104 pgs. color | $22.99 hardcover | W: Daniel Villa Monteiro, A: Nicolas Balas
Early in Mike Nichols’ 1967 film The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is pulled aside at his graduation party by one of his parents’ friends to be told the key of the universe. And what would that be? “Plastics.”* Some people interpret this earnest adult as a representative of the conventional capitalist world of Benjamin’s parents, but I think it’s more about people who think they have some special insider information but really don’t. If the movie were remade today, the big secret would probably be “Cryptocurrency,” which sounds far more knowing and insiderly than, say, “Index funds.”
Cryptocurrency is the kind of thing I know I will never be involved in, because I’m a Warren Buffet kind of gal who likes to avoid drama when it comes to investing my retirement funds. But I still feel like I should know something about crypto and that’s what attracted me to Nicolas Balas and Daniel Villa Monteiro’s Alice in Cryptoland: Bitcoin, NFT, and Other Curiosities.
When we first meet Alice, she’s an artist from a bougie family just beginning her art history studies at the Sorbonne. She inherited some money from her recently deceased grandmother and her father is bugging her to get on with investing it. Meanwhile, Covid is heading toward becoming a pandemic that might shut down university classes, and Alice is experiencing all the growing pains typical of young adulthood and finding her place in the world.
After overhearing snatches of a conversation about cryptocurrency, plus some basic searches on her phone, she decides to put her inheritance into crypto. In the following pages, Alice sometimes switches into Basil Exposition mode to explain the basics of the crypto world to various characters and of course to us the readers as well. She’s drunk the Kool-Aid (“no barriers, no banks, no parasites”) and become a true believer who can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t think crypto is a great as she does.
As the story progresses, we watch the value of Alice’s investments fluctuate while also being introduced to topics like NFTs and airdrops and getting a little background on issues like the amount of energy needed to keep the whole system running and the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender by El Salvador. You may soon conclude that this Alice has fallen down an even stranger rabbit hole than the one imagined by Lewis Carroll but, unlike that Alice, doesn’t seem to want to get back.
Alice in Cryptoland has a clear point of view regarding cryptocurrency but I doubt it will change anyone’s opinion on the subject. It’s an enjoyable and educational read that mixes economic theory with social history, and Alice is a relatable character whose journey is a useful narrative device to relate the basics of the subject. A forward by Daniel Villa Monteiro provides some historical context (this book was originally published in French in 2023, and the crypto world changes fast) while the glossary will come in handy if your eyes glaze over from all the technical terms used in the main text.
Nicolas Balas works in an unfussy clear-line style modified with some shading and apparent brushwork, and while the art is not particularly notable it’s a good choice for a comic that is primarily about delivering information. He mixes realistic portrayals of interactions between Alice and her friends and family with infodump pages and occasional flights of fancy as Alice ponders the strange new world in which she is immersed, and shifts his color palette frames according to factors like the time of day, location, and Alice’s state of mind. | Sarah Boslaugh
*#42 on the American Film Institutes’ “100 Years…100 Movie quotes” list.
You can see a sample of the artwork for Alice in Cryptoland on the nbm web site.
