The riveting, revelatory account of Sam Bankman-Fried and the biggest financial delusion the world has ever seen In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream.
Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Faux the title our great poet of crime ( Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine), Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion..
When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, he brings readers Inside SBF\'s penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest.
And in an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-fueled human-trafficking ring.
In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Ponzi scheme centered on a Pokémon knockoff mobile game.
Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to ApeFest, an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey.
Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world.
Faux\'s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires.
Hardly anyone knew how it worked--but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named digital asset? As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging question: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity--with a dash of FOMO--would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world\'s new financial machinery.
Giant investment funds were buying it, celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it, and TV ads hailed it as the future of money.
The riveting, revelatory account of Sam Bankman-Fried and the biggest financial delusion the world has ever seen In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream
