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April 24, 2024

Number Go Up is a compelling look at crypto's rise and fall

the true crime that's worth your time

detail from Numbers Go Up cover
A detail from the cover of Number Go Up lampoons its dubious poster child.

In 2021, cryptocurrency mania swept the world, heralded as the future of finance. Despite the fact that there was no ready explanation for what cryptocurrency was actually for, celebrities, journalists, politicians, and investment firms lined up to embrace the craze. By 2022, the bubble burst and a bevy of crypto scammers were brought to light, the most notorious of whom, Sam Bankman-Fried, earned the moniker of crypto’s Bernie Madoff.

An investigative journalist on the finance beat, Zeke Faux endeavors in Number Go Up to unpack crypto’s mechanics, profile its key players, and answer the question: does cryptocurrency have any practical uses or is it just a digital Ponzi scheme? Faux’s reporting takes him across continents to the Bahamas (the defacto home base of crypto), Cambodia (where the dark side of crypto manifests in human trafficking), and El Salvador (the only country to adopt Bitcoin as a national currency).

Read Susan Howard’s last entry in her series on 2024’s Edgar Award Fact Crime nominees at Best Evidence.

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