Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall

Number Go Up chronicles the rise and fall of cryptocurrency through investigative reporting by Zeke Faux. The book examines how Sam Bankman-Fried and others in the crypto industry transformed digital assets into a multi-trillion-dollar phenomenon, despite widespread lack of understanding about how the technology actually worked. Faux's two-year investigation takes him across the globe. He visits a luxury resort in the Bahamas where Bankman-Fried discusses using his fortune for philanthropic purposes, attends an elite party in the Bahamas by purchasing a $20,000 digital image, and travels to El Salvador to observe the country's Bitcoin investment strategy. In the Philippines, Faux encounters a mobile game marketed as a poverty solution, and in Cambodia, he discovers a crypto-related human-trafficking operation. The narrative culminates in 2022 when the crypto bubble collapses, bringing readers into Bankman-Fried's penthouse as he faces arrest. The book is a finalist for the Edgar Award, Macavity Award, Porchlight Business Book Award, and SABEW Best in Business Book Award, and was named a best book of the year by The New York Times DealBook, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, and other publications.