Crypto Confidential

Open on the highest stakes, then jump back in time. Eliason and his editor reworked the three-page prologue so the $100 million of other people's money arrives in the first two paragraphs, alongside a crying baby and an angry wife. The book then jumps back nine months, so the reader wonders how he got from excitement to disaster.

The page threatens a relationship, an identity and other people's money at once. It follows Brandon Sanderson's rule that a weak promise means nobody reads on, while a mediocre payoff or slow progress can be forgiven. Quote: "I'm about to lose $100 million of other people's money."

How I Write▶ 37:00

Move technical explanation into short chapters readers can skip. Across three drafts, crypto explanations inside the action killed the pace, so Eliason moved them into separate between-chapter pieces modeled on Anthony Bourdain's rant chapters in Kitchen Confidential. About half of readers skip them, while less technical readers love them.

These chapters were designed in the same visual style as the chapter headers. Quote: "you can skip it if you just want to get back to the story."

How I Write▶ 23:53

Map every beat in a stimulus and response spreadsheet. Eliason broke the whole book into beats (this happened, so this happened, which caused this) and rewrote any weak stimulus or response to keep the action moving. Scenes pair what a character wants with what blocks it and end in "yes, but" or "no, and".

He also tried an emotion, thought, decision, action version, then cut some of it because it felt overdone. He says he no longer needs the checklist because he has internalized it. Dialogue that went nowhere, about 80% of real conversation, was cut.

How I Write▶ 1:30:05

One sentence of interiority at the key moment revived flat scenes. Nathan Barry read early chapters and said Eliason was missing what was going on in his head. In a scene where a gambler colleague said to just ship a token that might lose people money, the first draft had Eliason reply only "what do you want to do?", and readers asked how that could be his response; adding his real hesitation brought it to life.

His first reaction was that nobody cares what he thinks and that sharing it felt vulnerable. Quote: "you can do a lot with one sentence in the right place."

How I Write▶ 12:12

The publisher's push kept the most vulnerable material in. Eliason thinks that self-publishing would have meant shelving or toning down the hardest parts. Writing those scenes made him sob in a coffee shop, and he cannot reread some of them.

He says the natural tendency is to pull such material back because millions might learn you feel these things.

How I Write

Deliberately broken prose made readers feel the mania. Some chapters have no dialogue tags or scene setting, only fragments, built to make readers feel the chaos. Eliason calls the pull toward a generic norm from tools and editors the Grammarly problem.

The book would score worse in Grammarly than his internet writing, yet it is better, using compound sentences and varied structure. He compares formulaic, editor-heavy books to private equity companies: they may earn more, but they are not the founder's book. Quote: "A lot of good writing is in the Grammarly advice you ignore."

How I Write▶ 15:15

The cover rejected the standard nonfiction recipe. Eliason and his editor turned down the usual big block text, easy subtitle, stinger and geometric design. They asked for a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas feel, as if scrawled while strung out on caffeine and nicotine.

How I Write

The sales team's pitch problem produced the title Crypto Confidential. The working title Everyone Getting Rich Without Me could mean GameStop options, Airbnbs or crypto, so the sales team found it hard to pitch and proposed Crypto Confidential, which had been on Eliason's own early shortlist.

His first reaction was anger, and he waited a day before replying. He worried about copying Kitchen Confidential until his team showed him five earlier titles with the same structure, a form that came from an old magazine.

How I Write

Readers with no interest in crypto gave the most useful feedback. Eliason wrote first for people who lived through the boom, but also for their partners, mostly wives and girlfriends in an industry that was 80 to 90% men, and for parents asking if their children were losing all their money. He weighed notes from women uninterested in crypto more heavily, because crypto readers already knew the material and couldn't say what bored or confused.

At gatherings, he recalls, the men talked crypto while the women rolled their eyes and joked about "Doggycoin." His first draft chapters got the feedback "I'm bored and I'm confused," so he read Red Rising each morning to prime a fast, engaging style.

How I Write