Zeke Faux
Zeke Faux is an award-winning investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek, where he has spent over a decade profiling and exposing the hustlers, scammers, and hedge fund managers who populate the shady side of Wall Street. He resisted learning about cryptocurrencies until a bout of FOMO led him on a multi-year globe-trotting quest to get to the bottom of what he calls the greatest financial mania the world has ever seen. The result is his critically acclaimed debut Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. The book was a finalist for the Edgar Award (Fact Crime), the Macavity Award (Nonfiction), the Porchlight Business Book Award, and the SABEW Best in Business Book Award, and was named a best book of the year by The New York Times DealBook, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, Irish Examiner, Morningstar, The Verge, and Wired.
Released shortly before Michael Lewis’s Going Infinite, Faux’s Number Go Up is widely recognized by critics as the superior work on Sam Bankman-Fried and the saga surrounding the fall of FTX. As a reporter, Faux had a front row seat to the booming crypto industry at its peak and maintained levels of access that had him in SBF’s penthouse in the Bahamas just before the police hauled him away. Not to be mistaken for a vapid extended profile on the temporarily luxurious lives of overnight crypto billionaires, the book also reveals the darker sides of crypto, from what happens when assets as volatile as Bitcoin become a country’s legal tender to the ways the technology makes human trafficking easier and less traceable. In an interesting turn of events, Number Go Up was used as evidence by the prosecution in the federal trial against SBF that ultimately found him guilty on all counts.
Frequently lauded for its laugh-out-loud nature, Number Go Up is also a “serious financial investigation” where “Zeke Faux seems to be the only one asking the uncomfortable questions,” according to award-winning author Sarah Frier. The book was called “ludicrously compelling” by New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos, who wrote, “I, quite literally, couldn’t put it down—and I don’t even care about crypto.” It is a masterful exemplar of his life’s work investigating business ethics that meet the current moment’s crypto frenzy.
Faux is a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel award, and was named a finalist for the National Magazine Award. He’s also a former National Fellow at New America. His work has appeared in The New York Times, New York, and the anthologies The Year’s Best Sportswriting and The Best Business Writing.
Zeke Faux is an award-winning investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek, where he has spent over a decade profiling and exposing the hustlers, scammers, and hedge fund managers who populate the shady side of Wall Street. He resisted learning about cryptocurrencies until a bout of FOMO led him on a multi-year globe-trotting quest to get to the bottom of what he calls the greatest financial mania the world has ever seen. The result is his critically acclaimed debut Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. The book was a finalist for the Edgar Award (Fact Crime), the Macavity Award (Nonfiction), the Porchlight Business Book Award, and the SABEW Best in Business Book Award, and was named a best book of the year by The New York Times DealBook, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, Irish Examiner, Morningstar, The Verge, and Wired.
Released shortly before Michael Lewis’s Going Infinite, Faux’s Number Go Up is widely recognized by critics as the superior work on Sam Bankman-Fried and the saga surrounding the fall of FTX. As a reporter, Faux had a front row seat to the booming crypto industry at its peak and maintained levels of access that had him in SBF’s penthouse in the Bahamas just before the police hauled him away. Not to be mistaken for a vapid extended profile on the temporarily luxurious lives of overnight crypto billionaires, the book also reveals the darker sides of crypto, from what happens when assets as volatile as Bitcoin become a country’s legal tender to the ways the technology makes human trafficking easier and less traceable. In an interesting turn of events, Number Go Up was used as evidence by the prosecution in the federal trial against SBF that ultimately found him guilty on all counts.
Frequently lauded for its laugh-out-loud nature, Number Go Up is also a “serious financial investigation” where “Zeke Faux seems to be the only one asking the uncomfortable questions,” according to award-winning author Sarah Frier. The book was called “ludicrously compelling” by New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos, who wrote, “I, quite literally, couldn’t put it down—and I don’t even care about crypto.” It is a masterful exemplar of his life’s work investigating business ethics that meet the current moment’s crypto frenzy.
Faux is a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel award, and was named a finalist for the National Magazine Award. He’s also a former National Fellow at New America. His work has appeared in The New York Times, New York, and the anthologies The Year’s Best Sportswriting and The Best Business Writing.
For more information, please visit zekefaux.com.
Zeke Faux is an award-winning investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek, where he has spent over a decade profiling and exposing the hustlers, scammers, and hedge fund managers who populate the shady side of Wall Street. He resisted learning about cryptocurrencies until a bout of FOMO led him on a multi-year globe-trotting quest to get to the bottom of what he calls the greatest financial mania the world has ever seen. The result is his critically acclaimed debut Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. The book was a finalist for the Edgar Award (Fact Crime), the Macavity Award (Nonfiction), the Porchlight Business Book Award, and the SABEW Best in Business Book Award, and was named a best book of the year by The New York Times DealBook, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, Irish Examiner, Morningstar, The Verge, and Wired.
Released shortly before Michael Lewis’s Going Infinite, Faux’s Number Go Up is widely recognized by critics as the superior work on Sam Bankman-Fried and the saga surrounding the fall of FTX. As a reporter, Faux had a front row seat to the booming crypto industry at its peak and maintained levels of access that had him in SBF’s penthouse in the Bahamas just before the police hauled him away. Not to be mistaken for a vapid extended profile on the temporarily luxurious lives of overnight crypto billionaires, the book also reveals the darker sides of crypto, from what happens when assets as volatile as Bitcoin become a country’s legal tender to the ways the technology makes human trafficking easier and less traceable. In an interesting turn of events, Number Go Up was used as evidence by the prosecution in the federal trial against SBF that ultimately found him guilty on all counts.
Frequently lauded for its laugh-out-loud nature, Number Go Up is also a “serious financial investigation” where “Zeke Faux seems to be the only one asking the uncomfortable questions,” according to award-winning author Sarah Frier. The book was called “ludicrously compelling” by New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos, who wrote, “I, quite literally, couldn’t put it down—and I don’t even care about crypto.” It is a masterful exemplar of his life’s work investigating business ethics that meet the current moment’s crypto frenzy.
Faux is a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel award, and was named a finalist for the National Magazine Award. He’s also a former National Fellow at New America. His work has appeared in The New York Times, New York, and the anthologies The Year’s Best Sportswriting and The Best Business Writing.
For more information, please visit zekefaux.com.
The Geopolitics of Crypto
Cryptocurrencies are seemingly everywhere. What was once a curiosity for internet geeks has become a major player in financial markets and even global affairs. Countries, including the U.S., are contemplating establishing strategic crypto reserves. Others, like Venezuela, are using crypto to circumvent U.S. sanctions. A new era of unregulated financial markets is upon us, with easy access to high-risk crypto investments and gambling apps in everyone’s pockets. But that doesn’t mean anyone actually understands what blockchain, bitcoin mining, DeFi, or Web 3.0 means. Zeke Faux, author of the critically acclaimed book Number Go Up, moves from Miami’s crypto parties to the penthouse of convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried to the White House to explain a world embracing a technological innovation that baffles even some of its advocates and the ideology of an industry that’s earned massive profits while thumbing its nose at traditional regulation. With the wry humor and verve that’s made him a regular on NPR, MSNBC, and podcasts like Search Engine, Faux draws from his years of investigative reporting to answer questions like, why is the crypto industry spending more on politics than any other? What does it mean that the U.S. president has launched his own meme coin? Free from mystifying jargon and full of globe-trotting stories, Faux’s talk gives a clear-eyed look at how we got to this new era of finance.
Crypto Criminality
Zeke Faux’s journey into the criminal underbelly of cryptocurrency started with a spam text message, the kind most people receive regularly: “Hi David, I’m Vicky Ho. Don’t you remember me?” His deep dive into who was sending him these messages and why took him halfway around the world, to a compound where thousands of victims of human trafficking are trapped and forced to scam, under the threat of torture and worse. It’s a scam industry that now nets tens of billions of dollars a year, from retirees to executives to teenagers. Faux, the author of Number Go Up, goes deep down the rabbit hole to tell the story of how crypto super-charged these scams and what everyone can do to avoid falling victim to them, drawing on years of investigative reporting into frauds. “Few true crime revelations have thrown me for a loop like this investigation,” The New York Times wrote of Faux’s reporting. It’s a story that will change how you see scamming forever.
- Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall (Crown, 2023)
Selected Articles
Bitcoin’s Long Slide Explained by ‘Number Go Down’, Bloomberg
11 Hours With Sam Bankman-Fried: Inside The Bahamian Penthouse After FTX’s Fall, Bloomberg
The Master Thief, Bloomberg
Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?, Bloomberg
Sign Here to Lose Everything, Bloomberg
Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back, With a Vengeance, Bloomberg
How Two Guys Lost God and Found $40 Million, Bloomberg
Bro, I’m Going Rogue, Bloomberg
How Facebook Helps Shady Advertisers Pollute the Internet, Bloomberg
King of the Snitches, Bloomberg
Maurice Spagnoletti was hired to clean up Doral Bank. Did he uncover something that got him killed?, Bloomberg
- 2019 Gerald Loeb Award for Explanatory Business Reporting, “Sign Here to Lose Everything”
- 2019 Silver Gavel Award, American Bar Association, “Sign Here to Lose Everything”
- 2019 Finalist, National Magazine Award, “Sign Here to Lose Everything”
The funniest financial journalist in America.
[Faux] has a wry eye for details.
Combines sharp analysis, intrepid reporting and punchy writing.
- WATCH: Jared Moskowitz and Zeke Faux: Scams Galore, The Bulwark
- WATCH: Jury selection begins for FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial, The 11th Hour, MSNBC
- LISTEN: Zeke Faux on Number Go Up, InSecurities
- LISTEN: Number Go Up: A Conversation with Author Zeke Faux, Hacked
- LISTEN: Stablecoins and shenanigans, with Zeke Faux, Complex Systems
- LISTEN: Trump’s Foray Into Cryptocurrency, Fresh Air
BOOKS
Number Go Up
Faux’s boisterous, masterfully written book is worth a read. . . . Faux’s cast of misfits and con artists never fails to entertain.”
The Washington Post
Videos
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