Crypto Confidential: Winning and Losing Millions in the New Frontier of Finance

Nathaniel Eliason. Portfolio, $30 (304p) ISBN 978-0-593-71404-1

Eliason debuts with a conflicted memoir recounting his efforts to get rich quick with cryptocurrency. In 2021, Eliason was unemployed and worried about providing for his first child, who was due by the end of the year. Dazzled by acquaintances who had won big on crypto, he began day-trading Dogecoin and writing code for a video game based around crypto tokens. He describes how his anxiety over the possibility that his increasingly valuable holdings would lose their worth or get hacked kept him glued to his devices and left his wife feeling isolated. Though Eliason aims to position his story as a cautionary tale, the takeaway is complicated by the fact that he made a healthy sum after selling most of his crypto assets in early 2022, even if his unspecified final profit was significantly less than the $10 million his holdings were nominally worth at their peak. Further confusing the volume’s stance are interstitial chapters offering tips on investing in crypto (“You can create a simple rule, like: if [a cryptocurrency one has invested in] goes down 50 percent, sell; if it doubles, sell half to cover the initial investment”). This is a head-scratcher. Agent: David Fugate, LaunchBooks Literary. (July)