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.
