- Nov 26, 2011
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This is a book about the idiocy of cryptocurrencies and the crypto bros who have been sucked into that foolishness.
Investigative reporter Zeke Faux (pronounced "Fox") literally travels all over the world in pursuit of an honest cryptocurrency. He becomes particularly obsessed with the "stable coin" Tether. Each Tether coin is supposedly backed one US dollar, but this really stretches belief as there are 94 billion Tethers in digital circulation.
Tether was started by two very sketchy characters whose pasts he delves into. This reporter is incredibly thorough.
Faux explores how people use crypto currencies and finds most uses are for sex trafficking, money laundering, and drugs. This makes sense since you can't use crypto to buy groceries or movie tickets or any other things you buy with real money.
Faux does find a McDonald's somewhere in Europe where you can buy a Big Mac with crypto, but the process to do so is so stupid and time consuming and costly, it just hammers home how useless crypto really is.
In my opinion, crypto currencies are the new beanie babies. Everyone is looking for the next sucker to buy one.
Faux ends up in Cambodia where he finds Tether is used for an underground slave trade and a scam called "pig butchering". This scam is used to bilk Americans out of billions of dollars a year.
You can learn more about pig butchering in an excerpt here:
Faux visits various crypto conventions where the true bleevers chug the Kool-Aid. Quite a spectacle.
Faux spends a lot of time in the Bahamas, which has become the center of the crypto universe. And he travels to El Salvador where the dictator Nayib Bukele adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, and the subsequent financial mess this wreaked on those beleaguered people.
He also has contempt for Michael Lewis who drank Sam Bankman-Fried's brand of Kool-Aid. I have much enjoyed Lewis's books, but am very disappointed with how he fell for SBF's bullshit.
Think about it. Crypto was supposed to be more reliable and useful than the American dollar, and yet the prices of crypto currencies are more volatile than the commodities market!
This is a fascinating book. Even if you think you know all there is to know about crypto, you will find there is much you don't know in this book.
Investigative reporter Zeke Faux (pronounced "Fox") literally travels all over the world in pursuit of an honest cryptocurrency. He becomes particularly obsessed with the "stable coin" Tether. Each Tether coin is supposedly backed one US dollar, but this really stretches belief as there are 94 billion Tethers in digital circulation.
Tether was started by two very sketchy characters whose pasts he delves into. This reporter is incredibly thorough.
Faux explores how people use crypto currencies and finds most uses are for sex trafficking, money laundering, and drugs. This makes sense since you can't use crypto to buy groceries or movie tickets or any other things you buy with real money.
Faux does find a McDonald's somewhere in Europe where you can buy a Big Mac with crypto, but the process to do so is so stupid and time consuming and costly, it just hammers home how useless crypto really is.
In my opinion, crypto currencies are the new beanie babies. Everyone is looking for the next sucker to buy one.
Faux ends up in Cambodia where he finds Tether is used for an underground slave trade and a scam called "pig butchering". This scam is used to bilk Americans out of billions of dollars a year.
You can learn more about pig butchering in an excerpt here:
‘Don’t You Remember Me?’ The Crypto Hell on the Other Side of a Spam Text
Faux visits various crypto conventions where the true bleevers chug the Kool-Aid. Quite a spectacle.
Faux spends a lot of time in the Bahamas, which has become the center of the crypto universe. And he travels to El Salvador where the dictator Nayib Bukele adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, and the subsequent financial mess this wreaked on those beleaguered people.
He also has contempt for Michael Lewis who drank Sam Bankman-Fried's brand of Kool-Aid. I have much enjoyed Lewis's books, but am very disappointed with how he fell for SBF's bullshit.
Think about it. Crypto was supposed to be more reliable and useful than the American dollar, and yet the prices of crypto currencies are more volatile than the commodities market!
This is a fascinating book. Even if you think you know all there is to know about crypto, you will find there is much you don't know in this book.
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