Peter Howson is a professor of International Development and a researcher who’s worked around the world on projects related to environmental sustainability in the global south. We recently sat down with him to discuss his new book, ‘Let Them Eat Crypto’.

When he first heard about blockchain through his NGO partners, he bought into the hype that the technology could help solve some of the problems he was seeing in his field. But he soon discovered that instead of a solution, blockchain based crypto projects offer a vehicle through which the ultra-wealthy exploit the poor and enrich themselves at the expense of the most vulnerable.

Peter wrote the book, in part, to make amends for his initial enthusiasm about blockchain, and the conclusions he presents are a scathing indictment of the industry who promotes its spread. Howson disassembles cryptocurrency’s core narratives by putting their greed, flagrant hypocrisy, and utter contempt for other humans on display, and demonstrates that from green washing fraudulent carbon credits, to crypto colonizers displacing indigenous populations, to recruiting impoverished children into financial schemes, all of blockchain’s solutions are ultimately ‘Scammydocious’.

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Get the Book: ‘Let Them Eat Crypto: TheBlockchain Scam That’s Ruining the World‘

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Investigative journalist Zeke Faux didn’t think very much of crypto, but when his friend Jay bragged about a Dogecoin ‘investment’ paying for a family vacation to Disneyland, he was determined to prove that Jay was not, in fact, Nostradamus. So when Zeke’s editor asked him to look into stablecoins, he yanked at the threads connected to crypto’s greatest mystery… What’s the deal with Tether?

Those threads dragged Zeke down a rabbit hole into a ripoff wonderland filled with colourful con-artists and the horror of human misery. From token luxury superyachts in the Bahamas to crypto’s forced labour camps in Cambodia, the first time author has chronicled the recent history of blockchain’s billionaires and the suffering of the victims on which their wealth depends.

One part detective novel, one part historical non-fiction, one part absurdist comedy. Faux has crafted an immutable ledger of the dark shadow that cryptocurrency has cast across our lives, a portrait that’s exciting, bleak, and funny in equal measure.

We sit down for a conversation with Zeke Faux, author of ‘Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall’.

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You can find Zeke’s new book here.