COMPARED
TO WHAT?
In August 2024, a man in Washington lost $243 million to a phone call. No code was broken. No wallet failed. Everything worked exactly as designed — and that is the problem this book takes seriously.
Built on a public catalogue of 650+ documented incidents, the book takes crypto's real dangers one at a time and sets each beside its twin already running in ordinary finance. Each chapter ends with an honest verdict about which is worse — and the verdicts do not all go one way.
Crypto did not invent these crimes. It wrote them down.
Not a market with fraud in it. A fraud with a market attached.
Opacity doesn't reduce the freezing. It removes the explanation.
Two stories from the book
The Six
Six rules that stop most of the thefts in the book. Free poster — print it, share it.
Every number is checkable
Every incident in this book exists in the public record — court filings, regulator reports, on-chain transactions anyone can read. See it: the verification index — claim by claim, artifact by artifact.
About the author
Dmytro Chystiakov is the author of OAK, a public catalogue of 650+ documented crypto incidents. He has worked in banking, cybersecurity and AI — and wrote the book he needed when he was standing at the door.