I had an hour to kill at the library, figured I would burn the time by skimming this book until I got bored – a middling actor’s adventures in crypto didn’t sound like compelling reading. 

Boy was I wrong. This is quite good, and will surely ride you over until the Michael Lewis/SBF book comes out in October. Lewis even makes a cameo in this one, and the authors might regret the way they characterize him.

Anyway! There are a few chapters I skipped most of: high-school level descriptions of how blockchain works, or the authors’ anecdotes of ‘how I wound up in this mess’. Most of that is done by about the 1/4 mark. 

Then it gets good! Fun stories of unexpected encounters with crypto bros, some fairly lucid accounts of how things fell apart, and a few throwaway stories that make for good fun but little substance (looking at you, sxsw x fbi story). 

The centrepiece is two chapters in the middle of this: one is a profile of Bukele’s crypto (mis)adventures in El Salvador, and the other is a sit-down interview with SBF, minus his handler. Each of these alone are worth the price of admission. McKenzie can tell a story, and like Lewis, seems to have a knack for showing up at the right time. 

The last 1/4 of the book details the downfall of FTX and the other companies in its orbit (as recently as SVB early in 2023). This gets dry and reads like a long form WSJ piece, but it will be useful for those new to the story. 

One really interesting bit of this book is the way they theorize around the broad appeal of crypto, and the credulity of many of the enthusiasts – the authors make some loose connections to how legal sportsbetting, cheap money (ie near zero interest rates) and a total lack of regulation set the stage for this enormous theft. They were interesting threads to pull together that I hadn’t considered. 

Overall, it was an enjoyable. I didn’t read every paragraph, but it earned a lot more than the hour I had intended to commit to it.