Number Go Up

Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall

By: Zeke Faux

Narrated by: Dan Bittner

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.

Critic reviews

Combines sharp analysis, intrepid reporting and punchy writing

Boisterous and masterfully written . . . Faux's cast of misfits and con artists never fails to entertain

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 (John Lanchester)

Offers a shrewdly sceptical view of crypto where [Michael Lewis's] Going Infinite is stubbornly credulous

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

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.

Of all the books you could read about the pandemic-driven crypto and NFT pyramid-scheme madness, this is the one. It is fantastically funny, sceptical, thoughtful and he's willing to pursue every part of the story. The chapter in which he investigates the effects of crypto-based gaming in the Philippines is devastating. The sequence where he risks his savings by buying an extremely ugly Bored Ape in order to get into a party is laugh-out-loud hilarious. (Naomi Alderman)

An appalled, Wolfe-ian look at the barely concealed cynicism and grift that fuelled and continue to fuel cryptocurrency's vast speculative bubble . . . No one comes out of this well, from Tony Blair and Bill Clinton cosying up to Bankman-Fried to an endless parade of celebrities shilling for crypto . . . Recount[s] the end of an era

Faux demonstrates his incisive grasp of the story with the very first words of his prologue . . . In telling his story, Faux has one major advantage over [Michael] Lewis: almost from the start, he had crypto's number

Funny, enraging, racy and profound. We were waiting for the first great crypto book and Zeke Faux has written it (Oliver Bullough, author)

The superior guide to understanding the FTX debacle and Bankman-Fried himself . . . This is the strength of Number Go Up: it doesn't pretend there's something inside, just beyond our reach. Instead, Faux explores how flimsy the whole crypto industry really is

Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the mass delusion that was crypto (Bethany McLean, bestselling co-author)

Real life detective thriller

Cross reference the book with current events make this doubly fascinating. The slavery that crypto has enabled is heart wrenching.

Excellent

A great dive into the crypto world. As someone who has been working in the crypto gaming space, I found this super insightful and gave a lot more context to projects that I thought I knew about, but really only from the surface. Would recommend anyone who's in the crypto world to overcome their FUD and give this a listen to help paint more of a picture of this developing space.