I resisted writing about cryptocurrency for years. One of my editors had suggested to me that readers are so naturally skeptical of crypto that there was no point in investigating any particular company. But around the time of the pandemic lockdowns, that seemed to change. Suddenly otherwise serious people were saying crypto was going to change the world. My friends were asking me if they should invest, doing it against my advice and then making a lot of money. Crypto bros were joining the ranks of the world’s richest people. I decided to see what it was all about. In reporting my first crypto story–about a coin called Tether–I met so many interesting characters I decided it could make for a fun book.

I’m fascinated by people who don’t feel the need to follow the same rules that we mostly live by. When a financier isn’t afraid of a lawsuit or even potential criminal charges, it opens up a lot of possibilities. I can appreciate the cleverness that goes into exploiting a loophole or evading a regulation. As I told one subject, I wouldn’t be writing about you if you were just selling Nikes.

Even now, the debate over cryptocurrency regulation is shaped by the industry’s wildly successful public-relations engine, which has focused attention on crypto’s potential and not the industry’s actual impact. The crypto industry tells a great story about innovative technology and financial inclusion. And no one wants to naysay the next Internet. But politicians should judge the industry based on what it has actually produced of value in the 14 years since Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin: not much. I hope this book will cut through some of the cryptological haze and allow people to use common sense to evaluate the industry.