Number Go Up: Inside Cryptos Wild Rise and Staggering Fall

(Hardback)

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Description

In 2021, cryptocurrency goes mainstream. Giant investment funds are buying it. Politicians endorse it. TV ads hail it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knows how it works - who cares when everyone is getting rich But financial crime reporter Zeke Faux cares: even in fraud, there are standards.

In the Bahamas, schlubby billionaire wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried tells him how he will use his fortune to save the world. In Cambodia, a spam text unearths a horrifying slavery ring fuelled by crypto. Faux buys a $20,000 cartoon of a mutant ape to gain access to a festival headlined by Snoop Dogg, and talks his way onto the yacht of a riddling crypto founder/former child actor (The Mighty Ducks, 1992) who was among the first to see the power of imaginary treasure. In search of an elusive cash reserve at the foundation of the whole system, the incredulous Faux finds himself crossing three continents, as well as the boundaries of law, taste and economic rationality. Shocking and uproarious, Number Go Up is the essential chronicle of a $3 trillion delusion, the greatest bubble in history.

Reviews

Funny, enraging, racy and profound. We were waiting for the first great crypto book and Zeke Faux has written it -- Oliver Bullough, author * Butler to the World *
Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the mass delusion that was crypto -- Bethany McLean, bestselling co-author * The Smartest Guys in the Room *
Both a serious financial investigation and incredibly entertaining ... Faux seems to be the only one asking uncomfortable questions -- Sara Frier, FT/McKinsey award-winning author * No Filter *
Ludicrously compelling. I, quite literally, couldn't put it down - and I don't even care about crypto. Zeke Faux writes about this world with such clarity, humor, and perspective that the portrait captures something even larger: a moment in time that we can't afford not to understand -- Evan Osnos, author * Joe Biden: American Dreamer *
A dizzying safari of the surreal ... Zeke Faux takes readers behind the velvet rope and onto the mega yachts and multimillion-dollar tropical compounds of the billionaire crypto schemers, hustlers, and evangelists who may all be headed to prison, but are having a riotously good time -- Joshua Green, #1 NYT bestselling author * The Devils Bargain *
Business journalists are not usually lauded for their bravery, but it takes guts to gaze into the abyss of late-stage capitalism, never mind parachute directly into it. [Number Go Up] is a kind of hero's journey . . . Riveting -- Jessica Pressler, special correspondent at Vanity Fair, producer * Inventing Anna *
The funniest financial journalist in America takes on the funniest story in modern finance -- Matt Levine, author of Businessweeks Money Stuff
An instant classic: Liar's Poker for the era of digital monkey tokens -- Kit Chellel, co-author * Dead in the Water *
The definitive book about crypto and the only one you'll want to read -- Max Chafkin, author * The Contrarian *

Author Bio

Zeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News in New York. He's a winner of the Gerald Loeb award for explanatory business journalism and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel award, and a finalist for a National Magazine Award. Faux lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and their three children.