Yep, another book about crypto, less than a month after I read Easy Money. I have Going Infinite loaded on my Kindle too, but I need to take a break after this one.
It’s okay. It’s kind of good. Zeke has done a lot of reporting, and I’ve read a lot of that reporting, so this book had less new information for me.
My summary of the difference between this an Easy Money is that I think Easy Money always aimed to be a story about the crypto boom and scams as a whole. Number Go Up, I think, was going to be a book about Tether, the controversial stablecoin project. If Zeke had uncovered the truth about that project and its founders, I think it would have been titled something different and his other experiences and plotlines would have yielded articles in a newspaper instead of chapters in a book. That is at least my impression.
Not that this is not a great book: it’s very good, and Zeke is a very legitimate reporter who uses his skills well. But I felt his frustration when he ran into so many dead-ends on the Tether story. They’re both pretty good books. I enjoyed this one a little less because I’m oversaturated on the topic, so that’s reflected in the rating (note: book ratings are purely whether I enjoyed them. I’m not claiming any pure objectivity).