Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Political economy

NUMBER GO UP

Zeke Faux

Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall

NUMBER GO UP is the harrowing, highly entertaining inside chronicle of how FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and a cast of fellow nerds and hustlers convinced the world to send trillions of dollars of real money to buy useless virtual coins - from Zeke Faux's Bloomberg Businessweek writer.

After years on the financial world's margins, crypto went mainstream in early 2021. Everybody was talking about it: giant investment funds were buying it, celebrities like Tom Brady and Justin Bieber endorsed it, and Washington bigwigs debated new regulations, as if it would be a permanent part of our financial system. It seemed like everyone knew someone who was bragging about their returns from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin and other bizarrely named "digital assets." FOMO spread: Was crypto the new path to financial freedom? It didn't seem to matter that hardly anyone knew how it worked. The longer prices went up and up, the harder it was to resist. To borrow a phrase from crypto parlance, the only thing that mattered was "number go up."

Observing this mania, Zeke Faux set out on a quest to pull back the curtain on the wizards behind this new financial machinery. He first set his sights on Tether, a digital currency dreamed up by a former child actor from the 1992 Disney film The Mighty Ducks. Tether had become crypto's de facto bank, with $69 billion pouring into it. Each Tether was supposedly backed by one dollar. But where was the money? Then, in 2022, the crypto bubble burst, and Tether's biggest customers started collapsing one by one. It culminated in November, when FTX - founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, a schlubby 29-year-old Fortune once suggested was "The Next Warren Buffett" - failed in spectacular fashion.

As he chases these intersecting storylines around the globe, Faux is driven by a nagging question: Is it all just a global confidence game of unprecedented proportions? In El Salvador, he finds a country reeling from the authoritarian president's decision to gamble its treasury on Bitcoin. A spam text message leads him to a crypto-fueled human-trafficking ring in Cambodia. In Lugano, Switzerland, he chases down the reclusive former plastic surgeon who runs Tether, and, in the Bahamas, Faux takes readers inside the glittering sadness, lies and delusion of SBF's luxury loft in the days after FTX's implosion.

Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Faux the title "our great poet of crime" (Matt Levine), NUMBER GO UP is a riveting account of the biggest financial mania the world has ever seen.

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.

Available products
Book Published 2023-09-12 by Currency
Book Published by Currency

Comments

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.

This book is what happens when the funniest financial journalist in America takes on the funniest story in modern finance. The results are as darkly hilarious as you could hope for.

Laugh-out-loud funny . . . An often hilarious courtside view of the recent maniaand a useful reminder to blockchain evangelists about the many, many sleazy characters who inhabit their realm. Well worth a read.

Number Go Up offers a shrewdly skeptical view of crypto where Going Infinite is stubbornly credulous.

The definitive book about crypto and the only one you'll want to read.

Everybody's talking about the wrong Sam Bankman-Fried book. . . . Faux's rollicking Number Go Up . . . is the far superior guide to understanding the FTX debacle and Bankman-Fried himself. . . . This is the strength of Number Go Up: It doesn't pretend there's something inside, just beyond our reach.

A clearly written narrative of the high and low points of the recent crypto boom and bust. [Zeke Faux] has a wry eye for details.

Faux's boisterous, masterfully written book is worth a read. . . . Faux's cast of misfits and con artists never fails to entertain.

Masterful, important, and utterly riveting . . . I devoured Number Go Up in almost one gulp.

second serial excerpt: That's What I Call Ponzinomics With Sam Bankman-Fried, Gisele, and a credulous Michael Lewis at the zenith of crypto hype... Read more...

Hilarious... a dizzying safari of the surreal.

One of the finest books of financial journalism I have ever read (and I read all of them).

Number Go Up is a triumph of reporting, wit, and sheer exuberant fun. Itand it alonemakes me glad that crypto came into the world.

Funny, enraging, racy, and profound... We were waiting for the first great crypto book, and Zeke Faux has written it.

Shortlisted for the Business Reporting category of the SABEW Best in Business Book Awards

Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the mass delusion that was crypto.

"This book is ludicrously compelling. I, quite literally, couldn't put it downand I don't even care about crypto. 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."

Both a serious financial investigation and an incredibly entertaining romp... Zeke Faux seems to be the only one asking the uncomfortable questions.

A very thorough, fierce investigation of the shady world of cryptocurrencies that erupted in FTX's failure, diving deep into the evolution and current state of cryptocurrencies and the key characters involved in that ecosystem . . . It's a must-read for investors considering crypto, as well as one of the rare financial nonfiction books that's by turns hilarious and scandalousa gripping page-turner.

Combines sharp analysis, intrepid reporting, and punchy writing.

Riveting, scary, funny, unbelievable... If you want a front-row seat to one of the greatest business stories of all time, you should read Number Go Up now.

Not only a breath of fresh air but quite possibly the best book ever written about the cryptocurrency industry.

Journalism schools will be able to use Going Infinite, Michael Lewis' new book about the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and the fall of its boss, Sam Bankman-Fried, as a textbook. . . . Fortunately, readers interested in the story of the cryptocurrency scam and Bankman-Fried's rise and fall can turn to a much more convincing (and more entertaining) book. That's Number Go Up. . . . In telling this story, Faux has one major advantage over Lewis: Almost from the start, he had crypto's number.

first serial excerpt (cover story): 'Don't You Remember Me?' The Crypto Hell on the Other Side of a Spam Text In an exclusive excerpt from Zeke Faux's forthcoming book, "Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall," he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring in Cambodia. ... Read more...

Number Go Up is an instant classic.

Mr. Lewis reveals little about the inner workings of crypto, which he says even SBF barely bothered to understand. For those wanting a rollickingalbeit jaundicedexamination of crypto's underbelly, read Mr. Faux's book.

UK: Orion ; Korean: RH Korea ; Vietnamese: Nha Nam ; Ukrainian: Artbooks Publishing House ; Thai: Salt Publishing ; Spanish: Ediciones Obelisco ; Chinese (simplified): CITIC

I loved Number Go Up, Zeke Faux's clever, vivid, propulsive, terrifying, and often hilarious account of the cryptocurrency bubble.