Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall

by Zeke Faux

“If it were not for Tether, America would likely fall,” he said. “Tether in many ways is the hope of America.”

Crypto Capital would simply open bank accounts using made-up company names. They’d tell banks they’d use the accounts for normal things, like real-estate investing. Then they’d let companies like Bitfinex use them for customer transfers.

It reminded me of a maxim called the “bullshit asymmetry principle,” coined by an Italian programmer. He was describing the challenge of debunking falsehoods in the internet age. “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it,” the programmer, Alberto Brandolini, wrote in 2013.