Has crypto finally had its day?

If you run an organisation, there are some reporters you definitely don’t want around: Ronan Farrow asking for comment; Madison Marriage or Dan McCrum with a couple of questions; Michael Wolff hanging out on a sofa taking notes. Michael Lewis is not one of those reporters. If he wants to spend time with you, you are about to be lionised as a decent person who sees just a bit more clearly than the fools who run the system of which you are a part, which will make you wildly rich (unless you’re an academic or a public servant) and famous. When Michael Lewis calls, people answer.

When Zeke Faux calls, they often don’t. A reporter for Bloomberg, Faux spends a lot of Number Goes Up being given the runaround by the management team of Tether, a stablecoin (a crypto token pegged to the US dollar) that he suspects of misleading customers about the depth of its reserves. In the end, Giancarlo Devasini, the pugnacious former plastic surgeon who serves as the company’s CFO, sends him a message that reads, in its entirety: ‘Bees don’t waste their time explaining to flies that honey is better than shit.’ In an attempt to get closer to understanding Tether, Faux turns to Sam Bankman-Fried, the wunderkind running the ostentatiously squeaky clean crypto exchange, FTX. Bankman-Fried, distractedly, expresses his confidence in Tether. Which is not what Faux needs for the book he has set out to write.

Lewis, at around the same time, receives a phone call from a friend unnamed in his book but since revealed to be Brad Kutsuyama, one of his previous subjects. Kutsuyama is considering a business deal with Bankman-Fried and wants Lewis’s judgment of him.