**Subheading**
During the Spring Festival, I took the opportunity to read “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.” The more I read, the more frustrated I became, struggling with whether I should write a book review that might offend others.
While I aimed to maintain my edge, I also reminded myself to remain calm; ultimately, what convinced me to put pen to paper was the demeanor of the book’s publisher, Shen Yunchong, the publisher of “Morning Finance.” Earlier this year, Mr. Shen intended to send me a copy of “Number,” but I politely declined, expressing my desire to pay for it instead. After purchasing and reading it, I honestly informed him that I did not like it. He not only did not take offense but generously invited me to his podcast to candidly discuss my thoughts on the book.
Mr. Shen is an understanding person, well aware that it is easy to ignore a book but challenging to critically assess it. Below, I have transformed the content of our interview into text and supplemented it, reflecting my respect for the author and the writing, as well as my admiration for Mr. Shen and the publishing process.
To me, cryptocurrency is meaningless; it is clearly a scam. Despite having no intrinsic value, many people continue to buy it. Writing an exposé on crypto scams feels akin to asking a food critic to review a cheap fast-food restaurant.
Even without reading the text or looking at the introduction, readers can somewhat guess from the title that the author of “Number,” Zeke Faux, holds views contrary to mine. However, this is not the reason for my dissatisfaction with the book. The real issue with “Number” lies in its method of drawing conclusions: Faux derides cryptocurrency as a worthless scam, arguing that the crypto space is rife with numerous scams and speculative activities.
I must clarify that I do not deny the scams and speculation the author discusses; I might even detest them more than he does. However, even assuming the author’s case studies are entirely accurate, it remains a typical case of equivocation, conflating the statement “scamming techniques involve cryptocurrency” with “cryptocurrency itself is a scam.” This kind of equivocation is akin to investigating several stock market scams, such as false accounting and insider trading, and concluding that the stock market is a scam; or exposing multiple phone scams and then asserting that telecommunications networks and telephones are fraudulent—this is clearly illogical.
In fact, the author himself is a “Bloomberg investigative reporter, responsible for tracking Wall Street con artists and market vultures” (as cited in the book introduction). I genuinely appreciate Faux’s hands-on approach to understanding the subject, but I cannot agree with his logic. While Faux has extensively reported on financial crimes in the past, this does not mean he would dismiss the significance of the dollar, limited liability companies, or capitalism. Unless he harbors a deep-seated prejudice against blockchain and cryptocurrency, it is hard to imagine such an experienced journalist would confuse these basic logical distinctions.
People in the crypto space often brag about the limitless potential of blockchain applications, but the only industry that has realized these claims is fraud.
Another typical flaw in the book is the generalization of a specific instance. “Number” begins with the author asserting that the stablecoin USDT lacks corresponding dollar backing and relentlessly pursues the revelation of USDT’s dark secrets while investigating many other projects in the process. Not to mention Faux’s incomplete success in exposing USDT’s fraud—failing to clearly identify any “weapons of mass destruction”—even if he had concrete evidence, it does not justify a wholesale dismissal of the value of cryptocurrency because of USDT. The author clearly knows that another stablecoin, USDC, is available in the U.S., and the company’s executives would likely be willing to be interviewed, yet he hardly mentions it; the term “USDC” appears only once in the entire book.
I do not intend to suggest that Faux is responsible for interviewing successful projects; in fact, I do not believe that covering both sides and summarizing their respective positions constitutes an exemplary “neutral” report. For instance, I do not hide my embrace of cryptography and cryptocurrencies, focusing on how related technologies can improve society and the ups and downs of the practical process. Some have expressed dissatisfaction with this, accusing me of glossing over the negative aspects, which I find perplexing. I do not deny or deliberately conceal the bizarre aspects of the industry, but I do not understand why the onus of revealing problems falls on me.
Returning to “Number,” since the entire book is positioned to investigate the dark side of the crypto space, it is not unreasonable for Faux to overlook successful blockchain cases and various attempts to build a new world; however, to deny their existence and conclude that cryptocurrency “is meaningless and clearly a scam” is not only an overgeneralization but also disregards facts, ignoring the efforts of countless entrepreneurs, contributors, and cypherpunks working to build a society with blockchain.
Many people in the crypto space I have interviewed also tell me that most cryptocurrencies are scams, except for theirs. Today, some of these individuals are imprisoned, awaiting trial, facing civil lawsuits, or bankrupt. Being in the crypto space seems difficult to escape such a fate.
Another point that made me uncomfortable while reading is that although Faux traveled around the world, his mindset remained rooted in American and traditional financial perspectives, lacking empathy for other viewpoints.
Having lived for years in a country protected by constitutional rights and with a highly developed financial system, Faux seems completely unaware that concepts such as money, law, and state are all social constructs. Gold took a long historical journey before gaining global recognition; the order of nation-states has only been gradually established for a few hundred years; the dollar has dominated the world for only a century, and online shopping was still illegal in the 1990s. It is understandable that the general public lacks imagination about possibilities beyond the current order, but Faux’s book condemning cryptocurrency as useless, while discussing only the current state without exploring the underlying concepts and historical context, is a significant oversight.
Living in the U.S., where opening a bank account or obtaining a credit card is straightforward, the legal tender is the most “stable” global currency, and debt issuance has global backing, Faux must surely know that legal tender in financially underdeveloped countries often continues to depreciate, with many people unable to open bank accounts. For the marginalized population of over a billion people, cryptocurrency wallets and dollar-pegged stablecoins, which do not require approval and can be accessed by anyone, bring genuine financial autonomy. Yet Faux seems to assume that everyone in the world can enjoy the financial advantages of Americans, overlooking the needs of regions like the Global South.
What I found most intolerable was that in the final chapter, Faux casually extolled the convenience of credit cards compared to cryptocurrencies. I initially thought that even with differing viewpoints, he would at least attempt to understand what deep insights the author has; I never expected that after reading over 100,000 words, this Bloomberg reporter, who spent two years on public funds traveling the world to investigate, would conclude that credit cards are great for accumulating flight miles!
After investigating cryptocurrencies around the world, I have gained a new understanding of my Visa credit card—it can be used immediately, requires just a gentle swipe, incurs no fees, and never asks me to remember a long string of numbers or hide my password in the backyard; it even allows me to accumulate airline miles.
Unlike readers who buy books at a bookstore attracted by new covers, I did the opposite: I purchased “Number” without even looking at the introduction. After finishing it, I glanced at the book jacket and was astonished to find that publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, The Irish Times, Morningstar, The Verge, and Wired all rated the original version of “Number Go Up” as the Book of the Year for 2023.
In light of this, I can think of two possibilities: either the problem lies with me, or after the NFT bubble burst, FTX collapsed, and the bear market caused public losses, society urgently needed a scapegoat. At this moment, riding the wave of exposing the truth about the crypto space, “Number Go Up,” written by a well-known award-winning financial journalist, was published, and the media unanimously praised it.
In contrast, the Chinese version of “Infinite Storm: The Rise and Fall Symphony of the FTX Empire,” also published by Morning Finance, was released around the same time as Michael Lewis’s “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon.” It is insightful and highly professional but does not completely deny the essence of FTX and cryptocurrency, resulting in average reviews. The public expects the media to be neutral, truth-seeking, and insightful; unfortunately, at least on this issue, emotions, political correctness, and catering to preferences dominate reporting.
A year and a half after the English version of this book was published, a bull market has returned, and the new President Trump overturned his previous stance on cryptocurrency, terminating most SEC lawsuits against the web3 industry, declaring the establishment of a cryptocurrency strategic reserve, and clearly abandoning central bank digital currency in favor of stablecoins. I am curious what Faux and the media think now—do they believe that the government and the crypto space are deceiving the people together, or do they think there is no conflict and that the nature of cryptocurrency has changed over the past year?
I absolutely do not believe that the significance of decentralized technology will change based on the stance of a president (which can change at any time). The essence of blockchain and cryptocurrency will not rely on the endorsement of government but rather on the mass application of web3. Writing this, I finally understand the true reason for my frustration while reading “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall”: “Practice is the only criterion for testing truth.” Instead of spending over ten hours reading this book, I should have invested my time in research and science popularization, allowing LikeCoin and DHK to genuinely integrate into the daily lives of the public, thereby serving as a counterexample to this book.
This article is reproduced in collaboration with: Gao Chongjian.