Number Go Up
- Author Zeke Faux
- Narrator Dan Bittner
- Publisher Orion
- Run Time 9 hours and 12 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Business and Management, Business strategy, Computing and Information Technology, Corporate crime / white-collar crime, Online finance and investing, Society and Social Sciences.
Titles Purchased
- 1-5
- 6-10
- 11-15
- 16-20
- Over 20
Price p/Title
- £7.99
- £6.99
- £5.99
- £4.99
- £3.99
Listen to a sample
What to expect
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.
Critics Review
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Combines sharp analysis, intrepid reporting and punchy writing
Wall Street Journal -
Boisterous and masterfully written . . . Faux’s cast of misfits and con artists never fails to entertain
Washington Post -
An excoriating attack on crypto and all who sail in her . . . It’s enough to drive the observer slightly nuts. You can find that energy in Faux’s funny, furious book
LRB -
Offers a shrewdly sceptical view of crypto where [Michael Lewis’s] Going Infinite is stubbornly credulous
New York Times -
Definitely the best book to read for anyone who wants to understand what happened with SBF and FTX; I’d argue it’s also the best book to give any general-interest reader who wants to learn more about why crypto has crashed and burned
LA Times, 'The 10 Best Tech Books of 2023' -
Number Go Up is a globe-trotting nonfiction picaresque that’s as much fun as you can have reading about financial malfeasance and blockchain scams. It’s a crisp primer that effortlessly ties the overinflated promise of bitcoin not just to the fraudsters like Sam Bankman-Fried who peddle it, but to the places in the Global South, like the Philippines and Cambodia, that are steamrolled by the fallout when that promise dies, often in spectacular fashion. It’s scathing; it made me snort rage chortles aloud as I read. I would have finished it in a single sitting if I didn’t have to sleep.
WIRED, 'The 16 Best Books of 2023'
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