Digital Gold - Review
Link to the author's (N. Popper) personal website
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publication Type: Book
Tags:
- Average Age of Main Characters (30)
- Length (5 / 10)
Link to Goodreads
Blurb: Bitcoin, the landmark digital money and financial technology, has spawned a global social movement with utopian ambitions. The notion of a new currency, maintained by the computers of users around the world, has been the butt of many jokes, but that has not stopped it from growing into a technology worth billions of dollars, supported by the hordes of followers who have come to view it as the most important new idea since the creation of the Internet.
Believers from Beijing to Buenos Aires see the potential for a financial system free from banks and governments, and a new global money for the digital age. An unusual tale of group invention, Digital Gold tells the story of the colorful characters who have built Bitcoin, including a Finnish college student; an Argentinian millionaire; a Chinese entrepreneur; Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss; Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s elusive creator; and Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road online drug market.
With Digital Gold, the New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper offers a brilliant and engrossing account of this new technology—one filled with dramatic booms and busts that have led to untold riches for some and prison terms for others. But at each turn, Bitcoin has provided one of the most fascinating tests of how money works, who benefits from it, and what it may look like in the future.
Review: The current resurgence of bitcoin reminded me of this gem. So to get the mandatory warning out of the way, don't go into this book expecting it to be the white-paper on how blockchain works. The book's rather an introduction onto the significance of block-chain, analogies on how it works, the potential of the technology, and most importantly a beautifully written summary of the early history of bitcoin. The way the history's written ties into the previous points, and for me helped to understand what exactly the technology was and what the use cases are. The author does a bang up job with the writing, and combined with the book not being too long, results in a pretty smooth read compared to books tackling similar tasks. Big recommend from me, I think it's a good read regardless of how much you know about crypto currencies.