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

by Zeke Faux

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.

From what I had learned, it seemed that this scam slave complex would not be able to operate without crypto. And the benefits of crypto to the rest of the world seemed to be limited to enabling a zero-sum gambling mania.

Crypto bros routinely claimed that anonymous, untraceable payments on the blockchain would somehow help the world’s poor. But it seemed like none of them had bothered to look into what their technology was actually being used for. Tricking Filipinos into going into debt for a pipe dream based on Smooth Love Potions was bad enough. But aiding and abetting enslavement?