Crypto Crackup

Crypto Crackup

Author: Ash Bennington

Publisher: Post Hill Press

Published: 2023-09-26

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13:

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Sam Bankman-Fried—better known as SBF—was at the top of the world and lauded as a leading figure in cryptocurrency, an industry whose popularity has exploded over the past few years. He was being compared to the legendary financier J.P. Morgan and sometimes even rumored to have the potential to become the world’s first trillionaire. He built a crypto empire with trading firm Alameda Research and crypto exchange FTX, which became one of the world’s largest. He attracted leading investors and walked the corridors of power in Congress. Then, seemingly within days, everything collapsed. FTX went bankrupt, and SBF was arrested, extradited from the Bahamas to the United States, and charged with multiple counts of fraud and other criminal offenses. The world was gripped but left wondering: How did SBF burst onto the scene and take the crypto world by storm only to come crashing down? What makes his case so special? And what does effective altruism have to do with it? Crypto Crackup explores his early days—his road from traditional finance to setting up Alameda and FTX, to the massive crash that swept both away and left SBF potentially facing decades in prison. Crypto Crackup will help you better understand SBF’s spectacular journey, even if you know little to nothing about crypto. If you want to understand more about SBF, how FTX’s bankruptcy left a mess that’s been described as “worse than Enron,” and why so much of this played out on Twitter—this book is for you.


Number Go Up

Number Go Up

Author: Zeke Faux

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2024-10-01

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0593443837

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The “rollicking” (The Economist), “masterfully written” (The Washington Post) account of the crypto delusion, and how Sam Bankman-Fried and a cast of fellow nerds and hustlers turned useless virtual coins into trillions of dollars—hailed by Ezra Klein in The New York Times as one of the “Books That Explain Where We Are” FINALIST: the Edgar Award (Fact Crime), the Macavity Award (Nonfiction), the Porchlight Business Book Award • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times DealBook, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, Irish Examiner, Morningstar, The Verge, Wired In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it, celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it, and TV ads hailed it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knew how it worked—but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named “digital asset”? As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging question: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity—with a dash of FOMO—would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world’s new financial machinery. Faux’s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires. Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to “ApeFest,” an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles upon a Pokémon knockoff mobile game touted by boosters as a cure for poverty. And in an astonishing development, a spam text leads Faux to Cambodia, where he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring. When the bubble suddenly bursts in 2022, Faux brings readers inside SBF’s penthouse as the fallen crypto king faces his imminent arrest. Fueled by the absurd details and authoritative reporting that earned Zeke Faux the accolade “our great poet of crime” (Money Stuff columnist Matt Levine), Number Go Up is the essential chronicle, by turns harrowing and uproarious, of a $3 trillion financial delusion.


Kings of Crypto

Kings of Crypto

Author: Jeff John Roberts

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1647820197

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"Tech writer Roberts debuts with a page-turning account of the rise of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase from the Y Combinator startup incubator to becoming a 'pillar of the larger crypto economy.'" — Publisher's Weekly For a moment late in 2018, one bitcoin, which physically amounts to a few electrons blipping on a tiny bit of silicon, was worth $20,000—the same as a pound of gold. Libertarian technologists who believed bitcoin would be the foundation of a new world order saw the moment as an apotheosis. Everyone else saw a bubble. Everyone else was right, and the bubble burst. But bitcoin survived, and the battle for its soul rages on. Kings of Crypto drops us into the unfolding drama, tracing the rise, fall, and rebirth of cryptocurrency through the experiences of major players across the globe. We follow Silicon Valley entrepreneur Brian Armstrong and the turbulent rocket ride of his startup, Coinbase, as he tries to take bitcoin mainstream while fighting off hackers, thieves, and zealots. Author Jeff John Roberts keenly observes the world of virtual currencies and what happens when startups try to disrupt the world of high finance. Clear explanations of crypto technology are woven into an amazing landscape full of meme-fueled startup hijinks, hacking (so much hacking!), shady investors, government investigations, billionaire bros and their Lambos, and closed-door meetings with Jamie Dimon. This is the surprising story of the origins of cryptocurrency and how it is changing money forever.


CryptoDad

CryptoDad

Author: J. Christopher Giancarlo

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 111985508X

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An insider's account of the rise of digital money and cryptocurrencies Dubbed "CryptoDad" for his impassioned plea to Congress to acknowledge and respect cryptocurrencies as the inevitable product of a fast-growing technological wave and a free marketplace, Chris Giancarlo is considered one of "the most influential individuals in financial regulation." CryptoDad: The Fight for the Future of Money describes Giancarlo’s own reckoning with the future of the global economy—at the intersection of markets, technology, and public policy—and lays out the fight for a Digital Dollar. CryptoDad is Giancarlo's own personal story, detailing his forays into the world of Wall Street to his tenure as the 13th Chairman of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where he pushed for the agency to recognize the digitization of markets. His growing fame as a Twitter presence in this essential debate has given Giancarlo a platform to makes a case for the future of cryptocurrencies as the natural successor to America’s current failing financial market infrastructure. CryptoDad provides readers with: A thorough exploration of digital change and how it affects the lives of everyone in a global economy A revolutionary consideration of regulatory responses to the rapid pace of technological innovation A call to update our aging financial organizations, particularly the infrastructure of money itself, and focus on renewed faith and confidence in free market innovation A foreword by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, two of the biggest names in cryptocurrencies CryptoDad argues that the next digital wave will be the coming Internet of Value, where cryptocurrencies will do the Internet of Information did to immaterial things: make them accessible, distributable, and movable instantly across the globe. This book is an ideal introduction to the importance of technology in the marketplace.


Crack-Up Capitalism

Crack-Up Capitalism

Author: Quinn Slobodian

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2023-04-04

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1250753902

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A Fortune best nonfiction book of 2023 In a revelatory dispatch from the frontier of capitalist extremism, an acclaimed historian of ideas shows how free marketeers are realizing their ultimate goal: an end to nation-states and the constraints of democracy. Look at a map of the world and you’ll see a colorful checkerboard of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. Over the last decade, globalization has shattered the map into different legal spaces: free ports, tax havens, special economic zones. With the new spaces, ultracapitalists have started to believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether. Crack-Up Capitalism follows the most notorious radical libertarians—from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel—around the globe as they search for the perfect space for capitalism. Historian Quinn Slobodian leads us from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the former frontier of the American West, from the medieval City of London to the gold vaults of right-wing billionaires, and finally into the world’s oceans and war zones, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where market competition is unfettered by democracy. A masterful work of economic and intellectual history, Crack-Up Capitalism offers both a new way of looking at the world and a new vision of coming threats. Full of rich details and provocative analysis, Crack-Up Capitalism offers an alarming view of a possible future.


Investigating Cryptocurrencies

Investigating Cryptocurrencies

Author: Nick Furneaux

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2018-05-10

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1119480574

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Investigate crimes involving cryptocurrencies and other blockchain technologies Bitcoin has traditionally been the payment system of choice for a criminal trading on the Dark Web, and now many other blockchain cryptocurrencies are entering the mainstream as traders are accepting them from low-end investors putting their money into the market. Worse still, the blockchain can even be used to hide information and covert messaging, unknown to most investigators. Investigating Cryptocurrencies is the first book to help corporate, law enforcement, and other investigators understand the technical concepts and the techniques for investigating crimes utilizing the blockchain and related digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Understand blockchain and transaction technologies Set up and run cryptocurrency accounts Build information about specific addresses Access raw data on blockchain ledgers Identify users of cryptocurrencies Extracting cryptocurrency data from live and imaged computers Following the money With nearly $150 billion in cryptocurrency circulating and $3 billion changing hands daily, crimes committed with or paid for with digital cash are a serious business. Luckily, Investigating Cryptocurrencies Forensics shows you how to detect it and, more importantly, stop it in its tracks.


The Crypto Launderers

The Crypto Launderers

Author: David Carlisle

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2024-02-12

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1394203195

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Re-discover the crypto underground In The Crypto Launderers: Crime and Cryptocurrencies from the Dark Web to DeFi and Beyond, renowned anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing expert David Carlisle delivers a fascinating breakdown of the impact of crime on the world of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Tracking the history and evolution of crypto crime from the rise of the Dark Web to the present day, Carlisle recounts how an increasingly complex money laundering ecosystem has taken root in the crypto space. He describes in vivid detail how North Korean cyber thieves, Russian hackers, narcotics traffickers, and other illicit actors have moved billions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrencies through the blockchain, exploiting new technological innovations to profit from their crimes. In response, regulators, private industry, and law enforcement have begun fighting back against bad actors abusing cryptocurrencies – scoring critical victories along the way, but also igniting important and sometimes fierce debates about the future of innovation, finance, and the law. The author explains: A wide variety of technologies exploited by criminals, including mixers, privacy coins, Bitcoin ATMs, decentralized finance applications, and NFTs The rise of ransomware and the industrialization of the cybercriminal ecosystem How the transparency of the blockchain leaves criminals vulnerable to detection, while fueling controversial debates about financial privacy Emerging innovations, such as the rise of the metaverse, that could shape the future of crypto crime An engrossing and comprehensive analysis of the intersection of crime, technology, and finance, The Crypto Launderers will prove impossible to put down for readers with an interest in law, finance, tech, and the blockchain – as well as for anyone with even a passing interest in cryptocurrencies.


The Cryptopians

The Cryptopians

Author: Laura Shin

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2022-02-22

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1541763009

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The story of the idealists, technologists, and opportunists fighting to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. In their short history, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone through booms, busts, and internecine wars, recently reaching a market valuation of more than $2 trillion. The central promise of crypto endures—vast fortunes made from decentralized networks not controlled by any single entity and not yet regulated by many governments. The recent growth of crypto would have been all but impossible if not for a brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and his creation: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the founding of this novel cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, thus creating a new crypto fever. She introduces readers to larger-than-life characters like Buterin, the Web3 wunderkind; his short-lived CEO, Charles Hoskinson; and Joe Lubin, a former Goldman Sachs VP who became one of crypto’s most well-known billionaires. Sparks fly as these outsized personalities fight for their piece of a seemingly limitless new business opportunity. This fascinating book shows the crypto market for what it really is: a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.


Crypto Decrypted

Crypto Decrypted

Author: Jake Ryan

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2023-05-09

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1394178522

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Break through your “crypto curiosity” and uncover why blockchain innovation will revolutionize our economy, culture, and the future of investing—as well as how to navigate it safely. Between the booms, crashes, jargon, and flashy memes, blockchain technology and digital assets have not been easy for ordinary investors to understand. Hopeful investors in blockchain, digital assets, and crypto everywhere have a lengthy list of questions—and the list keeps getting longer and more nuanced. But who do they turn to for answers? In Crypto Decrypted, Tradecraft Capital’s Jake Ryan and James Diorio decrypt a new world that is hidden in plain view, accessible currently to folks “in the know.” This book is for anyone who finds themselves lost in the blockchain babble, exploring and explaining not only how to participate, but the often overlooked reasons why this new technology is relevant to every human being. Ryan and Diorio dive in deeply, debunking common myths, clarifying major breakthroughs that are often disregarded, and providing easy-to-understand answers for both crypto newbies and blockchain enthusiasts, so they can move beyond the short-term to explore what great opportunities lie ahead for blockchain technologies while providing approaches to investing more safely and soundly so that you too can profit from this technological revolution. You will learn: The basics of blockchain technology, which will allow you to better navigate this new world. The truth that debunks the six most common myths about crypto and blockchain. What the Byzantine Generals’ Problem is, why it is important, and how it will impact your future. Why blockchain technology is so important and how it is relevant to you—yes, you! The ways in which blockchain innovation will transform our financial systems, our economy, and society itself. How to participate in lower risk approaches in investing in digital assets to diversify your retirement portfolio. Why the Information Age is over and that we’ve already begun a new long-wave economic cycle, the Age of Autonomy® , what the Autonomous Economy will look like in the coming years, and how it will impact us. Just as the internet revolutionized our world decades ago, blockchain technology will impact every person and businesses on the planet– for the better – in the decades to come.