Heligo hyped for Oliver’s book on the boom and bust of crypto 

Heligo, part of the Black & White Publishing Group, has acquired Hype Machine: How Greed, Fear and Free Money Crashed Crypto by Financial Times journalist Joshua Oliver. 

Rik Ubhi, editorial director, bought UK and Commonwealth, excluding North America, rights from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown. It will publish in March 2024. 

Hype Machine is described as the “definitive take on the seismic boom and bust of crypto. Expansive, compelling, nuanced and eminently entertaining, it explains and demystifies 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".  

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 legitimising crypto than 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 the truth about this $3 trillion delusion: that crypto is like a lab experiment for the worst excesses of unconstrained capitalism. 

Ubhi added: “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 Bankman-Fried, one of crypto’s most infamous protagonists, Hype Machine is the ultimate chronicle of crypto’s past, present and potential future.”