Heligo, the business and smart-thinking imprint of Black & White Publishing Group, has acquired Hype Machine: How Greed, Fear and Free Money Crashed Crypto by award-winning writer and Financial Times correspondent, Joshua Oliver.
Rik Uhbi, editorial director at Heligo, acquired UK & Commonwealth (ex. NA) rights from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown.
Hype Machine is the definitive take on the crypto boom and bust of the last decade. Expansive, compelling, nuanced and eminently entertaining, it explains and de-mystifies the rise and fall of crypto by following the trajectory of its most enigmatic and magnetic of participants, Sam Bankman-Fried – currently facing trial in New York for alleged fraud – as well as a fascinating host of rogues and geniuses, innovators and villains. Through compelling research and incendiary exclusive interviews with an extensive network of sources in London, New York, the Bahamas and California – including crypto veterans, executives, former employees and the trailblazers who shaped the markets – Oliver paints a vivid, detailed and often absurd picture of unregulated markets and unchecked hubris.
Joshua Oliver said: ‘Even a year later, it’s hard to believe how close we all came to taking crypto seriously. From the White House to Wall Street, no one was more important to legitimizing crypto than Sam Bankman-Fried, but looking at one guy’s guilt or innocence doesn’t tell the whole story. Underneath all the wild stories of crypto’s rise and fall, it’s important that we understand truth about this $3 trillion delusion: that crypto is like a lab experiment for the worst excesses of unconstrained capitalism.
This book is about how the crypto system worked, how millions of people were lied to, and how the worlds ‘smartest’ investors fell for the hype. It’s a guide to cryptoland told through the unbelievably true stories of the people who gambled with fake money and lost. I’m extremely excited to be working with Rik and Heligo Books to publish Hype Machine next year.’
Rik Uhbi said: ‘I’m thrilled to be publishing the brilliantly talented Joshua Oliver, who has been expertly covering the dizzying rise and calamitous fall of crypto for the better part of a decade. Now, with a journalist’s knack for zeroing in on the most crucial details and a novelist’s eye for a gripping narrative, Joshua deftly and wittily unravels the history, absurdity, and sheer spectacle of the crypto universe. More than just the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, crypto’s most infamous protagonists, Hype Machine is the ultimate chronicle of crypto’s past, present and potential future, its heroes and villains, winners and losers – revealing the many and profound ways that crypto has irreversibly reshaped our world’.
Hype Machine will be published in hardback, audio and eBook in March 2024.
