Book Review: Cryptomania is a strange but interesting read
It’s difficult to explain why I both enjoyed and disliked Cryptomania . On the one hand, it’s necessary to acknowledge that Andrew Chow, the author, and a TIME Magazine correspondent, is a very good, very experienced writer who knows how to move a story along in such a way that the reader is hardly aware that they’re engaging in the task of reading. On the other hand, it’s odd that Chow decided that the best way to connect and explain the collapse of FTX and Alameda Research was through weaving together real-life tales of success and loss via NFTs. Neither FTX nor Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) were widely engaged in the NFT space so to choose them as the main through line of a 40-chapter book seems like a real missed opportunity to delve into the murky worlds of offshore banks, money laundering, and international arbitrage in crypto. Cryptomania is both an easy read and a — sometimes manic — discussion about all things crypto-related that transpired over a couple of tumultuou...