Scan barcode
A review by sashapasha
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux
4.0
This is the story of a bunch of crypto bros with enormous egos gaslighting each other and screwing a lot of other people at the same time.
Takeaways
* Bitcoin mining is terrible for the environment and there is no real world value to it. It is the equivalent of literally burning money — a huge waste of power and resources.
* It’s wild to me that FTX was essentially brought down because Sam Bankman-Fried wrote a mocking tweet about Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance. Over the course of five days, CZ executed a two part takedown — the first part was a tweet announcing that Binance was withdrawing from FTX (selling its FTT tokens), pointing to a Coindesk article that claimed Alameda Research owed billions to lenders as the reason behind the move. The second part was making a deal to buy FTX and then withdrawing from it the next day. Backing out of the deal caused further panicked cash outs and was the nail on the coffin for FTX. It seems clear that CZ never had any intention of going through with the purchase.
* The Bored Ape NFT craze was the absolute height of rich person bullshit.
* The Axie Infinity game and Smooth Love Potions was one of the nastiest scams, as it targeted residents in the Philippines without the education to see through the scheme and who were just hoping to improve their quality of life.
* Wish the book had talked more about Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research. There are so few women in the crypto world, I would’ve found it fascinating to delve into her background and motivations further, find out exactly what went wrong in _her_ life story to end up such a high profile white collar criminal. Her Wikipedia page states she became interested in Effective Altruism while in college — at what point did her altruism fail? When did the money and power corrupt her? What’s her side of the story?
* The pig butchering and human trafficking in Southeast Asian enabled by Tether and other cryptocurrencies is horrific.
Favorite quote:
“Bees don’t waste their time explaining to flies that honey is better than shit.”
- A message from Giancarlo Devasini, cofounder of Bitfinex, to the author in one of Faux’s final attempts to get an interview. You have to appreciate such an elegant slap in the face lol.
Takeaways
* Bitcoin mining is terrible for the environment and there is no real world value to it. It is the equivalent of literally burning money — a huge waste of power and resources.
* It’s wild to me that FTX was essentially brought down because Sam Bankman-Fried wrote a mocking tweet about Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance. Over the course of five days, CZ executed a two part takedown — the first part was a tweet announcing that Binance was withdrawing from FTX (selling its FTT tokens), pointing to a Coindesk article that claimed Alameda Research owed billions to lenders as the reason behind the move. The second part was making a deal to buy FTX and then withdrawing from it the next day. Backing out of the deal caused further panicked cash outs and was the nail on the coffin for FTX. It seems clear that CZ never had any intention of going through with the purchase.
* The Bored Ape NFT craze was the absolute height of rich person bullshit.
* The Axie Infinity game and Smooth Love Potions was one of the nastiest scams, as it targeted residents in the Philippines without the education to see through the scheme and who were just hoping to improve their quality of life.
* Wish the book had talked more about Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research. There are so few women in the crypto world, I would’ve found it fascinating to delve into her background and motivations further, find out exactly what went wrong in _her_ life story to end up such a high profile white collar criminal. Her Wikipedia page states she became interested in Effective Altruism while in college — at what point did her altruism fail? When did the money and power corrupt her? What’s her side of the story?
* The pig butchering and human trafficking in Southeast Asian enabled by Tether and other cryptocurrencies is horrific.
Favorite quote:
“Bees don’t waste their time explaining to flies that honey is better than shit.”
- A message from Giancarlo Devasini, cofounder of Bitfinex, to the author in one of Faux’s final attempts to get an interview. You have to appreciate such an elegant slap in the face lol.