Easy Money

May 15, 2023
“Crypto is Vegas without the drinks, the dinner, or the show,” contend Gotham actor McKenzie and journalist Silverman (Terms of Service) in this zippy polemic. McKenzie recounts reading up on crypto during a Covid-induced lull in his acting career and coming to the conclusion that digital currencies are “akin to gambling” because, unlike shares in a company, crypto is “uncorrelated with any actual asset.” With Silverman, he examines major players in “one of the greatest frauds in history,” detailing how confidence men around the globe convinced ordinary people to make misguided investments that were wiped out after the spring 2022 crypto crash. The authors describe El Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s disastrous rollout of a fraud-ridden, government-sponsored platform for exchanging Bitcoin, Sam Bankman-Fried’s illegal strategy for artificially inflating the size of crypto exchange FTX, and South Korean entrepreneur Do Kwon’s fall from grace after his Luna currency lost around $40 billion in value over the course of one week in 2022. The crypto-curious will appreciate the authors’ accessible explanations of how digital currencies work, and the profiles illuminate how hype and irresponsible business practices inflated the crypto bubble for years before its inevitable burst. The result is a damning study of how and why the crypto market collapsed.

June 1, 2023
Actor McKenzie (Gotham, The O.C.) began looking for other ways to invest during the pandemic and stumbled onto digital currency. After dabbling in these investments, he began wondering if it was just another type of fraud. McKenzie, who has a background in economics, reached out to journalist Silverman to help him investigate the crypto world. They took a deep dive into digital currency, whose history began in the early 1980s. From there, they uncover the pitfalls, like the fact that cryptocurrencies are not tied to anything of real value the way gold or stocks are. Also, its value often fluctuates, it is hard to use, and it typically has fees associated with ownership. Working to unveil what they call a modern-day Ponzi scheme, the duo interviewed all types of people who invested in cryptocurrency, from average Joes to titans in the industry. They share information they gleaned from pandemic Zoom calls and interactions with dictators and CIA agents as well as from traveling and testifying before Congress. Readers will be drawn into this easy-to-understand version of the crypto world and how it ties to banking, economics, and potential for economic ruin. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: McKenzie's name and the hot, elusive topic of cryptocurrency will draw readers in.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2023
Actor McKenzie continues his long-standing denunciation of cryptocurrency. Matt Damon hawked crypto in ads during NFL games. Kim Kardashian made such extraordinary claims for it that it drew the attention of British regulators--though, in the U.S., "Kardashian's promotion was initially met with typical regulatory silence." Crypto seemed to be just the thing for the rich and powerful, a means of hiding transactions via the secrecy associated with a financial instrument that isn't really a currency, at least by American law. Writing with financial journalist Silverman, McKenzie charges that since crypto behaves like a security, and an unregulated one at that, its price "jumps up and down like a rabbit on amphetamines." Furthermore, the technology doesn't scale well enough, it's environmentally disastrous because it requires so much electricity to "mine," and it's surrounded by "fraudsters" and "con men." Ethereum, founded in 2015 and the "second largest cryptocurrency as of this writing," appears to be a smoke-and-mirrors operation, while Tether "was as if a random group of middling ne'er-do-wells had been issued their own money printer," a bomb waiting to take down the entire system of casino capitalism. The author chronicles how some of the less cautious principals were taken down by international police forces, while others simply disappeared after their businesses evaporated--but not, he adds, before a few of them bought yachts. As for Kardashian, she was "fined $1.26 million by the SEC for her participation in shilling the shitcoin Ethereum Max"--even if she was just a willing tool and not herself a fraudster. "Would anyone in crypto ever see the inside of a jail cell?" asks McKenzie. At least since the author finished the book, it appears that at least one or two--Sam Bankman-Fried most notable among them--are on the way to the slammer. A well-reasoned, occasionally shrill critique of the crypto universe.

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