Kings of Crypto

13

Hangover

“The telephone blasted Peter Fallow awake inside an egg with the shell peeled away and only the membranous sac holding it intact. Ah! The membranous sac was his head, and the right side of his head was on the pillow, and the yolk was as heavy as mercury, and it rolled like mercury, and it was pressing down on his right temple and his right eye and his right ear. If he tried to get up to answer the telephone, the yolk, the mercury, the poisoned mass, would shift and roll and rupture the sac, and his brains would fall out.”

—Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

Wolfe’s account has been cited as the greatest hangover in fiction. It’s also a good analogy for the cryptocurrency industry at the start of 2018. The market was in free fall ...