Narrator: In February 2022, investigative reporter Zeke Faux sat across from a man hailed as the J.P. Morgan of his generation: the 29-year-old crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. In his chaotic Bahamas office, surrounded by beanbags and the hum of computers, Bankman-Fried looked Faux in the eye and made a promise: "I'm not going to lie." As Faux would later discover, this was a lie. Bankman-Fried was not a genius revolutionizing finance; he was the architect of one of the largest financial frauds in history, secretly embezzling billions of dollars from his customers. This encounter became the prologue to a much larger story of delusion, greed, and systemic deception. In his book, Number Go Up, Zeke Faux embarks on a global investigation to unravel the absurdity of the crypto boom, revealing a world built not on complex technology, but on the simple, seductive, and ultimately hollow promise that the number will always, always go up.

Narrator: Faux's journey into the crypto rabbit hole began not with its kings, but with its plumbing. His initial skepticism was sparked by the seemingly nonsensical rise of Dogecoin, a joke currency that made his friend Jay feel like "freaking Nostradamus" for turning a small bet into a Disney World vacation. This irrationality led Faux to investigate a far more critical, yet mysterious, entity: Tether. Tether is a "stablecoin," a digital token supposedly pegged one-to-one with the U.S. dollar, acting as the banking system for the entire crypto world. Trillions of dollars in trades relied on the promise that every Tether was backed by a real dollar in a bank.

However, when Faux started digging, he found that this promise was built on shadows. No one on Wall Street had ever done business with Tether, despite its claims of holding billions in commercial paper. The company was run by a group of elusive figures with questionable pasts. Faux’s investigation took him to the Bahamas to meet Jean Chalopin, the chairman of Deltec Bank, one of the few institutions willing to hold Tether’s money. Chalopin defended Tether, but a leaked document later revealed its reserves weren't just in safe cash equivalents; they included billions in risky, short-term loans to Chinese companies, a far cry from the stable foundation it promised the world.

Narrator: To understand Tether, Faux had to understand its creators, particularly its enigmatic CFO, Giancarlo Devasini. Devasini’s history reads like a work of fiction. He began his career as a plastic surgeon in Italy but quit abruptly, disgusted by what he called the "exploitation of a whim." He then pivoted to importing electronics, a venture that ended with him paying a hefty settlement to Microsoft over accusations of selling counterfeit software. Later, his CD and DVD factory mysteriously burned down after becoming unprofitable. On his personal blog, he expressed a cynical worldview, disdain for banks, and a strange admiration for Bernie Madoff, wondering how one man could orchestrate such a massive scam while regulators were "playing Tetris."

This was the man in charge of the finances for a stablecoin that held the crypto economy in its hands. Devasini and his partners at the crypto exchange Bitfinex had taken over Tether in its early days. They needed it to survive. After being hacked for over $100 million in 2016 and losing access to traditional banks, they realized Tether was the perfect tool to circumvent the rules, creating their own form of digital dollars to keep the casino running.

Narrator: The questionable characters and shaky finances behind Tether were not bugs in the system; they were features of a culture built on a single, powerful belief: Number Go Up. Faux captured this mania at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, an event that felt more like a religious revival than a financial summit. Miami’s mayor declared the city the "capital of Bitcoin," and tech evangelists like Jack Dorsey proclaimed that Bitcoin "changes absolutely everything."

The core philosophy was best articulated by a speaker named Dan Held, who called it "number go up technology." The price is the product. As the price rises, more people become aware of it and buy in, anticipating it will climb higher, which in turn drives the price up further. This circular logic was echoed by figures like Michael Saylor, a CEO who sank billions of his company’s money into Bitcoin and tweeted bizarre aphorisms, calling it a "swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom." This quasi-religious fervor created an environment where fundamental value was irrelevant; the only thing that mattered was getting in before the number went up even more.

Narrator: At the center of this mania stood Sam Bankman-Fried, who cultivated an image not of a flashy crypto bro, but of a brilliant, altruistic nerd. He was a champion of "effective altruism," a philosophy that argues for using logic and reason to do the most good possible. SBF’s version was "earning to give": he would make billions of dollars in the crypto markets so he could one day give it all away to save humanity from existential risks like pandemics and rogue AI. This narrative was incredibly effective. He became a massive political donor, spreading nearly $100 million across both parties to influence regulation. He spent tens of millions on a Super Bowl ad with Larry David, encouraging millions of ordinary people to not "miss out" on crypto.

But behind the carefully crafted image of a selfless utilitarian, a different reality was unfolding. As Faux observed while shadowing him, SBF seemed to justify any action as long as it served the greater good. In a podcast interview, he chillingly described "yield farming" in a way that was indistinguishable from a Ponzi scheme—a company creates a magic box, convinces people to put money in it, and the value of their tokens goes up as more people join. It was a stunning admission that the entire industry could be built on nothing.

Narrator: While billionaires and celebrities partied in the Bahamas, the "number go up" dream had devastating real-world consequences. Faux traveled to the Philippines to document the aftermath of Axie Infinity, a "play-to-earn" game that was promoted as the future of work. During the pandemic, thousands of Filipinos, many of whom had lost their jobs, borrowed money to buy the game's cartoon NFTs, hoping to earn a living by collecting its in-game currency, Smooth Love Potion (SLP). For a brief period, it worked. People like Arthur Lapina were earning more than the average national salary and building new homes for their families.

But the game’s economy was unsustainable by design. It required a constant influx of new players to prop up the value of SLP. When the hype faded, the price of SLP crashed to virtually zero. Faux found communities shattered by the collapse. Lapina was left with an unfinished house and a sense of shame. Another player, Sheila Quigan, who had borrowed from her mother to invest, was left with nothing, still checking the price of her worthless tokens every day, clinging to the false hope that the number might one day go up again.

Narrator: The entire flimsy structure was destined to collapse. The fall began in May 2022 with the implosion of another crypto project called Terra-Luna, which set off a chain reaction. The crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital went bankrupt. The lending platform Celsius, which Faux had investigated, froze customer withdrawals and revealed it had a massive hole in its balance sheet. But the final, most shocking domino to fall was Sam Bankman-Fried.

It was revealed that FTX was not the safe, regulated exchange it claimed to be. SBF had been secretly funneling billions of dollars in customer funds to his personal trading firm, Alameda Research, to cover its reckless bets. When a rival exchange owner exposed the scheme, it triggered a bank run that FTX could not survive. The company declared bankruptcy, and SBF’s $16 billion fortune vanished overnight. His top lieutenants confessed to the fraud, and the altruistic boy-king was arrested in the Bahamas, his philanthropic empire exposed as a house of cards.

Narrator: Ultimately, Number Go Up reveals that the cryptocurrency boom was not a complex financial revolution misunderstood by the old guard. It was a simple, old-fashioned story of fraud, greed, and collective delusion, supercharged by technology that made it easier than ever to run scams at a global scale. The book's most important takeaway is that behind the jargon of blockchains and DeFi, the core mechanisms were often just dressed-up Ponzi schemes, reliant on hype and the recruitment of new believers to keep the numbers going up.

Yet, as Faux concludes his journey, a chilling reality remains. Even after the spectacular collapse of FTX and the exposure of so much fraud, Tether—the original mystery, the financial core of the entire ecosystem—is still standing. It is bigger and more powerful than ever, processing hundreds of billions in transactions. The story of crypto may not be over, leaving us with a haunting question: Was Sam Bankman-Fried the final boss, or is the biggest domino yet to fall?