Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux

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

by Zeke Faux

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Crime & Justice

Crypto prices rose because people bought, and people bought because prices rose. Faux takes his title from a Bitcoin promoter describing that loop, and you follow it with him from a roughly $20,000 Bored Ape to Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas and scam compounds in Cambodia.

Core ideas
  • Tether's reserves: The recurring question is whether the stablecoin, then worth about $81 billion, actually held the reserves it claimed.
  • Pig butchering: Romance scams run from Cambodian compounds staffed by trafficked workers, and Tether is the payment rail the scammers use.
  • Sold as a way out: El Salvador put public money into Bitcoin, and a Pokémon-style crypto game was promoted in the Philippines as an escape from poverty.
Published2023
Pages304
ISBN9780593443811
ReadAug 2025

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