Book · How it goes wrong
Number Go Up
Zeke Faux · 2023
A reporter's sceptical tour of the crypto boom, arriving at FTX from the outside and asking the questions the insiders did not.
Why it is here
Faux spent the boom trying to establish whether the assets underlying the industry's largest claims actually existed, and reporting what he found when the answers were evasive. The method is unglamorous and it is exactly what diligence is.
The instructive contrast is with Going Infinite. One author had unparalleled access and produced a portrait many found credulous; the other had none and simply kept asking who was holding the assets. The second approach aged better, which is a finding about method rather than about either writer.
It is also very funny, which matters more than it should on a shelf this bleak.
Read it if
You want to see sceptical reporting used as a diligence method, on a subject where it was vindicated.
Skip it if
You have no interest in crypto — though the method transfers completely.