Hold On for Dear LIfe
Annelise OsborneShe called it "not actionable."
Her feelings for him. Filed away. For three years. Because she
decided - very deliberately - that what they already had was worth
more than the risk of saying it out loud.
New York City, 2017. Charlie, Jack, and Nik are three MIT
graduates who have just raised thirty million dollars in a single
night from thousands of strangers who read their whitepaper and
decided to trust them with something real. Their mission is genuine:
financial systems should serve people, not the other way around.
What follows is the story of what that trust costs.
As the cryptocurrency bull run lifts everything - including people
who shouldn't be lifted - the three friends begin to drift from the
versions of themselves that started this. Charlie trades discipline
for visibility. A secret trade placed at 3AM costs the company four
million dollars. And Jack holds. She always holds.
When the market crashes, a hack hits, and Charlie is taken off a
Brooklyn street in a van, what remains is not a company. It is three
people who have to decide what they were actually building - and
whether it is worth rebuilding from what is left.
They scatter. They find themselves. They come back.
The answer to everything arrives in a four-minute phone call
from Manila.
Hold On for Dear Life is a propulsive debut novel about
ambition, friendship, and what survives when everything else burns.
Written by a capital markets executive who spent years inside the
rooms the novel describes - the ICO launches, the treasury meetings,
the 3AM decisions - it is the first novel to get this world exactly
right.
For readers of Accidental Billionaire (Social Network), Bad Blood, Daisy Jones & The Six,
and Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Osborne Capital Partners, LLC
Published: 06/01/2026
ISBN: 9798240969294
Pages: 370
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.82d
