{
    "id": 487051,
    "slug": "number-go-up-zeker-faux",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "Number Go Up",
    "subtitle": null,
    "collection_title": null,
    "collection_part_number": null,
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "<p>In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it; celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it; and TV ads hailed it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knew how it worked&mdash;but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named &ldquo;digital asset&rdquo;? As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging feeling: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity&mdash;with a dash of FOMO&mdash;would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world&rsquo;s new financial machinery. Faux&rsquo;s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires. Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to &ldquo;ApeFest,&rdquo; an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Pok&eacute;mon knockoff mobile game touted by boosters as a cure for poverty. In an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring. When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, Faux brings readers inside SBF&rsquo;s penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest. Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Zeke Faux the accolade &ldquo;our great poet of crime&rdquo; from Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine, Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion.</p>",
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 304,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2023-09-12",
    "publication_date_latest": "2023-09-12",
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    "created_at": "2025-09-19T14:32:54+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-10-31T00:41:46+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 5382,
        "slug": "-13",
        "name": "",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T12:25:20+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T14:42:29+00:00"
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}