to make sense of what is ultimately nonsensical but “hilariously” lucrative. It isn’t easy. These characters are hard to pin down, and, except for the notorious SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried, who becomes Faux’s main subject) not very forthcoming about their activities or liability. Are they true believers? Who knows. Are they changing the world? They may tell you they’re making the poor rich (capitalism’s greatest con), but evidence shows they’re most assuredly not, on balance. Are they getting rich? Sometimes, maybe, wildly so, and usually only for a time. Does it sound like a giant gambler’s paradise? Mostly, yes.
Bankman-Fried’s SFX crypto exchange collapsed spectacularly in November 2022. He’s due to stand trial from October 3, 2023. So far, he’s pleading “I made a big boo-boo” so we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, read Faux’s well-written and head-spinning investigation, and ask yourself, like I did, what the future’s going to be like.
Thank you to Mason Eng and Currency/PRH for access.
""I’m not going to lie,” Sam Bankman-Fried told me.
This was a lie."
Zeke Faux is determined, even obsessive as he tracks down some of the most colourful characters in crypto, and as he tries to make sense of what is ultimately nonsensical but “hilariously” lucrative. It isn’t easy. These characters are hard to pin down, and, except for the notorious SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried, who becomes Faux’s main subject) not very forthcoming about their activities or liability. Are they true believers? Who knows. Are they changing the world? They may tell you they’re making the poor rich (capitalism’s greatest con), but evidence shows they’re most assuredly not, on balance. Are they getting rich? Sometimes, maybe, wildly so, and usually only for a time. Does it sound like a giant gambler’s paradise? Mostly, yes.
Bankman-Fried’s SFX crypto exchange collapsed spectacularly in November 2022. He’s due to stand trial from October 3, 2023. So far, he’s pleading “I made a big boo-boo” so we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, read Faux’s well-written and head-spinning investigation, and ask yourself, like I did, what the future’s going to be like.
Thank you to Mason Eng and Currency/PRH for access.
October 3, 2023
This is the first crypto book I can recommend. It balances the pain, hilarity, and shamelessness of all stakeholders.
Faux earnestly asks, "what is crypto useful for?"
And the answer is gambling and crime; SO much crime.
Faux punches up and keeps the victims of endless crypto scamming at the forefront. For every stablecoin there is an industrialized outpost of human slavery. For every shitcoin and NFT there is an audience of everyman gamblers. For every VC-funded effective altruist there are thousands of swindled retail investors.
My only criticism is the common misattribution of "worth" to "quantity X current trade price" when the thesis of the book is that the whole space was never inherently worth shit to begin with.
Faux earnestly asks, "what is crypto useful for?"
And the answer is gambling and crime; SO much crime.
Faux punches up and keeps the victims of endless crypto scamming at the forefront. For every stablecoin there is an industrialized outpost of human slavery. For every shitcoin and NFT there is an audience of everyman gamblers. For every VC-funded effective altruist there are thousands of swindled retail investors.
My only criticism is the common misattribution of "worth" to "quantity X current trade price" when the thesis of the book is that the whole space was never inherently worth shit to begin with.
November 11, 2023
This one goes out to anyone who had to listen to crypto bros describe what an NFT is at Christmas parties back in 2021- this book may provide some catharsis.
I think we are in the midst of a finance book Battle Royale, with newcomer Faux's book dropping right around the same time as wily vet Michael Lewis's- currently on hold for the latter at the library and will keep y'all posted. 5 Stars
P.S. NOT LEGAL ADVICE but if you ever commit the largest robbery in history ($4.5bn) please please please don't also be a Very Bad rapper. I couldn't understand why Faux spent multiple pages making fun of "Versace Bedouin" by Razzlekhan until I googled the music video for myself.
I think we are in the midst of a finance book Battle Royale, with newcomer Faux's book dropping right around the same time as wily vet Michael Lewis's- currently on hold for the latter at the library and will keep y'all posted. 5 Stars
P.S. NOT LEGAL ADVICE but if you ever commit the largest robbery in history ($4.5bn) please please please don't also be a Very Bad rapper. I couldn't understand why Faux spent multiple pages making fun of "Versace Bedouin" by Razzlekhan until I googled the music video for myself.
January 5, 2024
The topic and the ensuing ridiculousness of crypto and NFTs makes for a great story, but could have been told better without Faux putting himself so much at the center of the story. While it twists and turns a bit, I feel like it’s more of a story of his investigation, rather than telling a great story on crypto
September 27, 2023
Entertaining but not great. No coherent story line, just a bunch of anecdotes from a struggling legacy msm journalist.
January 15, 2024
You might assume that Crypto is sketchy; I promise it’s worse than you think. This book is absolutely a must-read.
December 19, 2023
Something here for everyone! Far surpassed my expectations, gets better and better throughout. Too bad this ends with the fall of SBX and not the arrest of CZ and the investigation of Binance (which haven’t resulted in any business failures yet).
I’m angry at how many American retirement savings dreams of stability were destroyed, transferred to extravagant inequality, criminal enterprises and russian, Chinese, and north korean hard currency reserves, sometimes by tortured slave labor.
Surprisingly well researched and edited. I expected an amusing opinion piece and I found a biographically rich documentary on crypto finance. He did indeed get lengthy interview access to SBF/FTX before their downfall. Unfortunately, Bitfinex and Tether are still going strong, leaving room for a sequel to this book.
I’ve read many hundreds of articles about crypto and fraud over the prior decade, and I feel like Zeke effectively summarized them. With the benefit of hindsight, this book has organized and connected the hacks and frauds into a simple and memorable narrative. For example, it is hilarious (and accurate) how in an early section he fully explains blockchain technology in a few paragraphs. An parts of the investigation are quite funny, like his conversation with Vicki Ho from page 226, and Zeke can write up an ordinary spam conversation as much more amusing than the raw material.
Considered how much scamming and fraud depends on Tether USDT (ch18, etc), it is depressing to see that the circulation has only continued growing to $90B, with perhaps half of that exchanging wallets each day. Even if it includes washing, that is just a huge flow of value, probably hiding so much financial crime.
The chinese criminal gang slave camps in Cambodia (p243/ch19) need vastly more investigation, stronger international institutions, military interventions and prosecutions. Rule of law matters, and way too many bad people with guns, despite surveillance and digital tracking. It’s astonishing that Faux personally travelled to the dangerous crime scene.. i have been in Cambodia, and he would stand out, and any number of armed agents could be corrupted to take him out. And the hotwiring an iPhone demonstration is astounding! (p248)
While the book is dense with biographical details and psychological analysis backed with dozens of direct interview quotations, and is also rich with technical and financial details, it is also exceptionally well edited and concisely written. At over 400 paper pages, it is substantial, but nowhere redundant nor verbose.
One special talent Faux occasionally displays (probably developed from intense research grit through countless dead-ends) is archival research for text that is no longer on the internet, or at least certainly not search indexed. He doesn’t flaunt it, instead including only the gems, but it deepens many story backgrounds and opens some surprising connections.
Hodlers have $1.5T reasons to pump crypto and ignore morality, tremendous psychological pressure on tech media and even michael lewis who got a $5m advance from Apple for a version of SBX that is marketable.
Legal proceedings seem to be documentary journalists’ best friend! This is an under appreciated public good of a functioning legal system! Disappointing that so few people ever get their attention pointed to these disclosures.. even when huge political or profit implications would accrue. For example, just this book has enough to kill crypto, yet the market persists. Russian corruption of the GOP, our media and global oligarchs is so well documented, yet still so effectively deniable.
On kindle at least, the endnotes needed to be more complete and accessible.
I’m angry at how many American retirement savings dreams of stability were destroyed, transferred to extravagant inequality, criminal enterprises and russian, Chinese, and north korean hard currency reserves, sometimes by tortured slave labor.
Surprisingly well researched and edited. I expected an amusing opinion piece and I found a biographically rich documentary on crypto finance. He did indeed get lengthy interview access to SBF/FTX before their downfall. Unfortunately, Bitfinex and Tether are still going strong, leaving room for a sequel to this book.
I’ve read many hundreds of articles about crypto and fraud over the prior decade, and I feel like Zeke effectively summarized them. With the benefit of hindsight, this book has organized and connected the hacks and frauds into a simple and memorable narrative. For example, it is hilarious (and accurate) how in an early section he fully explains blockchain technology in a few paragraphs. An parts of the investigation are quite funny, like his conversation with Vicki Ho from page 226, and Zeke can write up an ordinary spam conversation as much more amusing than the raw material.
Considered how much scamming and fraud depends on Tether USDT (ch18, etc), it is depressing to see that the circulation has only continued growing to $90B, with perhaps half of that exchanging wallets each day. Even if it includes washing, that is just a huge flow of value, probably hiding so much financial crime.
The chinese criminal gang slave camps in Cambodia (p243/ch19) need vastly more investigation, stronger international institutions, military interventions and prosecutions. Rule of law matters, and way too many bad people with guns, despite surveillance and digital tracking. It’s astonishing that Faux personally travelled to the dangerous crime scene.. i have been in Cambodia, and he would stand out, and any number of armed agents could be corrupted to take him out. And the hotwiring an iPhone demonstration is astounding! (p248)
While the book is dense with biographical details and psychological analysis backed with dozens of direct interview quotations, and is also rich with technical and financial details, it is also exceptionally well edited and concisely written. At over 400 paper pages, it is substantial, but nowhere redundant nor verbose.
One special talent Faux occasionally displays (probably developed from intense research grit through countless dead-ends) is archival research for text that is no longer on the internet, or at least certainly not search indexed. He doesn’t flaunt it, instead including only the gems, but it deepens many story backgrounds and opens some surprising connections.
Hodlers have $1.5T reasons to pump crypto and ignore morality, tremendous psychological pressure on tech media and even michael lewis who got a $5m advance from Apple for a version of SBX that is marketable.
Legal proceedings seem to be documentary journalists’ best friend! This is an under appreciated public good of a functioning legal system! Disappointing that so few people ever get their attention pointed to these disclosures.. even when huge political or profit implications would accrue. For example, just this book has enough to kill crypto, yet the market persists. Russian corruption of the GOP, our media and global oligarchs is so well documented, yet still so effectively deniable.
On kindle at least, the endnotes needed to be more complete and accessible.
May 12, 2024
3.5, prob would be 4 if I could possibly comprehend how people could sell pictures of stoned apes or Trump (NFTs) for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But I can’t. Such a seamy underbelly of scammers and drug dealers and risk and unbelievable dystopian dreams. I felt like I was reading “Reamde” (N Stephenson) -or even Steppenwolf at times.
I’m still puzzled, but people been doing it for all of time. Scammers gonna scam. And 8 billion dollar in FTX crypto hs been located, and made money while it was lost. What do I know?
But I can’t. Such a seamy underbelly of scammers and drug dealers and risk and unbelievable dystopian dreams. I felt like I was reading “Reamde” (N Stephenson) -or even Steppenwolf at times.
I’m still puzzled, but people been doing it for all of time. Scammers gonna scam. And 8 billion dollar in FTX crypto hs been located, and made money while it was lost. What do I know?
March 19, 2024
Definitely gives a better context to the broader crypto industry compared to the Michael Lewis book. I feel like I missed out on so much during that time frame and glad I understand a bit more about what crypto is about. The author is also quite funny.
March 25, 2024
Better than expected. Especially after the first third.
A broad and up-to-date view of the subject.
A broad and up-to-date view of the subject.
April 3, 2024
Back in 2022 barely a conversation with friends or colleagues went by without someone mentioning their latest Crypto investment be it in Bitcoin, ETH or some other new fad coin. Despite their enthusiasm none of my friends or colleagues were able to clearly explain the inherent value/use of the latest coin they’d invested in.
Faux’s adventure into the Crypto universe is both a fast paced narrative and an eye opening education piece as he describes a world based on fraud, machismo, greed and in many cases downright stupidity. He clearly explains many of the crypto concepts/buzzwords that you hear so often from the Crypto faithful “yield farming”, NFTs, blockchain etc. His investigation of Tether and FTX - their meteoric rise and then collapse is fascinating. The fact that so many celebrities (Clinton, Tom Brady, Katy Perry, Congresspeople etc) and powerful people were so enamoured with the individuals who ran these crypto companies who turned out to be running giant Ponzi schemes reveals a lot about western capitalist culture. Another story of smart financial engineers flying too close to the sun in their pursuit of money, influence and power while exploiting the community along the way.
Would highly recommend to anyone wanting to educate themself on this topic.
Faux’s adventure into the Crypto universe is both a fast paced narrative and an eye opening education piece as he describes a world based on fraud, machismo, greed and in many cases downright stupidity. He clearly explains many of the crypto concepts/buzzwords that you hear so often from the Crypto faithful “yield farming”, NFTs, blockchain etc. His investigation of Tether and FTX - their meteoric rise and then collapse is fascinating. The fact that so many celebrities (Clinton, Tom Brady, Katy Perry, Congresspeople etc) and powerful people were so enamoured with the individuals who ran these crypto companies who turned out to be running giant Ponzi schemes reveals a lot about western capitalist culture. Another story of smart financial engineers flying too close to the sun in their pursuit of money, influence and power while exploiting the community along the way.
Would highly recommend to anyone wanting to educate themself on this topic.
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