Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of Ftx's Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire

As cryptocurrency rose in popularity during the pandemic, new converts bought into the idea that crypto would not only make them rich, but would usher in imminent revolutions across art, finance, politics, and gaming. Cryptocurrency caught the zeitgeist through figures like FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who only two years later would be convicted of one of the most calamitous acts of financial fraud in US history.

During his meteoric rise, Sam Bankman-Fried outflanked idealists in the movement like Vitalik Buterin, who sought to build fairer, more democratic systems through Ethereum. Bankman-Fried pursued a growth-obsessed, by-any-means approach to crypto, which proved seductive to those who just wanted to get rich. But this Silicon Valley-like approach also drove the creation of a spate of high-risk financial instruments that mirrored those of the 2008 financial crisis. Accused of misleading investors and mishandling funds, Bankman-Fried became a target of prosecutors.

Now, Cryptomania unfolds the tumultuous twenty months inside this male-dominated, overhyped industry that led to its downfall. Drawing on exclusive reporting and an extensive network in the global NFT community, Andrew Chow chronicles the battle for crypto's soul, and the human toll of its economic meltdown--from the conmen and eccentrics driving the bubble to the victims caught in its burst.