Daniel: Sophia, if you had to describe the entire $3 trillion crypto boom in one sentence, what would it be? Sophia: Easy. A bunch of guys in hoodies reinvented the Ponzi scheme, but this time, with more laser eyes. Daniel: You are shockingly close to the truth. And our guide through that glittering, chaotic madness is the investigative journalist Zeke Faux in his book, Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. Sophia: I love that title. It’s so simple, so blunt, and it perfectly captures the entire philosophy, doesn't it? As long as the number goes up, don't ask any questions. Daniel: Exactly. And Faux is the perfect person to ask those questions. He's a senior reporter for Bloomberg, an award-winning journalist who has a history of exposing predatory lending. This isn't his first rodeo with financial scams. Sophia: That context is important. He’s not just a tech writer who got swept up in the hype. He’s a professional skeptic. Daniel: A professional skeptic who got so deep into this world that his book was actually used as evidence in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. Sophia: Whoa, hold on. The book itself was evidence? That’s not just a review, that’s a testament. Okay, I'm hooked. So if this whole thing was a house of cards, how on earth did it get so big? What was the belief system that pulled in so many people?

Daniel: It was a belief system that felt more like a religion. Faux takes us to the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, and it sounds less like a financial conference and more like a massive, high-tech revival meeting. You have the mayor of Miami getting on stage and declaring the city "the capital of capital," which he says means "the capital of Bitcoin." Sophia: Of course he did. It’s the ultimate hype machine. Everyone has a vested interest in making everyone else believe. Daniel: Precisely. You have tech celebrities like Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, saying with a straight face, "Bitcoin changes absolutely everything." But the most honest, and most terrifying, explanation came from a crypto marketer named Dan Held. Faux quotes him explaining what he calls "number go up technology." Sophia: "Number go up technology." That sounds like something out of a satire. What does it even mean? Daniel: It means the technology's primary feature is that its price increases. Held says, "It’s the price. As the price goes higher, more people become aware of it, and buy it in anticipation of the price continuing to climb." Sophia: That is the literal definition of a speculative bubble. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy with no underlying value. It’s a story people agree to believe in, and the story is just "this will be worth more tomorrow." Daniel: And nobody told a better story than Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF. He was the poster child for the "good billionaire" in crypto. Faux paints this incredible picture of him. While other crypto bros were buying Lamborghinis, SBF was driving a beat-up Corolla, sleeping on a beanbag in the office, and talking endlessly about "effective altruism"—this philosophy of making billions of dollars just to give it all away to save humanity. Sophia: Right, the nerdy, disheveled philanthropist. It’s a brilliant costume. It disarms you. You think, "This guy can't be a fraud; he doesn't even own a proper bed." Daniel: Faux describes visiting him in the Bahamas for an interview. SBF is in his signature schlumpy t-shirt and cargo shorts, and while he's on a video call with some of the most powerful people in finance, he's secretly playing a fantasy video game on his other screen. He's clicking away, leveling up his character, all while projecting this image of a boy genius who just happens to be building the future of money. Sophia: That is such a perfect metaphor. He’s playing a game, and everyone else thinks it’s reality. But surely, people in his inner circle, the people building this stuff, they had to know. Weren't there any red flags? Daniel: Oh, the red flags were everywhere, and this is where Faux's reporting is just devastating. He uncovers a podcast interview SBF did where he’s asked to explain "yield farming," one of these complex crypto investment schemes. And SBF, with stunning candor, basically describes a Ponzi scheme. Sophia: What did he say? Daniel: He describes it like this: you start with a company that builds a "box." You, the investor, put your money in the box. The box then gives you a new, made-up token. The token's price starts going up because more people are putting money in the box. He says, "You've got this box, and it's kind of dumb, but what's the stonk?"—meaning, what's the return? He admits the box itself might do literally nothing. Its only function is to attract more money to make the token price go up. Sophia: He called his own industry's products a "dumb box." And people still gave him billions of dollars? Daniel: The podcast host was floored. He said, "You're telling me it's a Ponzi scheme," and SBF just sort of agrees, saying there's a "depressing amount of validity" to that view. He called it "Ponzinomics." He laid out the entire scam for everyone to see, but because the number was still going up, nobody wanted to listen. Sophia: Wow. So the grand illusion wasn't just for the public; the people inside knew it was a game. They knew the box was empty. But for them, it's just numbers on a screen. It feels victimless. That leads to the real question: who was actually getting hurt by all this?

Daniel: And that is the question that transforms this book from a financial caper into a truly important piece of journalism. Faux takes us from the glitzy conferences in the Bahamas to the places where the "number go up" dream turned into a real-world nightmare. The first stop is the Philippines. Sophia: I remember hearing about this. It was tied to a video game, right? Axie Infinity. Daniel: Exactly. Axie Infinity was a "play-to-earn" game. During the pandemic, when millions of Filipinos were out of work, it was pitched as a lifeline. The idea was you could battle these cute little digital monsters, and in return, you'd earn a cryptocurrency called Smooth Love Potion, or SLP. You could then trade that for real money. For a while, it worked. People were earning more playing this game than they could at their old jobs. Sophia: It sounds like a digital gold rush. Daniel: It was. Faux tells the story of a woman named Sheila Quigan, a community organizer living in a precarious settlement in Manila. She and her husband borrowed money from her mother to buy the Axie monsters needed to play the game. They were hoping to earn enough to renovate their home, to give their kids a safer life. And for a few months, the dream felt real. Sophia: But the number doesn't go up forever. What happened? Daniel: The game's economy was fundamentally broken. The creators could mint an infinite supply of SLP tokens. As more players flooded in, the supply exploded, and the price crashed. It went from being worth around 40 cents to less than a penny. The dream evaporated overnight. Sheila and her family lost everything they'd invested. Faux finds that her story is one of millions. The game, which was backed by major American venture capitalists and hyped as the "future of work," was just another empty box. Sophia: That's just devastating. They weren't high-risk traders or billionaires; they were just regular people trying to feed their families. Daniel: And it gets even darker. The financial rails that powered this whole ecosystem, the untraceable, unregulated crypto tokens, enabled something far more sinister than just a failed video game. Faux starts investigating "pig-butchering" scams. Sophia: I've heard this term. It's a type of romance scam, isn't it? Daniel: A particularly cruel one. Scammers, often using fake profiles of attractive people, build a long-term relationship with a victim online. They "fatten the pig" with trust and affection, and then they convince them to invest in a fake crypto platform. The victims lose their life savings. But Faux asks the next question: who are the scammers? Sophia: And what did he find? Daniel: He finds that many of them are victims themselves. He travels to Cambodia and uncovers this horrific network of human trafficking. People from across Asia are lured with promises of legitimate jobs, then they're trapped in guarded compounds, their passports taken, and they are forced to work 16-hour days running these pig-butchering scams. If they don't meet their quotas, they're beaten or electrocuted. Sophia: My god. That's not a financial crime; that's modern slavery. What does this have to do with crypto? Daniel: The entire operation runs on one specific cryptocurrency: Tether. It's a "stablecoin," supposedly pegged one-to-one with the U.S. dollar. It's the grease in the wheels of the big crypto exchanges, what traders like SBF used to move billions. But it's also the perfect currency for criminals. It's fast, global, and virtually untraceable. The traffickers use Tether to pay for everything and to launder the money they steal from victims. Sophia: Wait. So the same financial instrument, the same token, that's propping up the trading for billionaires in the Bahamas is also the lifeblood of these horrific trafficking operations in Cambodia? That connection is chilling. Daniel: It's the central, damning discovery of the book. The high-flying, abstract world of "number go up" and the brutal, violent world of human trafficking are two sides of the same coin. They are both powered by the same lawless, unregulated technology.

Sophia: It's incredible. The book starts with what feels like a comedy of errors—quirky billionaires and ridiculous NFT monkeys—and ends in a place of profound human suffering. Daniel: And that's the genius of Faux's work. He shows that "Number Go Up" wasn't just a silly meme or a flawed investment thesis. It was a moral anesthetic. It was a story so powerful that it allowed everyone—from venture capitalists to ordinary investors—to ignore the empty promises, the shoddy technology, and the real-world harm, all because the price was climbing. Sophia: The number going up was the justification for everything. It didn't matter if the box was empty as long as someone else was willing to pay more for it tomorrow. Daniel: Exactly. The book reveals that the line between a visionary tech founder and a common scammer is sometimes just a matter of timing and narrative. SBF was a genius when the number was going up. When it went down, he was just a fraud who had stolen billions of dollars of customer money. The underlying actions were the same. Sophia: It really forces you to look at the systems we build and the stories we tell ourselves to justify them. The book is about crypto, but the theme is universal. Daniel: It is. The whole thing was a grand performance, and Zeke Faux was the one who stayed after the show to look behind the curtain. He found nothing there but trapdoors and mirrors. Sophia: It makes you wonder, in our own lives, what are the 'numbers' we chase—status, likes, promotions—that stop us from looking at the real cost? Daniel: That's a powerful question. And it’s one we hope our listeners will think about. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Join the conversation on our socials and let us know what you think. Sophia: This is Aibrary, signing off.