Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall

· Weidenfeld & Nicolson · Narrated by Dan Bittner
5.0
2 reviews
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9 hr 48 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR WIRED | LA TIMES | FINANCIAL TIMES | WASHINGTON POST | GLOBE AND MAIL

USED IN EVIDENCE IN THE TRIAL OF SAM BANKMAN-FRIED

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.

Ratings and reviews

5.0
2 reviews
Michael Brodie
November 28, 2023
An excellently written insight into the weird world of crypto - never overly technical, nor dull. Zeke Faux put a lot of time and money into his research, and it shows.
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Thomas Karlsson
September 26, 2023
Super interesting book, great reading by the reader
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About the author

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.

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