published on : Wednesday, September 4, 2024
I have always been a cryptocurrency skeptic. I never really understood how they worked when I initially came across crypto currencies. Today, I understand how they work perfectly - crypto-currencies have no value, but they can be priced because there is a market. It was prof Aswath Damodaran who thoroughly explained to me how something can have a price but no value. His post on this subject is the best I’ve come across. Go read it: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-bitcoin-boom-asset-currency.html
Since I’m a skeptic, I have stayed away from crypo currencies. Never bought any, never traded any, no nothing. A few years ago, I started hearing a lot about ‘stablecoins’ and ‘proof-of-work’ versus ‘proof-of-stake’, and related crypto jargon.. I ignored almost all of it.
After the collapse of FTX, I wanted to more thoroughly understand what the hell was happening in this space just because I was stunned at how much money was being thrown at crypto. I bought Zeke Fauk’s book ‘Number Go Up’. And boy! was it a fun read!!
The entire book is excellent and I cannot recommend it highly enough. (I’m writing this post in the hopes that anyone who is on the fence about buying the book, or wants honest reviews, finds it. Given how gamified amazon product reviews have become).
Zeke starts out as a reporter trying to figure out if the company behind a stablecoin called “tether” actually has the funds it claims it has to honor the redemption of all “tether coins”. His journey is wild. His journey takes him from NYC to Florida, to the Bahamas, to Cambodia and he meets several colorful characters during the course of the novel.
What really makes the book great is the way in which Zeke breaks down all the fancy crypto speak using the anology of an excel sheet, throughout the book. The book is hilarious, explicatory and fascinating in equal parts. (Well, there are some parts of it where you genuinely feel scared for the author as he gets dangerously close to a few buildings abroad where there is suspected human trafficking.)
Overall, I learned a ton about bitcoin, various stable-coins, the characters behind them. The NFT pump and dump schemes, forex, regulatory regimes, the fraud behind FTX, and various other crypto exchanges, and probably the most useful lesson of all - to continue staying the fuck away from crypto.