CONFESSIONS OF A CRYPTO MILLIONAIRE

In this debut memoir, Conway
recounts his struggle to climb a corporate ladder and how investment in cryptocurrency
gave him a way out.

Around
2010, the author scored what he calls a
“golden ticket”—a blue-chip job at a major multimedia corporation with his own
team, a budget, and a six-figure salary. He finally “felt dignified and
gangster,” he says. However, he also notes that he was profoundly unhappy,
frustrated with a “fake company culture [that] made me and most of my
co-workers miserable” and unable to advance as quickly as he’d hoped. He says
that his sense of self-worth was fragile and that he was perpetually unable to
silence his “Flip Side, the bed-wetting, escapist gimp with bad judgment who
lives in the basement of my personality.” He eventually turned to drugs as a
balm for his anxiety, and he soon became addicted to Vicodin. After confessing this
to his wife, he sought recovery at a rehabilitation center and
became a devotee of 12-step optimism. However, he later lost his job, so he
decided to bet money he really couldn’t afford to lose on “ether,” the currency
of the Ethereum blockchain—one of the popular cryptocurrencies of the
time. The author then thrillingly
relates the consequences of this dramatic gamble, in which the stakes weren’t
merely financial; he knew he would ultimately emerge as either a visionary or a
reckless fool. But, he writes, he not only won, he won big—finally cashing out for
millions of dollars in a life-transforming financial triumph.

In this memoir, Conway skillfully
combines three intersecting narratives involving his ego-driven, often
self-destructive ambition; his cryptocurrency gamble; and the history of cryptocurrency
in general. Along the way, the author stirringly describes how, to him, cryptocurrency
investment wasn’t just a new technological innovation, but rather a way to
escape the corporate world that he once set out to conquer. Indeed, his
critique of corporate bureaucracy in this book is both astute and conveyed with
verve. More than anything else, he asserts, the blockchain movement is about freeing
oneself from the financial gatekeepers that stymie progress—and about profiting
fabulously in the process: “I’m bringing this up simply as a reminder that
decentralization used to be a reasonable priority for the common man and woman,”
he writes. Over the course of the book, the author recounts his personal experience
with admirable candor; specifically, he unflinchingly documents his foibles and
reflects deeply on how his life experiences prepared him for his risk-embracing
cryptocurrency adventure. The tone of the book is somewhat inconsistent,
however, as it ranges from buoyantly irreverent to smugly knowing. The author also
savagely caricatures his former colleagues, referring to them by nicknames, such
as “Fuckface” and “Kermit,” presumably in order to protect their identities,
but this also serves to deepen his condemnation of them. Overall, though, this book
offers an edifying look into a mysterious world that promises momentous transformation.