What could go wrong? Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up is billed as “the revelatory account of the biggest financial delusion the world has ever seen”, which both under- and oversells this hugely entertaining book. It oversells it because there is nothing really new in fraud: criminals exploit human nature, some of the weaknesses of which are in full display in Faux’s stories. But it also undersells the book because crypto does bring some new dimensions to the opportunities for fraud – and, as it turns out, for surveillance.

Faux explains this with the example of the ‘big store’ cons that existed in the US in the early 1900s (think ‘The Sting’). Those cons had to co-opt crooked bankers to cash large cheques and ask no questions. Multi-step crypto scams spare the fraudsters that bother and, as long as the ‘crypto coin’ of choice is attracting ‘investors’, cashing out into actual money is easy.

But that does not mean that they never get caught. The much-vaunted immutability of the blockchain is real, as some have found to their cost. Perhaps more importantly, crypto has also led to debate among policymakers on how to ensure that payment systems do not become fragmented, which is one of the reasons why so many central banks are looking at launching their own digital currencies (CBDCs).

Faux says that he pitched the book in November 2021 “near the mania’s peak, on the premise that crypto would soon collapse”. He thought crypto was “dumb”, but he’s open about how he started to worry that it would just develop an unstoppable momentum. If nothing else, bitcoin has not imploded in the way that many other cryptocurrencies have. As it happens, the timing of his publication date was a stroke of luck. It coincided with the trial in New York of Sam Bankman-Fried, who ran one of the biggest crypto exchanges, FTX, and who is accused of eight counts of fraud with $8bn in customer funds missing.

For those who have managed to close their eyes and ears to crypto, Faux provides a nice potted overview of how bitcoin was designed to enable trust across a distributed system without the need for intermediaries. (Hence the heady dreams of no longer needing banks.) Then, the reader gets to follow Faux around as he interviews crypto bros and crypto enthusiasts, follows tip-offs, and finds out just how ugly the underbelly of the crypto market is when he speaks to people who were enslaved by organised crime.

For there is no doubt that many crypto coins were simply Ponzi schemes. Faux quotes the US comedian John Oliver’s spoof of the Terra-Luna business plan: “Your blorp is always worth one dollar. And the reason I can guarantee that is I’ll sell as many fleezels as it takes to make that happen. Also, I make the fleezels.” The TerraUSD coins promised 20% interest and, at one point, the Terra-Luna scheme was supposedly worth $60bn, until it was worth nothing.

The argument of the book is that future capitalism, ie when all boomers have gone to the great ledger in the sky, will look very different to what we now view as capitalism. And one of the reasons for that is the coming wealth transfer from boomers to Gen-Z and millennials. (They are grouped together as ‘zennials’ throughout the book.) It will be huge – at a scale never seen before.

Should financial service professionals read this book? Yes, but maybe not for the reasons they’d expect – although the book offers up a pathway to the solution to the transfer of capital problem. Half the book is an insight into how different generations think and feel and what their values and expectations are. The second looks at how they operate – both in generational silos and across them. It’s really more about behavioural science than banking itself. But it’s still an essential read. If you’re a boomer managing younger staff, this will help you get a better grasp on why their attitudes to work, money and technology are different to your own.

How different? For me, this book was an eye-opener in terms of what Gen-Z and millennials stand for and what they have experienced. For example, when it comes to education, younger people expect a more relaxed atmosphere, collaborative learning and the right to form their own opinions. No one young values rote learning; they have calculators and internet connectivity if they need to do some non-creative chore. The corporal punishment that boomers never questioned is now, rightly, assault.

Ethics have also undergone a sea-change. That might sound implausible, given that human nature doesn’t change very much, but Costa makes an important case here. He points out that the information society means the end of ‘I didn’t know’. For example, if the picture of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian two-year-old found washed up dead on a Turkish beach, had been taken in the 1960s, it might have ended up in National Geographic but, overall, few would have seen it and even fewer would have had continued access to it. The video of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020 is another example.

But what does the book have to say about climate change and sustainability? It argues that younger generations see it as their responsibility to clean up the planet. Are they willing to change the way they live? They will go part-way, the book suggests, so long as it doesn’t intrude too much on their personal lifestyle.

Great admirers of Margaret Thatcher, they were knighted by Tony Blair in 2000 and had a ‘symbiotic’ relationship with Boris Johnson. So, power and influence as well as money. But they were not so keen on the public gaze or the regulatory and tax nets that might be expected to go with those blessings. They literally built a fortress, albeit a luxury version, in the English Channel. Fort Brecqhou, just off Sark, allowed the twins and their families to enjoy, and enforce, privacy.