With bitcoin once again ascendant, and the incoming Trump administration embracing digital assets with open arms, even hardened sceptics may have decided to swot up on cryptocurrency. If that is you, I can heartily recommend Number Go Up by the investigative journalist Zeke Faux.
As well as a richly reported and entertaining read, one of the book’s best features is its title. Somehow, ‘number go up’ just perfectly captures the crypto/meme-stock online sub-culture like nothing else.
The term, sometimes abbreviated to NGU, is a community shorthand for the observation of – and die-hard faith in – rising crypto prices. It’s not a call based on asset fundamentals (in part because these are often missing), but a self-aware, even self-mocking form of belief. Its reasoning may be tautological, but it at least helps explain the allure of crypto markets. This thing is going up, so buy.