I spent a decade reporting on crypto. I saw the epic runups, the catastrophic collapses, the FOMO, the rug-pulls, the winters, the summers, the NFT parties in Miami and all the ballroom messiahs. At CoinDesk, where I was managing editor, our newsroom broke the balance-sheet story that brought down FTX, then one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges. Its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, got 25 years.

By 2023, after another market crash, I’d seen enough crypto drama to think about writing my own. The storylines of crypto seemed eminently dramatic: heroes, villains, power conflict, big themes in finance, tech and much more. I’d written a lot of headlines. I wanted to think about what it felt like to be a person in the room. Certain details…