' A gripping real-life financial thriller.' CLAER BARRETT AUTHOR OF WHAT THEY DON' T
TEACH YOU ABOUT MONEY ' Fast-paced and highly accessible ... A must read.' GILLIAN
TETT AUTHOR OF ANTHRO-VISION ' Anybody who wants to understand the cryptocurrency mania
should read Hype Machine .' LIONEL BARBER FORMER EDITOR OF THE FINANCIAL TIMES On 2
November 2023 in one of the largest fraud trials in history Sam Bankman-Fried was found
guilty of stealing billions of dollars from the customers of his crypto-exchange FTX. How
did this 31-year-old Californian in shorts and a T-shirt manage to become one of the most
famous CEOs in the world? How did greed fear and free money inflate the crypto bubble until it
finally popped with devastating consequences for millions of people who lost money in the
crash? Who were the enablers investors and innovators who transformed the original promise of
crypto into a digital Wild West? Hype Machine is the definitive story of the boom and bust
of crypto written by award-winning Financial Times journalist Joshua Oliver. Expansive
nuanced and eminently entertaining it demystifies the crypto circus by following the journeys
of its most influential participants and the trajectory of SBF its enigmatic ringmaster.
Oliver who reported on the crypto crash with extensive access to SBF himself introduces
readers to the people and ideas that shaped crypto' s wild rise and fall including Arthur
Hayes Changpeng Zhao and the coterie of acolytes who surrounded FTX. Through exclusive
interviews compelling research and with ringside seats at the trial of the decade he paints a
vivid detailed and tragi-comic picture of this defining financial moment of our times.
