Reviews tagging 'Trafficking'

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

15 reviews

themorsecode's review against another edition

dark funny informative reflective sad fast-paced

4.25

Enjoyed this, extremely readable and doesn't get too bogged down in the technical weeds - more interested in the people and community.  The difference between the crypto-bro culture Vs the exploited people in East Asia working in slave labour conditions to make their masters money is quite stark and the book takes quite a turn when it heads over to this side of the world.  Despite his work unravelling some of the crypto scams, Faux was fortunate with his timing of the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried and Tether, I'm not sure that his book would have had a neat conclusion without this - but he was definitely sniffing in the right direction so his instincts were certainly true.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Slavery and Trafficking

blueowl2ivy's review

adventurous funny informative fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug use, Slavery, and Trafficking

pmhandley's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

5.0

I found Faux's approach to crypto to be relatable: this thing seems like a scam, but everyone else is insisting it's the next thing and that somehow it works. Faux mostly goes around asking obvious questions to crypto bros and founders and pointing out obvious flaws. (One of the currency's strategies is, literally, to buy high and sell low, which the founder insists works, somehow.) Faux talks to coin and exchange founders and executives and just lets them talk, which usually ends up being wildly incriminating. At some point one of them says their coin is a Ponzi structure, but not a Ponzi scheme. Faux's investigation starts off rather funny. It's mostly "look at these idiot crypto bros" and he gets to fly to the Bahamas a lot. He buys a Mutant Ape solely to get into a party for Ape NFT holders which is as insane as you'd expect. But things take a darker turn later in the book, looking at how the cryptocurrency Tether is enabling human trafficking. It's a far cry from laughing at crypto bros losing money. Faux is critical of his own coverage of SBF as not being critical enough, which is kind of refreshing given how many people uncritically built him up. He certainly is not flattering SBF in this book. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Trafficking

clairephillips's review

dark funny informative

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Murder

itsmebee's review

funny informative medium-paced

4.0

Solid introduction for anyone who wants to learn about the most recent crypto boom and bust cycle.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Racism, Sexism, and Trafficking

None of these people are great people, so expect that going in.