cryptocurrency

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze

by Laura Shin  · 22 Feb 2022  · 506pp  · 151,753 words

publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shin, Laura, author. Title: The cryptopians : idealism, greed, lies, and the making of the first big cryptocurrency craze / Laura Shin. Description: First edition. | New York : PublicAffairs, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021035607 | ISBN 9781541763012 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781541763005 (epub) Subjects

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: LCSH: Cryptocurrencies—History. | Money—History—21st century. | Finance—History—21st century. Classification: LCC HG1710.3 .S55 2021 | DDC 332.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn

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investors large and small: initial coin offerings (ICOs). A cross between a Kickstarter campaign, an IPO, and bitcoin, ICOs enabled projects to raise funds in cryptocurrency by giving people a new token, and they took off, showing how quickly a tsunami of economically incentivized developers could raise money to shake up

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, it was the spring of Vitalik’s high school senior year. Since starting at Bitcoin Magazine, he’d continued writing his clear prose about the cryptocurrency online: The Bitcoin network is the network of computers through which Bitcoin transactions are broadcasted and which maintains the public blockchain. Sometimes, the term is

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arrived, he saw it featured twelve articles on topics such as the personality of anonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, the history of previous attempts at cryptocurrency, and the Bitcoin bubble of 2011. (The price had barely budged from Christmastime and was now about $5.) Scanning the magazine’s sixty-nine

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of the white paper as follows: The Ethereum protocol’s design philosophy is in many ways the opposite from that taken by many other cryptocurrencies today. Other cryptocurrencies aim to add complexity and increase the number of “features”; Ethereum, on the other hand, takes features away. The protocol does not “support” multisignature

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to a computer science degree, he had worked at a kids’ math-learning platform, which was how he’d taken notice of Bitcoin. He explored cryptocurrencies and even worked on Mastercoin briefly. Then a friend from Mastercoin sent him the Ethereum white paper, since Jeff enjoyed writing computer languages. He found

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of the network for itself. This was the model that internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter followed, which the libertarian and cypherpunk Bitcoin and cryptocurrency crowd eschewed. Anthony, a believer in capitalism and incentives, even wanted its software to be closed-source, with the company itself the only entity that

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moved in the Friday before—the dishwasher was being installed as the few dozen attendees strolled in. Some Berlin employees who were completely new to cryptocurrency, like Felix, found the event way over their heads but magical. Gustav Simonsson, a programmer who’d been watching Ethereum but had thought that

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the internet, it was set up as a multisig, in which multiple signers were required to move money.) Michael had previously built such systems for cryptocurrency exchanges and gambling sites. He’d developed a thirteen-page cold storage policy and a six-page key compromise protocol, which outlined the procedure to

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, should have been included.) Previously, when Anthony and the BAC had presented to the Ontario Securities Commission and a regulator asked about the security of cryptocurrencies, Anthony had said, “Well, you’re at risk now”—referring to the traditional financial system. (Anthony says the regulator’s question was about quantum computing

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three-hour conversation that he had enjoyed. They bonded over being geeks and how they’d both survived the traditional school system. Plus, they talked cryptocurrency. Since Gavin and Jeff preferred the UN candidate, Vitalik, who wanted Ming, came up with a compromise: if the UN candidate requested a high

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four senior and junior developers.16 In recent weeks, Ming had tried convincing Vitalik to let Gavin go, but Vitalik—whose whole life revolved around cryptocurrency broadly, if not Ethereum exclusively—was resistant. Even though Gavin berated him and could be dismissive (in the yellow paper, he credited Vitalik with

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identities and make sure that if an entity, say, Slock.it, submitted a payment request, the account requesting it was indeed Slock.it’s. In cryptocurrency parlance, they would serve as “oracles”—agents that verify non-blockchain-based information for use by a smart contract. One curator, Fabian Vogelsteller, the full

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for eight thousand ETH (around $99,000) for one year. THE NEXT DAY, a day before the crowdsale ended, a Cornell professor prominent in the cryptocurrency space, Emin Gün Sirer, along with Ethereum Foundation researcher Vlad Zamfir and Dino Mark, an entrepreneur who also collaborated with ConsenSys’s Joe Lubin, published

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mock-summarized the argument from a pro-ETC Reddit post as ETC “will make better decisions,” so “trust us.” (A long-standing philosophy of the cryptocurrency community was “trustlessness,” meaning blockchain technology could be used in transactions that normally require people to trust others but would instead operate like a financial

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for trading ETH. The exchange, which had been pivotal to the survival of Ethereum Classic, alone accounted for half of global transaction volume in all cryptocurrencies, mainly due to interest in Ethereum and margin trading. Even as it often topped the charts of crypto exchanges worldwide, the company, which was also

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a legal or business background were specifically looking at the Securities and Exchange Commission. While the SEC had performed a handful of enforcement actions involving cryptocurrency, in 2016 there was only one and in 2017 only one regarding a Bitcoin fraud.14 The agency had, however, dropped hints. At the

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and Unikrn were somewhat well-known, the others were no-name projects. He’d also invested in two Chinese projects, Vechain and Qtum. To uninformed cryptocurrency investors, having an Ethereum cofounder on an ICO advisory board gave it an imprimatur of legitimacy, but other crypto community members felt Anthony was mostly

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for “hyping” the price of ether, which raised conflict-of-interest issues when it came to consulting clients who couldn’t risk endorsing a particular cryptocurrency. (Joe, who says he was unaware of the report, did not follow any of its recommendations.) This was the other explanation high-level ConsenSys

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from Santander, and the other was a young trader named Tyler Frederick from Fidelity, the only traditional financial services firm public about its interest in cryptocurrency, lending legitimacy to the space.34 Tyler started on the foreboding date of September 11, 2017. His interview process, done by phone and email,

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dollar value for bitcoin,” “Analyst who predicted bitcoin’s rise now sees it hitting $300,000–$400,000,” and “Trader who called bitcoin rally says cryptocurrency will surge above $100,000 in 2018.”28 News about Bitcoin and Ethereum proliferated: about teens who’d become millionaires off Bitcoin, ETH traders who

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and, in 2011, became interested in using Bitcoin for microfinance for women in developing countries. Soon after, she got a job working for Kraken, the cryptocurrency exchange that had given Vitalik office space when he had written the Ethereum white paper four years prior. She eventually became managing director of Kraken

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Copenhagen, she said, “He isn’t the decision maker. He’s a member of the community.” In the spring of 2019, Coin Jazeera, a satirical cryptocurrency site, published an article titled “Ethereum Development Halts After Vitalik Discovers Sex.” The article asked what had happened to development on Ethereum and said its

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117 million for ETH and 18.8 million for Bitcoin), had reached a market cap of around $90 billion, and briefly become the third-largest cryptocurrency. A new CryptoKitties-like game called NBA Top Shot, which sold digital collectibles (aka nonfungible tokens, or NFTs) of basketball highlight clips, generated more

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pics on Crypto Twitter, where people debated whether NFTs were the ICOs of 2021.64 It looked like the early stages of a second big cryptocurrency craze. Timeline 2011 Late winter Vitalik starts learning about Bitcoin, writing for Bitcoin Weekly June 1 Gawker article, “The Underground Website Where You Can

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ConsenSys the Brooklyn-based Ethereum venture production studio founded by Joe Lubin, which created Ethereum infrastructure tools and tried to foster decentralized applications on Ethereum cryptocurrency a digital asset produced by a blockchain that is highly fungible, divisible, and transportable and whose movements can be tracked, unless the chain has built

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application community center and coworking space in Toronto founded by Anthony Di Iorio DevCon the annual Ethereum developer conference difficulty a way of keeping a cryptocurrency mining algorithm competitive for miners such that miners will find blocks at a targeted average interval, such as ten minutes on bitcoin or twelve to

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computer that is more powerful than a typical computer’s central processing unit, or CPU, making it a more efficient and profitable way to mine cryptocurrencies (though not the most efficient and profitable) hard fork a non-backward-compatible software upgrade to a crypto network; usually refers to a “contentious”

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the nodes do not. This causes the nodes that upgrade to create a blockchain separate from the nodes running the original software, resulting in two cryptocurrencies with a shared history until the moment of the fork. (If the whole network simultaneously upgrades, which is a noncontentious hard fork, everyone stays

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over control of their coins to a company Nakamoto, Satoshi the anonymous creator of Bitcoin node a computer that helps run the software for a cryptocurrency or asset and usually maintains a copy of its blockchain Parity the Rust-language Ethereum software client; also the company (originally called Ethcore) founded

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some coins to the creators or early investors as a reward private key the cryptographic string of numbers and letters that enables one to send cryptocurrency from a specific public address (the other half of the cryptographically connected “public/private key pair”) protocol an established set of rules for the

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than a company or other intermediary, that executes the terms of an agreement between two transacting parties soft fork a backward-compatible change in a cryptocurrency protocol; it only narrows what is possible, so nodes running the older software will still accept the new blocks as valid Solidity a programming language

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downloads and views. Her writing can also be found in her Facebook Bulletin newsletter and on Medium. Shin has spoken about and led discussions on cryptocurrency at places such as TEDx San Francisco, the International Monetary Fund, Singularity University, and the Oslo Freedom Forum. She lives in New York City.

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, https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/@5122440/historic?month=7&year=2016. 42. “IC3-Ethereum Crypto Boot Camp and Workshop at Cornell University,” The Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts, accessed March 31, 2021, https://www.initc3.org/events/2016-07-20-IC3-Ethereum-Crypto-Boot-Camp-and-Workshop-at-Cornell-University.html

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,” Reddit, September 16, 2016, https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/532523/the_dao_extrabalwithdraw_contract_has_now_been. 3. “Directors,” IC3: The Initiative for CryptoCurrencies & Contracts via Wayback Machine, September 10, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20160910051422/https://www.initc3.org/people.html. 4. “Founder of the Apache Software

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.com/1004892/the-bancor-ico-just-raised-153-million-on-ethereum-in-three-hours. 34. Wong, “Ethereum Unleashed the ‘initial coin offering’ craze.” 35. “Global Cryptocurrency Charts: Percentage of Total Market Capitalization (Dominance),” CoinMarketCap, accessed April 2, 2021, https://coinmarketcap.com/charts. 36. “The Status Network: A Strategy Towards Mass Adoption

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-price. 41. Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin), “Another day, another blockchain use case,” Twitter, June 25, 2017, https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/879127496024772610?s=20. 42. “Global Cryptocurrency Charts,” CoinMarketCap. 43. MyEtherWallet (@MyEtherWallet), “Cmonnnnnnn Have you learned NOTHING from the last week?! Take your heads out greedy asses (you too, FOMO investors!) & look

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is for 1 domain,” Twitter, August 20, 2017, https://twitter.com/sniko_/status/899342140572131328/photo/1. 25. Lily Hay Newman, “A Very Dumb Mistake Costs Cryptocurrency Investors Big Time,” Wired, August 21, 2017, https://www.wired.com/story/enigma-ico-ethereum-heist. 26. Laura Shin, “Hackers Have Stolen Millions of Dollars

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Predicts Multitrillion-Dollar Value for Bitcoin,” CNBC, December 9, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/09/bitcoin-cameron-winklevoss-predicts-multitrillion-dollar-value-for-cryptocurrency.html; Dan Murphy, “Analyst Who Predicted Bitcoin’s Rise Now Sees It Hitting $300,000–$400,000,” CNBC, December 17, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com

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‘sharting,’ then I WILL leave…,” Twitter, December 27, 2017, https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/945988644661207040?s=20. 42. Zheping Huang, “The world now has a cryptocurrency pop group,” Quartz, January 10, 2018, https://qz.com/1177249/japans-kasotsuka-shojo-the-worlds-first-cryptopop-group-sings-about-bitcoin-and-cryptofraud. 43. Nellie

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Epilogue 1. Anna Irrera, “U.S. SEC Official Says Ether Not a Security, Price Surges,” Reuters, June 15, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cryptocurrencies-ether/u-s-sec-official-says-ether-not-a-security-price-surges-idUSKBN1JA30Q. 2. Taylor Monahan, “A New Beginning: MyCrypto.com,” Medium, February 8, 2018

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via ShapeShift API, accessed April 3, 2021, https://shapeshift.io/txstat/04d2ab5112241124b917d131c9e3858b73c1ff15c04f7330dc55d26491beadee, now at https://laurashin.com/cryptopians/Epilogue/24-04d2a. 25. Ryan Mac, “A Cryptocurrency Pioneer Wrote About Sex with a Preteen Girl on His Blog. He Says It Was Fiction,” BuzzFeed News, September 19, 2018, https://www.buzzfeednews.com

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Discovers Sex,” Coin Jazeera, accessed April 3, 2021, https://coinjazeera.news/ethereum-development-halts-after-vitalik-discovers-sex. 29. “Two Arrested for Extortion of Startup Cryptocurrency Company,” Department of Justice, US Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, September 18, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/two-arrested

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-extortion-startup-cryptocurrency-company. 30. Dominic Kennedy and Oliver Wright, “Christopher Harborne: Brexit Party’s Bankroller Has a Thai Doppelganger,” The Times, November 27, 2019, https://www.thetimes

Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street

by Jeff John Roberts  · 15 Dec 2020  · 226pp  · 65,516 words

subject to change. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Roberts, Jeff John, author. Title: Kings of crypto : one startup’s quest to take cryptocurrency out of Silicon Valley and onto Wall Street / Jeff John Roberts. Description: Boston, MA : Harvard Business Review Press, [2020] | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020036284 (print

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) | LCCN 2020036285 (ebook) | ISBN 9781647820183 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781647820190 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Armstrong, Brian, 1983- | Cryptocurrencies. | Cryptocurrencies–United States. | Money–United States. | Currency question. Classification: LCC HG1710.3 .R85 2020 (print) | LCC HG1710.3 (ebook) | DDC 332.4–dc23 LC record available

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on my earlier work and also conducted numerous additional interviews with Coinbase executives and board members. I also interviewed many other influential figures in the cryptocurrency world, including academics, investors, and those close to Coinbase’s competitors. Most of the accounts in this book, including nearly all of the quotes attributed

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a company to manage their stash of digital gold. A heresy in the church of Satoshi. And so it was that even though Coinbase introduced cryptocurrency to millions of non-technical people, many of bitcoin’s early champions reviled the company. These included the radical libertarian Erik Voorhees, who had denounced

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, delivering an impromptu lecture on the work of political economist Albert Hirschman. A scrawny teenager named Vitalik Buterin, who would soon invent the most important cryptocurrency after bitcoin, also spent days puttering around the Coinbase office. Not all visitors to Bluxome Street were so welcome. On several occasions, irate Coinbase customers

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a sort of crypto chamber of commerce, pushing to bestow an air of respectability on Satoshi’s creation. It was not just bitcoin flourishing. Other cryptocurrencies had emerged with fan bases of their own and, like bitcoin, could be exchanged for real-world money. These included Litecoin, the offshoot of bitcoin

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Nakamoto across the freeways of LA. The ensuing restaurant sit-down with Nakamoto revealed the purported crypto creator did not know the first thing about cryptocurrency. The next day, a long-dormant message board account tied to the real Satoshi sent out a simple message: “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.”

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deck to the press. Conservative media outlet The Washington Free Beacon published the presentation in February under a blaring headline of how Coinbase was touting cryptocurrency as a tool to circumvent sanctions on Iran. With a single bullet point, Fred had jerked Coinbase into geopolitics. Silicon Valley Bank had seen

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The long-awaited rebound in bitcoin’s prices, which continued into early 2016, brought delighted relief to Coinbase. But outside, in the broader world of cryptocurrency, something ugly was brewing as the tribal factions who were the bedrock of bitcoin turned on each other—and on Brian—like never before. The

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days. After his expulsion, Hearn described the situation as open civil war. Laura Shin, a Forbes journalist who would go on to build an influential cryptocurrency podcasting series, wrote of the 2016 war over block size: “Bitcoin Twitter has been a toxic stew of name-calling, trolling, bullying, blocking and

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preferred the hurly-burly of Reddit and Hacker News, sites that encouraged vis-itors to share headlines and yammer on about their favorite topics, including cryptocurrency. Since the start of Coinbase, Brian and Fred had been eager participants in these debates—explaining and defending the company’s decisions and chatting with

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at Facebook. McGeenan, known at Coinbase as Magoo, served as a bodyguard for Brian and also kept watch over the online threats. The nature of cryptocurrency meant the entire community was rife with criminals and, as bitcoin grew, so did criminal enterprises within its world. Stories of robbery and kidnapping became

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a special advantage over bitcoin. It had an acknowledged leader in the form of its wunderkind creator who would become the most famous figure in cryptocurrency after Satoshi. PART TWO * * * From Boom to Bubble to Bust 7 Enter Ethereum Vitalik Buterin is soft-spoken, pale, and practically skeletal. He likes to

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wore mismatched Hello Kitty socks and ate lemons, including the rinds. At the urging of his libertarian father, Dmitry, he took an interest in the cryptocurrency called bitcoin. He soon became absorbed. While still in high school, he launched an online news site called Bitcoin Magazine as a side hustle, persuading

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never succeeded—they had robbed exchanges and individual crypto owners but had never found a way to tamper with bitcoin’s all-important ledger. Other cryptocurrencies had been hacked and hijacked. Ethereum wasn’t only hacked, but its ledger was tampered with on purpose. What’s more, buying and selling

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funds, pension funds, private equity firms, family offices. Even in 2016, seven years after bitcoin launched, very little of that capital had flowed into the cryptocurrency economy. Sure, crypto was flourishing in the contained community of advocates and believers, but Brian and others believed that a true breakout would arrive only

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on price swings. And the action wasn’t just in bitcoin and Ethereum. On loosely regulated overseas exchanges, traders speculated on a galaxy of other cryptocurrencies that began to double and triple in price. Litecoin fans, for instance, likened the currency to bitcoin’s little brother and pointed out that its

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or manipulated by unscrupulous insiders. For many traders, it didn’t matter. A bull market was barreling forward as the price of every type of cryptocurrency kept climbing. Business schools took notice, finally. Only a few years earlier, Coinbase’s Adam White had pleaded with his professors at Harvard Business School

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of the Bitcoin Era.” By 2016, outlets like Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal assigned business reporters to cover crypto. Books like The Age of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Revolution further increased the ledger technology’s credibility. The transformation wasn’t instant. Bitcoin’s outlaw origins kept poking through. Hedge funds and

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different. It was broader and more ambitious. Unsubtly titled “The Coinbase Secret Master Plan,” it set out Brian’s sweeping vision for the future of cryptocurrency. Crypto was like the internet, he explained and, like the internet, it would have a four-step development. The initial two steps, which would

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the white knight’s decision to comply with “know your customer” laws had made it easy pickings for the IRS’s first major investigation into cryptocurrency—even as the more renegade exchanges, which operated in secrecy and skirted banking laws, avoided scrutiny. Utzke’s investigation produced a subpoena that landed at

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, hoped thoughtful, careful regulation could bring stability to the crypto markets and help it become even more mainstream. Unfortunately, the emerging US regulatory regime for cryptocurrency was not providing stability, but instead wrapping it in red tape. Multiple agencies were still arguing over whether this stuff was money or property or

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investigation. Today, its millions of tokens are worth nothing. The thousands of people who bought Bitconnect tokens, which briefly sat as the twentieth-most-popular cryptocurrency, lost every dollar. The only remaining value is Matos’s “Bitcooooonnnnnect!” yodel, which became an internet meme and fodder for Last Week Tonight, John Oliver

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were giving away bitcoin and Ethereum in special promotions. To receive the windfall, the targeted Twitter user was told to send a small amount of cryptocurrency first—funds that would, of course, be promptly pocketed by the scammer. Twitter would eventually shut down the impersonator accounts, and the scammers would

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prices climbed and climbed, Brian published a blog post in early December titled “Please Invest Responsibly” that dryly warned customers of the volatility associated with cryptocurrency investing. The market paid no heed whatsoever. Prices kept climbing. Brian’s call for responsible crypto investing wasn’t just ineffective—it was hypocritical. Coinbase

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millionaires—some of them were billionaires—had another priority: creating “Puertopia.” This was to be a new type of city where people paid only with cryptocurrency and laws were written on a blockchain. For the new arrivals, Puertopia invoked a paradise. For everyone else, it meant “crypto bros looking for

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as well. In the show Billions, the main character Bobby Axelrod, who is reportedly based on real-life hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, turns to cryptocurrency to thwart SEC trading restrictions. “One million dollars straight in crypto, in chilly storage,” Bobby says, proffering a USB storage device to a minion.

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and offer only crypto-to-crypto trades. This meant customers could swap bitcoin for Ethereum, or Ethereum for Litecoin, or Litecoin for dozens of other cryptocurrencies. For CZ, the crypto-to-crypto arrangement offered an obvious advantage: it meant Binance didn’t need to touch the conventional banking system, which was

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Coinbase to split into two legal entities—one that did business in heavily regulated places like the United States and another that offered dozens of cryptocurrencies while operating from a regulatory haven like Bermuda. The plan went nowhere, and well into 2018, Coinbase stumbled along with the same four currencies.

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Coinbase compete with Binance by adding new assets. For months, the company had dithered as Binance grew into a powerhouse by offering dozens of new cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, Coinbase had plodded along with the same four coins: bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and—as of late December 2017, after its hiccup of a

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questioned why Coinbase was tinkering with Toshi and dApps—especially at a time when millions of people were flocking to Binance to acquire the newest cryptocurrencies. It was as if Coinbase had been a road construction company that instead of laying pavement for interstate highways spent its days adding scenic overlooks

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that signs an endorsement deal with Brooks Brothers. More seriously, it risked a strategic muddle, given Balaji’s quest to challenge Binance by adding exotic cryptocurrencies to Coinbase’s platform. It didn’t take long for the competing visions—Wall Street versus libertarian utopia—to produce factions at Coinbase, with crypto

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of Balaji’s wrecking-ball approach was that the secondary projects got sidelined or smothered, and Coinbase moved to focus on his priority—adding new cryptocurrencies. Coinbase unveiled new currency offerings like XRP and Ethereum Classic for US customers, and dozens more for clients overseas. The gap with Binance started

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2019. The best known one, called Tether, had appeared in 2015. It caught on with traders who wanted to move in and out of various cryptocurrencies without the fees that came with converting from crypto to traditional currency. Tether, however, suffered from a sketchy reputation. How, traders wondered, could they

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challenged Tether as fixtures of crypto trading markets. By 2020, Coinbase and others were paying interest on customers’ stash of stablecoins—a sign of how cryptocurrency could resemble an ordinary savings account. More importantly, the growth of stablecoins signaled to important people outside the crypto world that blockchain-based money could

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, and to contribute to the reserve fund that would back the Libra with hard currency. The partner list included two companies that specialized in storing cryptocurrency, and it also included Coinbase. There already was a link between Facebook and Coinbase: the head of Project Libra was David Marcus, a former

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army, this would be only slightly more hostile to the people of the United States than what is currently proposed,” declared Preston Byrne, an outspoken cryptocurrency lawyer. Critics raised many valid questions, and, as of the time of this writing, it’s far from clear whether Facebook can overcome government opposition

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may have greeted Facebook’s digital currency plans with surprise and alarm, but in crypto circles, Project Libra mostly generated guffaws. This wasn’t real cryptocurrency but a debased version, one that would be controlled by a cabal of powerful companies. Veteran crypto boosters invoked the c-word—centralized—and warned

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business front, the company was still lagging behind Binance, but the gap between the two was shrinking, in part because Coinbase now offered dozens of cryptocurrencies in markets around the world. Meanwhile, Binance’s star lost some of its luster after the exchange suffered a major hack that saw thieves plunder

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Quorum, a spin-off of Ethereum that serves as a private network and ledger for financial transactions. He had even approved JPM Coin, a new cryptocurrency to settle crossborder payments with clients. At the same time JP Morgan was dabbling with crypto, Coinbase was moving closer to traditional banking. The one

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and Apple too—could just as easily dominate crypto. Then there are national governments. Authoritarian regimes like China or Venezuela, Tapscott points out, are developing cryptocurrencies. Their strategic goals involve not only undermining the US dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency but using crypto to surveil and control

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mythology as it is by technology. The Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Shiller’s latest book, Narrative Economics, devotes its first chapter to bitcoin. The cryptocurrency, Shiller says, has no intrinsic value but has been propped up by a contagious belief that it does. Academics like Shiller who are deeply skeptical

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years, much like the internet, is likely to awe us in ways no one can predict.” Index Accenture, 140 addresses, blockchain, 19–20 Age of Cryptocurrency, The (Vigna and Casey), 23 Airbnb, 3, 5 Alford, Gary, 122 algorithms, in financial trading, 11–12 AlphaBay, 107–108 Alphabet, 64 altcoins, 138

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others who have taken the time to help me understand the splendid technology called blockchain. Despite its well-deserved reputation for drama and infighting, the cryptocurrency community is also incredibly supportive, and I want to thank those who offered me advice and encouragement during the writing of this book: Laura Shin

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to Coinbase’s communications team for arranging many interviews. Likewise, I want to thank Barry Silbert, Chris Dixon, Emin Gün Sirer, and the numerous other cryptocurrency theorists and entrepreneurs who helped supply the larger ideas that inform this book. I could not have written Kings of Crypto without the support of

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my employer, Fortune magazine, which not only provided me time to write but also gave me free rein to report and write about cryptocurrency, even when the topics roamed far beyond those familiar to the publication’s regular business audience. My appreciation extends in particular to Fortune CEO Alan

Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency

by Andy Greenberg  · 15 Nov 2022  · 494pp  · 121,217 words

. Windsor Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Greenberg, Andy, author. Title: Tracers in the dark: the global hunt for the crime lords of cryptocurrency / Andy Greenberg. Description: First edition. | New York: Doubleday, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2022005413 (print) | LCCN 2022005414 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385548090 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385548106

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(ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Computer crimes. | Commercial crimes. | Cryptocurrencies. | Transnational crime. Classification: LCC HV6773.G7424 2022 (print) | LCC HV6773 (ebook) | DDC 364.16/8—dc23/eng/20220215 LC record available at https://lccn.loc

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Luxury Hotel & Villas website, avaton.com. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Alexander Vinnik suddenly found himself: Andrei Zakharov, “Hunting the Missing Millions from Collapsed Cryptocurrency,” BBC News, Dec. 30, 2019. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT CHAPTER 41: “SERACH VIDEOS” When Janczewski and Gambaryan first copied: Welcome to Video

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law enforcement. See Operation Bayonet IP address of server for, 158, 200–2 long-term effects of takedown of, 236–7 Monero as exclusive cryptocurrency on, 314–15 privacy coins and, 299 products banned on, 146, 314 publicity surrounding takedown of, 229 reopening of in 2021, 313–14 Russia and

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of Bitcoin in 2015 by, 136–7 theft from Silk Road by, 112–16. See also Silk Road, theft of $350,000 from BTC-e (cryptocurrency exchange): Bridges, Shaun, and, 136 creation of, 131 dark web ties to, 123–4, 127 Gambaryan, Tigran, and, 127–30, 132–4 Individual X

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secrecy of, 119, 122–3 See also Vinnik, Alexander Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (U.S.), 162 C California Franchise Tax Board, 23 CampBX (cryptocurrency exchange), 66, 75, 80 Camtasia (screen recording program), 79 Canton Business Corporation, 123 Capone, Al, 282 Carmakal, Charles, 296 Cazes, Alexandre: AlphaBay administration by, 

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by, 172–6 Bonakdar, Roger, and, 219–20 cars owned by, 157, 159, 165–6, 205, 214–15 credit card fraud business of, 145–6 cryptocurrency owned by, 218 daily schedule of, 194 death of, 221–7, 229, 314–15 demeanor of, 156–7 Desjardins, Paul, and, 156–7 financial

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–18 blockchain analysis tools of, 106, 173, 316–18 BTC-e study by, 292 cluster audit technique of, 258 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and, 301 cryptocurrency exchange use of, 137 customers of, 310–11 DarkLeaks document stolen from, 316–18 founding of, 100–2 Gladstein, Alex, and, 306–7, 309

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2021 and, 307, 311 vetting of customers by, 310–11 Welcome to Video case and, 258 See also Gronager, Michael; Levin, Jonathan; Møller, Jan Chatex (cryptocurrency exchange), 302 Chaum, David, 45 Chen, Adrian, 33–4 child sexual abuse materials (CSAM): dark web traffic volume and, 247 Internal Revenue Service (U.

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and Exploited Children and, 274 as term, 239 See also Childs Play; Dark Scandals; Love Zone; Welcome to Video Childs Play (CSAM website), 344 China: cryptocurrency potential in, 306 Christin, Nicolas: Agora analysis by, 124 AlphaBay analysis by, 148, 236–7, 340, 345–6 Evolution analysis by, 124 Silk Road

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analysis by, 36, 38 CipherTrace, 138 Circle (cryptocurrency exchange), 245 Clark, Graham Ivan, 289n Clockwork Orange, A (1971 film), 258 Cloud 9 (dark web market), 123 Cloudflare, 127–8 CNA Financial: ransomware

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Comment Ça Marche (online forum), 159–60 Cox, Joseph, 147 Cross-Input Signature Aggregation, 309 “Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, The” (May), 29 cryptoanarchy, 29–30, 37 cryptocurrency: anonymity of, 45–6 banks’ lack of trust in, 99–100 criminal use of, 305 development of, 29–30 mixer services for, 172–3, 289

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North Korea, 288 from Silk Road, 68–9, 81–2, 111–15, 292–4 cryptography: as privacy tool, 44–5, 62 Cryptowatch, 107–8 CryptoXchange (cryptocurrency exchange), 132 CSAM. See child sexual abuse materials Customs and Border Protection (U.S.), 261–3, 290–1 CyberBunker, 287 cypherpunks, 27–30, 37

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executive order), 308 Erin (pseud.; FBI analyst): Cazes, Alexandre, case and, 171–7, 193, 215, 218 Escobar, Pablo, 164 Esposito, Calogero. See Bridges, Shaun Ethereum (cryptocurrency), 218 European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), 96 Europol: conference on virtual currency investigations at, 199–201 Hansa case and, 186, 198, 229, 235 Operation

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–2, 228 F Falder, Matthew, 243–4 Falkvinge, Rick, 97 Farivar, Cyrus, 331, 336, 340 Faruqui, Zia: Gambaryan, Tigran, and, 125–6 North Korean cryptocurrency theft cases and, 288 Tamsi, Thomas, and, 256–7 virtual currency strike force of, 125 Welcome to Video case and, 246–7, 254–6, 263

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, Tigran, and, 238 Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement group and, 235 NetWalker case and, 300 New York field office of, 64 North Korean cryptocurrency theft cases and, 288 Operation Onymous and, 123 ransomware cases and, 301–2 Sacramento field office of, 160, 167, 194 Silk Road takedown by, 64

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, 66–76, 78–82 Greenberg, Andy, and, 323–6 Gronager, Michael, and, 111–12, 122, 130 Individual X case and, 292–4 interest in cryptocurrency of, 24–5, 35 at Internal Revenue Service, 23–4 Levin, Jonathan, and, 238–9, 292 Monero and, 324 at National Cyber Investigative Joint Task

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Bitfinex theft case and, 324 Dark Scandals case and, 281 effect of Welcome to Video investigation on, 279, 282 Gambaryan, Tigran, and, 239 North Korean cryptocurrency theft cases and, 288 Son Jong-woo release from prison and, 280 at TRM Labs, 324 Welcome to Video case and, 3–5, 245–7

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5, 118, 120 Kennedy, Maddie, 310–12 kingpin statute, 18, 219 Kober, Alice, 44 Korean National Police Agency. See National Police Agency (South Korea) Kraken (cryptocurrency exchange), 91, 96, 99–100 Krebs, Brian, 57–8 Kryptos (sculpture), 43 L Laos, 162 Large Hadron Collider, 96 Lazarus Group, 288 Lebua (Bangkok hotel

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200 Gambaryan, Tigran, and, 199–201, 238–9, 292 Individual X case and, 292–4 Welcome to Video case and, 243–6, 283 Liberty Reserve (cryptocurrency), 291 Line (messaging app), 205 Linear A, 44 Linear B, 44 Linux Unified Key Setup, 183 Liu, Jesse, 283 LocalBitcoins (peer-to-peer exchanger), 

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152 Love Zone (CSAM website), 191 Luno (cryptocurrency exchange), 324 Lysyanskaya, Anna, 45 M M (Thai agent), 212–13 Manchin, Joe, 34 Mandiant, 296 Mansoor, Ahmed, 310–11 Marion, Louisa: Cazes, Alexandre,

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dark web drug cases and, 153–4 Mohammad, Michael Rahim, 281 Møller, Jan, 101–2, 105–7, 169. See also Chainalysis Monahan, Greg, 283 Monero (cryptocurrency): Cazes, Alexandre, and, 218 dark web markets and, 299 as privacy coin, 298–9 traceability of, 299–300, 316, 324 Mr. Dark. See Mohammad,

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York Times, 301 New York University: BTC-e study by, 292 Nilsson, Kim, 129, 137 Nob. See Force, Carl Mark, IV North Korea: cryptocurrency thefts by, 288 cryptocurrency use in, 306 as inaccessible to U.S. law enforcement, 301 ransomware groups and, 300–1 NSO (spyware contractor), 310 Nueng (pseud.): Cazes, Alexandre

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SaboTor, 235 Ormsby, Eileen, 331 Outlaw Market (dark web market), 123 P Pandora (dark web market), 123 Patreon, 306 PayPal, 24, 306 peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchangers, 152 Pelker, Alden, 127, 248, 287 Peña, Javier, 164 Perlroth, Nicole, 345 PGP (encryption program), 70–1, 78, 198 Philippines: as sex tourism

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138 Welcome to Video case and, 244, 246, 258 redandwhite (pseud.), 85 Rettig, Charles, 282–3 REvil (ransomware group), 302–3 Rhysider, Jack, 340 Ripple (cryptocurrency startup), 11 Rivest, Ron, 45 RonSwanson (pseud.), 187–8 Roosh V (online forum), 178–9, 194, 209 Rosetta stone, 44 Royal Canadian Mounted Police: Operation

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, 194 Cazes, Alexandre, arrest and, 209, 213, 215 Cazes, Alexandre, death and, 221–2, 225–6 Cazes, Alexandre, interviews with, 216–17, 220–1 cryptocurrency knowledge of, 167 at DEA, 162–3 at Luno, 324 Royal Thai Police and, 193–4 Sanger, David, 345 san-nakji, 256–7 Satoshi Dice

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1 surveillance of by law enforcement, 269 South Chungcheong, 269 spam email: research on by Savage, Stefan, 52 SQLite, 101 Sterlingov, Roman, 290–1 Suex (cryptocurrency exchange), 302 suspicious activity report: on Force, Carl, 13, 67, 135, 326 legal requirement to file, 151 Suttenberg, Lindsay, 254–5, 257, 267, 281 Sybil

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, 65n, 123, 148 TorBox, 265 Tor Carding Forum, 145 Tor Project, 247n Torre, Berny, 344 Tox Chat, 196 traceroute command, 127, 253, 265 Trade Hill (cryptocurrency exchange), 119, 131 TRM Labs, 324 “Tunafish” (Bitcoin address codename), 174–5, 215 Turton, William, 345 Twitter: 2020 hack of, 288–9 U Ulbricht,

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Geoffrey, 52, 55 W WalletExplorer, 113, 169, 317 Wall Street Journal, The, 137, 229, 303 Wall Street Market (dark web drug market), 287–8 Wasabi (cryptocurrency wallet), 317 Weaver, Nick, 84–5, 291 WebMoney Exchanger, 132 Welcome to Video (CSAM market): administrator of, 245, 254, 259, 264–5. See also Son

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Jong-woo BTC-e database and investigation of, 265 chat page at, 251, 264 cryptocurrency use on, 244–7, 252–3, 275 extreme content on, 250–1 Falder, Matthew, and, 244 investigation of. See Welcome to Video investigation IP

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8 Wieczner, Jen, 337 WikiLeaks, 28 Wilson, Cody, 97 WME. See Vinnik, Alexander Y Yerevan, 20–1 Yomiuri Shimbun, 104 Yum, Ilhwan, 85 Z Zcash (cryptocurrency): Cazes, Alexandre, and, 218 dark web markets and, 299 lack of popularity of, 310 as privacy coin, 298–9 shielded transactions of, 298–9 traceability

Mastering Blockchain: Unlocking the Power of Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts

by Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey  · 8 Dec 2020  · 434pp  · 77,974 words

Altchains Bitcoin Improvement Proposals Understanding Forks Contentious Hard Forks The Bitcoin Cash Fork Altcoins Litecoin More Altcoin Experiments “2.0” Chains NXT Counterparty Privacy-Focused Cryptocurrencies Dash Monero Zcash Ripple and Stellar Ripple Stellar Scaling Blockchains SegWit Lightning Other Altchain Solutions The Ethereum Classic Fork Summary 4. The Evolution to Ethereum

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quick, highly detailed, and accurate technical overview of the blockchain sector. Moe Adham, CEO, Bitcoin ATM provider Bitaccess Mastering Blockchain Unlocking the Power of Cryptocurrencies, Smart Contracts, and Decentralized Applications Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey Mastering Blockchain by Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey Copyright © 2021 Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey

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Bitcoin) and MetaMask (Ethereum). Pros User controls keys Can be used mostly offline for better security Cons No one desktop wallet is best for all cryptocurrencies Desktop security must be maintained by the user A mobile wallet is an app-based wallet, found in the app stores for Android or iOS

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is used in more private implementations of blockchain. Stakeholders In addition to a protocol network, wallets, and miners, there are other stakeholders in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. These may be centralized services or for-profit businesses, and they provide important functionality needed in the ecosystem. There are five categories of stakeholders

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privacy chains available today. Research has proven that in some instances, using hashes can compromise privacy in cryptographic systems. These systems could include blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, since they use hashes on a publicly viewable ledger. Zcash uses a technology called Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs)

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Ethereum. Improving Bitcoin’s Limited Functionality Bitcoin was the first decentralized consensus protocol to apply the concept of scripted money—that is, the idea that cryptocurrency transactions could transmit funds depending on the true/false status of running a limited program. Initially, many saw bitcoin as “programmable money,” but scripted

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platform coupled with the ability to create tokens on top of the Ethereum blockchain made it an ideal automated fundraising apparatus for jump-starting various cryptocurrency projects. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations In an effort to further the ethos of decentralization in the Ethereum ecosystem, the concept of a decentralized autonomous organization

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Buterin began emailing around a whitepaper proposing a new protocol based on elements of Bitcoin, Mastercoin, and other projects. This document was disseminated throughout the cryptocurrency community, and developers and backers began to accumulate. Buterin made a public announcement of the Ethereum project in February 2014. A Swiss-based nonprofit

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executes the transaction using the details that were submitted in step 1. This confirmTransaction call occurs in block #7458500. Decentralized Exchange Contracts Before Ethereum, every cryptocurrency exchange had to be controlled and managed by a company—a centralized authority. Centralized exchanges still exist, with popular examples including Coinbase, Bitstamp, and

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operate in different jurisdictions and therefore must comply with different levels of regulatory oversight. Figure 6-5 illustrates. Figure 6-5. Four types of cryptocurrency exchanges Cryptocurrency exchanges are bound by the laws of the jurisdictions they operate in. Figure 6-5 shows four categories that exchanges may fall into: International exchanges

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Here are a few of the most well-known data sources: CoinDesk Skew Glassnode TradingView Each offers different datasets and tools. There are also specialized cryptocurrency information sources that it’s good to know about, such as block explorers and transaction flow tracking systems. Block explorers A block explorer enables the

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or wallet) is completed. Transaction flows The ability to track transaction flows on the blockchain can help when analyzing trading patterns. Tracking the movement of cryptocurrency can be much easier than tracking fiat currency. This is especially true when transfers are happening between wallets, exchanges, and other services because these

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diminishing its purchasing power and store of value properties. Minting is algorithmically fixed, or relegated to authorities within a system. Burning Used to decrease a cryptocurrency supply, burning involves the destruction of assets. This destruction is done by system authorities. By reducing circulation and lessening supply, this can cause the price

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system with accounts and payments built in. However, some organizations don’t particularly see the benefit of this. Permissionless systems need accounts, payments, and cryptocurrencies to properly incentivize users, but that may not necessarily be the case for permissioned ledgers. In the permissioned world, providing infrastructure for payments and accounts

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instead of centralized rent-seeking (e.g., targeted advertising on social networks or taking a fee like online marketplaces do). Decentralization Versus Centralization Early cryptocurrency proponents embraced decentralization as a core part of the technology. However, many other blockchain platforms—particularly those being developed for organizations—are much more centralized

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were on the longest chain. At each fork, the new “longest chain” must contain all these checkpoints. Ethereum-Based Privacy Implementations Public blockchains and cryptocurrency networks don’t make good implementations for businesses. This is because many organizations need to keep control of their information for competitive reasons, compliance, or

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Monero, How Monero Works whitelisting, Counterparty Risk adjustable blocksize cap (Bitcoin), The Bitcoin Cash Fork adoption of blockchain, The Future of Blockchain airdrops, disbursement of cryptocurrencies via, Airdrops airgapped computers, Counterparty Risk altchains, Understanding Forks altcoins, Understanding Forks, Altcoins-Counterpartyearlier, sample of, Altcoins Litecoin, Litecoin other, More Altcoin Experiments Amazon

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Quantum Ledger, Blockchain as a Service analysis, Analysis-Hunting for Bartanalytics services for cryptocurrency blockchains, Analytics fundamental cryptocurrency analysis, Fundamental Cryptocurrency Analysis-Tools for fundamental analysistools for, Tools for fundamental analysis Tullip Mania or the internet, Tulip Mania or the internet? technical

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for Consensus Byzantine fault-tolerant agreement, RippleHotStuff algorithm, Borrowing from Existing Blockchains C Cardano, Blockchains to Watch Casper algorithm (proof-of-stake), Ethereum Scaling CCXT (CryptoCurrency eXchange Trading Library), Open Source Trading Tech cell phone porting attacks, Security Fundamentals central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), Central Bank Digital Currencies centralizationcaused by proof

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, Analytics channels (Lightning), Lightning Chaum, David, DigiCash Chia, Alternative methods Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), partnership with Royal Mint, The Royal Mint China, central bank cryptocurrency, China Coburn, Zachary, Skirting the Laws Coin ATM Radar website, Evolution of the Price of Bitcoin Coinbase, Wallet Types: Custodial Versus Noncustodial, Custody Coinbase Pro

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communication complexity, Other Altchain Solutions crypto laundering, The Evolution of Crypto Laundering-The Evolution of Crypto Launderinghow funds are laundered, The Evolution of Crypto Laundering cryptocurrencies, Cryptocurrency Fundamentals-Summaryadditional, Mastercoin introducing notion of, Mastercoin and Smart Contracts backing DAI multi-collateral token, DAI and blockchain, leading to new platforms for the web

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attacks on passwords, Zero-Knowledge Proof difficulty of discovering valid block hash, Block discovery DigiCash, DigiCash digital bonds, Banking digital money, Bitcoin Predecessors(see also cryptocurrencies) creation of, in B-Money, B-Money use of hashing to limit double spend, Hashcash digital signaturesmultisignature system, Hash Time Locked Contracts, Lightning Schnorr

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decentralized version of, Altcoins dot-com crash, Tulip Mania or the internet? double spend problem, Hashcashin Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper, The Whitepaper dumping of a cryptocurrency, Wash Trading E E-gold, E-Gold EEA (Enterprise Ethereum Alliance), The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Elements open source project, Liquid Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm

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(ECDSA) encrytionsecp256k1 function, Public and Private Keys in Cryptocurrency Systems signing and validating transactions with, Signing and Validating Transactions Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) secp256k1 function, Generating keys Enigma, Skirting the Laws, Privacy

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Electronic Systems and Trust IT systems, permissioned ledger uses, IT Ixcoin, Altcoins J Java, Corda language JPMorgan, JPMorganinterbank payments using permissioned ledger, Payments jurisdiction over cryptocurrency exchanges, Jurisdiction K Keccak-256 hash algorithm, Hashes Know Your Customer (KYC) rules, Banking Risk, DAIon centralized and decentralized exchanges, Know your customer crypto laundering

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Verifiable Ledgers Hyperledger Fabric technology, Hyperledger permissioned ledger uses of blockchain, Permissioned Ledger Uses-Payments Ripple, Ripple legal industry, permissioned ledger uses, Legal legal requirements, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology skirting the laws, Skirting the Laws lending services (DeFi), Lending less than 5% rule, Counterparty Risk Libra, Libra-Summaryborrowing from existing blockchains

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Price of Bitcoin whales, Whales market size, Order Books Mastercoin, Mastercoin and Smart Contracts, Tokenize EverythingEthereum and, Ethereum: Taking Mastercoin to the Next Level raising cryptocurrency funds to launch a project, Use Cases: ICOs Meetup.com, Information mempool, unconfirmed transactions on Bitcoin, Transaction life cycle Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST),

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Laundering paired with scalability, Mimblewimble blockchain protocol, Mimblewimble, Beam, and Grin privacy-focused blockchains, PrivacyMonero, Blockchains to Watch-How Monero Works Zcash, Zcash privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, Privacy-Focused CryptocurrenciesDash, Dash Monero, Monero Zcash, Zcash private blockchain networks, Privacy private blockchains, The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance private keys, Public/private key cryptography(see

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tokens on a blockchain, Tokens on the Ethereum Platform recovery seed, Recovery Seed recursive call vulnerability, Forking Ethereum and the creation of Ethereum Classic regulationof cryptocurrency exchanges, Jurisdiction FATF and the Travel Rule, The FATF and the Travel Rule FinCEN guidance and beginnings of, FinCEN Guidance and the Beginning of

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Regulation-FinCEN Guidance and the Beginning of Regulation regulatory challenges in cryptocurrency market, Regulatory Challenges-Basic Mistakes regulatory issues with ICOs, Tokenize Everything regulatory arbitrage, Avoiding Scrutiny: Regulatory Arbitrage-Crypto-Based StablecoinsICOs as example of, Initial

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on Bitcoin, An Early Vulnerability exchanges taking care of private keys, Counterparty Risk flash loans exploiting vulnerabilities in DeFi platforms, The Fulcrum Exploit fundamentals for cryptocurrencies, Security Fundamentals-Recovery Seed identity and dangers of hacking, Identity and the Dangers of Hacking information security in decentralizing finance and the web, Privacy

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push and pull transactions, ERC-777 third-party auditors of, Fungible and Nonfungible Tokens Uniswap contract viewable on Ethereum, Infrastructure social media, campaigns to influence cryptocurrencies, Tools for fundamental analysis soft forks, Understanding Forks software development, changes from use of cryptcurrency and blockchain, Web 3.0 software forks, Understanding Forks

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software wallets, Wallets Solidcoin, Altcoins Solidity language, Authoring a smart contract South Korean exchanges, Regulatory Challenges speculation in cryptocurrency, Market Infrastructure, Tulip Mania or the internet? spoofing, Wash Trading spot exchanges, The Role of Exchanges Square’s Cash App, Brokerages stablecoins, Stablecoins-KYC

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problems with, Crypto-Based Stablecoins-TetherBasis, Basis Digix, Digix NuBits, NuBits Tether (USDT), Tether TrueUSD, TrueUSD USDC, USDC use by unregulated exchanges, Jurisdiction stakeholders in cryptocurrency ecosystem, Stakeholders-Informationanalytics services, Analytics brokerages, Brokerages custody solutions, Custody exchanges, Exchanges information services, Information STARKs, STARKs state channels, Other Altchain Solutions stealth addresses (Monero

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decentralized exchanges, Decentralized Exchange Contracts Tether use case for tokenization, Tether token economics in ICOs, Token Economics tokenizing everything, Tokenize Everything use to create new cryptocurrencies on blockchain protocols, Understanding Omni Layer Torcoin, Alternative methods trading bots and exchange APIs, Exchange APIs and Trading Bots-Market Aggregators trading technology, open

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to overcome, Storing Data in a Chain of Blocks intermediary, Electronic Systems and Trust issuance, Electronic Systems and Trust trustless sidechains, Sidechains Tulip Mania, Fundamental Cryptocurrency Analysis 2.0 chains, “2.0” Chains two-factor authentication, Security Fundamentals U Ulbricht, Ross, Catch Me If You Can unconfirmed/mempool (transactions on

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on Ethereum, Infrastructure token listing on, Token listing Unobtainium, More Altcoin Experiments unspent transaction output (see UTXO model) US agencies and regulatory bodies regulating cryptocurrencies, FinCEN Guidance and the Beginning of Regulation US Dollar Coin (USDC), USDC US Federal Reserveblockchain implementation, US Federal Reserve raising interest rates to control housing

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asset service providers (VASPs), requirement to provide user data on transactions, The FATF and the Travel Rule VmWare blockchain, Blockchain as a Service volatility of cryptocurrencies, Fungible and Nonfungible TokensMaker creating stable asset from volatile markets, DAI Voorhees, Erik, Skirting the Laws voting-based consensus, Alternative methods W wallets, Wallet

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey  · 27 Jan 2015  · 457pp  · 128,838 words

to mitigate corruption inside those intermediating institutions as well as from the politicians who are drawn into their prosperous orbit. The public ledgers used by cryptocurrencies can bring into the open the inner workings of an economic-political system that was previously hidden within impenetrable, centralized institutions. Indeed, the technology’

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those who support the new one, but also within the ranks of the latter group, as idealists, pragmatists, entrepreneurs, and opportunists compete to control cryptocurrency’s future. When disruption is driven by a technology associated with money, these clashes can be especially intense. However, when the knives are out—metaphorically

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London, Brussels, Beijing, and various other financial and political capitals formulate rules for users of digital currencies to follow. If well designed, these could bolster cryptocurrencies by making people feel better protected from their more dangerous elements. But the bureaucrats may go too far and quash innovative start-ups’ ability to

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of Beijing. It includes visits to the mountains of Utah, the beaches of Barbados, schools in Afghanistan, and start-ups in Kenya. The world of cryptocurrencies comprises venture-capital royalty, high school dropouts, businessmen, utopians, anarchists, students, humanitarians, hackers, and Papa John’s pizza. It’s got parallels with the

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trust relationships between the individual and society at large that currency embodies. This view, the one we subscribe to and which informs our understanding of cryptocurrencies, recognizes the presence of an implicit, societywide agreement that allows monetary exchange to perpetuate and debt and credit to be issued and cleared. This

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system, governments worldwide felt compelled to put up trillions of taxpayer dollars, pounds, and euros to avoid bringing down that entire system. The rise of cryptocurrencies can properly be understood only in relation to those cataclysmic events. * * * On the Wednesday after the September 15 collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008,

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Magazine, founded by Mihai Alisie and Vitalik Buterin in 2011, began publishing a print edition in May 2012, becoming the first serious publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin conferences became more common, with New York, London, and Prague featuring in the early circuit. In September 2012, the Bitcoin Foundation was founded

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banking system, which always demands its cut. * * * As the calendar progressed through 2013 a vanguard of retail businesses began to spot the advantages of cryptocurrency’s lower-cost, faster payment system and started signing up for payment-processing services offered by Silicon Valley–funded bitcoin start-ups such as BitPay

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adoption offered a compelling counterpoint to the impression of criminality, incompetence, and regulatory crackdown that had dominated mainstream press coverage in 2014. Meanwhile, innovation in cryptocurrency technology powered on. If anything, it accelerated as developers around the world became increasingly enamored with the prospect of total economic disruption and the profits

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explanation, we’re going to focus on how bitcoin’s blockchain, currency-creation, and transaction-confirmation systems work, though many blockchain variations exist across the cryptocurrency universe. James’s cup of coffee represented one transaction. The system must process many more. The blockchain is managed, as we’ve mentioned, by

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in the underlying software, have been met by consensus-driven responses fashioned to be as fair as possible. Still, the challenges are complicated. Designers of cryptocurrency projects are working at the nexus of economics (which emphasizes the creation of incentives for individual behavior that benefits the group) and technology. Computer-system

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rulebook or top-down set of managerial instructions keeps people’s choices in line with a common corporate objective. Guiding people to optimal behavior in cryptocurrencies is entirely up to how the software is designed to affect human thinking, how effectively its incentive systems encourage that desired behavior. The vulnerabilities

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—or face value—of $710 trillion. The vital thing to remember is that the collective brainpower applied to all the challenges facing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is enormous. Under the open-source, decentralized model, these technologies are not hindered by the same constraints that bureaucracies and stodgy corporations face. The

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accounting; Byrne saw it as purely manipulative speculation, all facilitated and encouraged by Wall Street’s centralized systems for buying, selling, lending, and borrowing securities. Cryptocurrency, he believes, is a weapon to combat this because it brings willing buyers and sellers of assets together, without the brokers and investment banks acting

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information could liberate the poor from the incompetence and corruption of bureaucrats and judges. Digitized registers of real-estate deeds, all fully administered by a cryptocurrency computer network without the engagement of a central government agency, could be created to cheaply and reliably manage people’s rights to property, administering digital

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calls Bitcoin 2.0, or, our preference, Blockchain 2.0 applications—products, services, and even full-blown companies that are run autonomously by a decentralized cryptocurrency network. * * * Gleason and Voorhees were not the first people to envision alternative uses for the blockchain. If, some adventurous minds thought, two parties could

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, bypassing a central exchange or clearinghouse. Mike Hearn, who worked for three years on security software at Google before quitting to devote himself to cryptocurrency development, offers perhaps the most far-reaching forecast of such potential in blockchain technology. In a speech at the August 2013 Turing Festival in Edinburgh

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rewarded with free or discounted rides for a prescribed period, and to achieve that kind of broad-based funding objective, Hearn offers up another solution: cryptocurrency assurance contracts, a blockchain-based version of the popular crowdfunding model in which organizers pledge a certain amount when others’ donations reach target levels. Rather

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the ultimate decentralized platform. * * * Sometime before Buterin set his sights on an entirely new blockchain, another school of Blockchain 2.0 developers started taking decentralized cryptocurrency ledgers in another direction. They believed you didn’t have to completely overhaul the traditional economy of fiat currencies to slash the costs of transferring

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happy. Still, “everybody” in this sense includes one constituency that’s especially difficult to please: regulators. The lawyers who are currently acting as liaisons between cryptocurrency innovators and government regulators are struggling to get the latter to shape rules around a concept that the existing legal system never contemplated. “You think

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not easily identify them. One month after the bust, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, took a surprisingly accommodating approach to cryptocurrency. FinCEN issued guidelines treating bitcoin payment processers and exchanges as legal entities that would need to register with it and would have to comply with

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of money-transfer systems. Getting licensed was laborious, unpredictable, bureaucratic, and lengthy. Some states, such as Texas, took a deliberately accommodating stance, deciding that cryptocurrencies didn’t fall within the bounds of their rules and so could be allowed to function without a license. That led a bunch of storefronts

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government announced it would study the prospect of creating a blockchain-based digital peso and explore how the country might leverage the benefits of decentralized cryptocurrency networks to attack corruption. Though it was thin on details, this was an unprecedented statement, suggesting a forward-looking view of the blockchain’s

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processor GoCoin, which includes bitcoin’s self-proclaimed “serial dealmaker” Brock Pierce as a founder, is headquartered in the city-state. Like any reputable cryptocurrency hub, Singapore has some established bitcoin exchanges, including FYB-SG and First Meta, though the latter has come under some scrutiny following the untimely death

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that bitcoin exchanges would have to fulfill regular anti-money-laundering compliance requirements. But generally, Singapore’s government has shown itself cautiously interested in encouraging cryptocurrency innovation. According to one report, giant, state-owned conglomerate Temasek Holdings, a pillar of Singapore’s financial establishment, has been experimenting with bitcoin investments

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, we’ll explore some of these contradictions and look at what they mean for how societies grapple with the introduction of disruptive technologies such as cryptocurrency. We examine the tension it creates and the demands that the tensions be resolved through compromise and negotiation—typically through the intervention of government. * * *

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t bleed into the larger sectors that Big Business dominates. But that’s not what the proponents of this technology foresee—especially those in the cryptocurrency sector. They believe that decentralization is just getting started and that the centralized economic and political establishments—even governments and nation-states, those ultimate centralized

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banks start shutting back-office administrative centers in midtown Manhattan or London’s Canary Wharf when their merchant customers start booking more customer sales via cryptocurrency systems to avoid the 3 percent transaction fees. The challenge for technologists and their venture-capitalist backers is to frame the disruption within a politically

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people facing job displacement. For society to arrive at a happy medium where the great, liberating benefits of community empowerment are achieved through decentralized cryptocurrency applications but at minimal cost to those human beings who are displaced, all these parties will need to come together to find a negotiated solution

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—another way to say “centralizing”—forces to take control of the economy of the future, even if its underlying infrastructure is built upon decentralized cryptocurrency technology. Whereas cryptocurrency enthusiasts tend to think now of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, etc., as the centralized establishment—the enemy—it’s worth remembering that

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and via multiple blockchain-based applications, they promise to hold whole classes of middlemen, centralized institutions, and government agencies accountable as never before. Exactly how cryptocurrency technology gets to become a major part of the global financial infrastructure is the next big unknown we’ll tackle. However, a few routes are

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edge. While business adopters could be the most powerful catalysts for change, they will watch how consumers and the general public view bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies before jumping. Most consumers may never show sufficient support. Consumer-focused digital-wallet, payment-processing, and bitcoin-depository services such as Coinbase, Bitreserve, Circle

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as the dollar. Despite its public-image problem and regulatory constraints, the environment isn’t entirely unaccommodating for bitcoin to flourish. Some of the more cryptocurrency-friendly states such as Switzerland, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada could foster hubs of innovation that give the technology an unstoppable momentum. Even in

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our financial systems but in the background, with fiat currencies continuing as the economies’ main units of account and mediums of exchange. In that case, cryptocurrency protocols and blockchain-based systems for confirming transactions would replace the cumbersome payment system that’s currently run by banks, credit-card companies, payment processors

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, and foreign-exchange traders. Some of those intermediaries would disappear; others would simply use cryptocurrency technology for their own institution-to-institution transactions. Because of instantaneous conversion into fiat currencies after each transaction, the end-user consumers and businesses would

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reason to believe that concerns about a bitcoin-induced deflation crisis are overblown. The Multicoin World There’s no guarantee that bitcoin remains the dominant cryptocurrency. If cryptocurrencies do survive, more than one, or many, could end up playing an important role in commerce. Given that the blockchain will allow anybody to

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unpredictable ways. Society at large will play a role, too, partly because of the disruptive impact that technology is having on people’s lives. Cryptocurrency is a potentially powerful new disruptive element. Interconnected computing gadgets give people far greater control over their daily lives, creating opportunities to discover new ideas

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’ve ever had. Whatever you want to call this new economy—the sharing economy, the collaborative economy—it is upending centuries of accepted social norms. Cryptocurrency, a pure form of information technology, a deliberately, explicitly disruptive form of information technology, promises to take things to a new level altogether. The

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/bitbeat-much-good-dogecoin-so-hip/. though with bitcoin’s market capitalization more than ten times: as per the market capitalizations of the top 100 cryptocurrencies quoted at coinmarketcap.com. Andreas Antonopoulos, chief security officer at wallet provider Blockchain.info: Paul Vigna, “BitBeat: Dorian Nakamoto Writes a Letter,” Wall Street

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and debit cards American Express fraud and MasterCard Visa Credit Suisse First Boston Crook, Colin Cross River Bank Crowd Companies crowdfunding “Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto” (May) cryptocurrencies: future of labeling of ledger and mainstreaming of mining of regulation of roots of trust and value of see also bitcoin cryptographers Cypherpunks political differences

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Ulbricht, Ross Ultimate Frisbee unbanked people Unenumerated Unfair Trade, The (Casey) UnionPay Union Square Partners United Kingdom Utah utilities value: of bitcoins of coins of cryptocurrencies of dollar of gold intrinsic of money van der Laan, Wladimir Vaurum venture capitalists (VCs) Ver, Roger Verisign Verizon Vessenes, Peter VHS Virgin Group VirtEx

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Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com. The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows: Vigna, Paul. The age of cryptocurrency: how bitcoin and digital money are challenging the global economic order / Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey.—First Edition. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-250

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’t quite the anonymous haven that Nakamoto and some underground businesses thought it would be. * This approach has been followed by designers of special cryptocurrency projects intended to develop applications for decentralized commerce beyond merely currency payments. The coin sale proceeds are used to pay for the developers needed to

The Bitcoin Guidebook: How to Obtain, Invest, and Spend the World's First Decentralized Cryptocurrency

by Ian Demartino  · 2 Feb 2016  · 296pp  · 86,610 words

, you can do so with the following QR code: Bitcoin Address: 3Bi1fhng5LfoDzue5MTfGw9PgHNKKgRkVt Disclaimer: Although I have attempted to make this book as accurate as possible, cryptocurrencies are complex and constantly evolving. So it is worth mentioning right off the bat: do your own research—things can change from month to month

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have been produced as well. ASIC: Application-specific integrated circuit. A piece of hardware designed to do one thing and one thing only. In the cryptocurrency world, it mines for a specific algorithm (SHA256, Scrypt, etc.). BFGMiner: The second most-popular Bitcoin-mining software. Bitcoin/bitcoin: Bitcoin with a capital B

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blockchain confirmed as valid. This is called a 51% attack. fork: Copying an open-source code and making modifications to it. In the context of cryptocurrencies it can also mean when miners either accidentally or maliciously start mining a false blockchain. full node: A local Bitcoin wallet that stores the entire

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-source code for collaborative work on that code. GUIMiner: The most popular Bitcoin-mining software with a graphical user interface. hard fork: Changes to a cryptocurrency’s code that requires participants to upgrade their software in order to be able to continue functioning with the upgraded clients. If the majority of

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of hashes being put toward a network. The total number of hashes equals the number of computational equations taking place on the Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrency) network. 1/THs hashrate means the network is capable of one trillion calculations per second. hot wallet: A wallet connected to the Internet. Bitcoins are

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was already apparent that smaller vendors would remain a force on the Internet, especially through rapidly growing services like eBay. There were a few other cryptocurrency attempts, however, the most prominent of which was E-gold. E-gold was a digital currency backed by—you guessed it—gold. The company held

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operate while only taking a one to five percent fee from the borrowers. This removal of friction enables more investments and more payments. Another service cryptocurrencies can theoretically provide is the role of arbitrator in any transaction. BitHalo, the Bitcoin half of BlackHalo, was the first instance of workable smart contracts

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legal force. Smart contracts enable the sale of physical goods without either party needing to trust the other. BlackHalo was designed for Blackcoin, an alternative cryptocurrency that I will discuss in Chapter 21. BitHalo has the same functionality but works with Bitcoin. It enables quick transfers between the two currencies. More

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potential to bring advanced banking abilities to users around the world. Bitcoin 2.0 projects, as they are often called, can involve Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. The main idea behind these projects is that the blockchain and blockchain technologies can be used to transfer and keep track of holdings of valuables

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. “Kim Dotcom’s Blockchain MegaNet and Bitcoin ATMs Stolen.” International Business Times RSS. February 17, 2015. Accessed May 20, 2015. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cryptocurrency-round-kim-dotcoms-blockchain-meganet-bitcoin-atms-stolen-1488393. Chapter 6: Bitcoin: Anonymous or Pseudonymous? There’s going to be so much information about individuals

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, regardless of whether the people who participated in the transaction want them to be or not. It is not unreasonable to expect that in a cryptocurrency-powered future, political candidates will have their Bitcoin history pored over by their opponents and media sleuths. The blockchain is not the only place they

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, there are plenty of users with other belief systems and affiliations. Likewise, the vast majority of libertarians aren’t as radical as some in the cryptocurrency community. But there is also a sect of cryptolibertarian believers who do have a set of consistent and clear principles that generally pushes their software

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the end. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia called for an outright ban on Bitcoin.14 Even the long-time Bitcoin blogger, security researcher, and cryptocurrency evangelist twobitidiot (real name Ryan Selkis) lamented “Bitcoin’s Apocalyptic moment” upon learning the news.15 The concerns, it should be said, were valid. One

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who want to save and spend bitcoins. Although nothing is guaranteed in Bitcoin, these Mt. Gox-like events are becoming more rare; although popular multi-cryptocurrency exchanges still have controversies and issues, the Bitcoin-only exchanges—Circle, Coinbase, etc.—are relatively safe for small-to-medium Bitcoin holdings. Long-term savings

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a password and a special one-time use code) is a must. • Scams that work on the Internet in general have been carried over to cryptocurrencies as well, sometimes with a bit more sophistication. Phishing scams are common and the thieves have proven capable of spoofing legitimate Bitcoin companies’ email addresses

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large number of supported currencies and a professional look. Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving. The MintPal scandal is as convoluted as any other scam in cryptocurrency history, including the Mt. Gox failure. Almost tailor-made for the big screen, it involves fake identities, corporate takeovers, and a cliffhanger. MintPal’s problems

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VeriCoins. VeriCoin uses a proof-of-stake algorithm to confirm transactions. Proof-of-stake algorithms give weight to those who have significant holdings of the cryptocurrency, resulting in a somewhat stable interest rate—typically anywhere between one and five percent, depending on the coin. Unlike proof-of-work coins such as

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of this writing.2 One significant lesson to learn from the MintPal failure is that appearances aren’t indicative of legitimacy. Of the mainstream multi-cryptocurrency exchanges, MintPal had one of the prettier website layouts. I remember at one point commenting to a friend that MintPal had, in my opinion, the

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Miners and its sister company, ZEN Miners, were owned by a man named Homero Joshua Garza, who went by Josh Garza. Garza had gotten into cryptocurrency after running a broadband Internet company that was accused of ripping off its customers before abandoning them; it is currently under investigation.4 GAW Miners

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claiming to mine. The majority of mining payments, according to the SEC, were paid out with new investor money.7 Although many media outlets, particularly cryptocurrency-focused ones, did an adequate job reporting on GAW after the initial sale of Paycoin in December 2014, much of the initial investigation was done

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being ironed out. Issues with Working for Bitcoin Smart contracts—computer protocols that ensure a contract is followed—have been developed for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and are getting more powerful all the time. Escrow is very useful because it gives the worker a third party to depend on to fulfill

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a flurry of controversies. There have also been complaints about these two remaining companies, however. As is my general advice in all matters related to cryptocurrency, do your research before investing significant amounts of money. Before buying any hardware, it’s essential to check a Bitcoin-mining difficulty calculator to figure

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not with the general sentiment behind his statement. Two years is not realistic; although that amount of time might seem like an eternity within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, the general public—and especially the financial markets—don’t move at the same speed. But Bitcoin is growing; this is undeniable. It also

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virtual bag of a worthless coin. Again, such tactics affect all commodities with a low enough liquidity. It just so happens that there are many cryptocurrencies that have low liquidity compared to more traditional commodities. And since the space is virtually unregulated, pump-and-dumps have become commonplace. The groups that

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most headway in accomplishing this goal. It uses “trusted gateways” to allow users to buy commodities such as gold, as well as various currencies—both cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies. Trusted gateways are entities, like precious metal investment companies, that can be trusted to honor assets they put on the Ripple network

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the Ripple network, assuming you trust the gateway. But Ripple has always been careful not to step on any regulation toes. More centralized than other cryptocurrencies, Ripple Labs could feasibly be held responsible for additions to the Ripple network. In fact, it ran afoul of regulations once already, though it settled

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probably will happen someday soon, either via Ripple or another altcoin, or Bitcoin itself. Non–Wall Street markets are becoming more popular every year. Eventually, cryptocurrencies could create a fully peer-to-peer stock market without any kind of middleman outside of code and cryptography. In that kind of system, people

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. In addition, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a longtime Bitcoin advocate, is currently working on a marketplace that will challenge Wall Street. Unlike many other cryptocurrency “stock market” projects, Overstock is actually going through the proper channels to stay on the right side of regulation. At first, Overstock will only offer

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crowdfunding campaign and raised more than $9 million without being open to US customers.1 But those are the fiat world’s solutions. In the cryptocurrency world, there is a far more direct method of funding businesses: asset tokens distributed on the blockchain. Asset tokens are tokens that represent ownership of

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“more than zero” value. After the article was released, Ars Technica readers became interested in Arscoin and the media outlet suddenly had a fairly successful cryptocurrency on its hands. It launched a store where readers could spend their Arscoins. The store only sold flair—little images of decorative hats that would

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Block Reward (current): 25 LTC Reward Curve: Halves every 840,000 blocks Total Number of LTC: 84 million Litecoin is arguably the second most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, judging by its level of acceptance and brand recognition. Created by Charlie Lee, it is technically a fork of the first Scrypt coin

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(current): 10k Doge Reward Curve: Halves every 840,000 blocks Total Number of Doge: 100 billion [goal, variable] If Litecoin is the most popular serious cryptocurrency, Dogecoin—pronounced either “Doggy Coin” or “Douje-Coin” depending on whom you ask—is the most “viral.” Originally intended as a joke, Dogecoin ended up

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Darkcoin, but the creators decided to rebrand in an attempt to distance themselves from potential perceptions of a criminal connection. Dash is a privacy-minded cryptocurrency that intends to make the final jump from the pseudonymous nature of Bitcoin to the anonymous promise of electronic cash. Dash attempts to do this

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is a fun place for high-risk investments. Some features haven’t been as successful. Its monetary system, for instance, is full of shovelwear cryptocurrencies—i.e., cryptocurrencies that bring no new features or value—that serve no purpose and are being bought by virtually no one. Likewise, its digital goods store

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that plagued its launch and to indicate the project was turning over a new leaf. Mastercoin/Omni was hired by Overstock.com to create a cryptocurrency-powered asset exchange but Overstock eventually decided to continue on with the project without the help of the Mastercoin/Omni developers.8 There are, however

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Time: 10 minutes Difficulty Re-target: 2016 blocks Block Reward (current): 25 NMC Total Supply: 21 million Namecoin was the first “Bitcoin 2.0” or “Cryptocurrency 2.0” project. It was released in April 2011 and was a novel solution to domain registration centralization and censorship issues that some on the

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I am merely an outside observer. Even copycat coins are prevented from scooping up .bit addresses, so Namecoin is in the extremely rare position among cryptocurrencies of being open source but also protected from being directly copied by a lesser coin. Someone else could make a similar uncensorable Internet, but they

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anywhere anytime soon. Blackcoin has its own version of proof-of-stake (dubbed “Proof-of-Stake 3.0”) that depends less on coinage than other cryptocurrencies and which aims to secure the network. Blackcoin’s developers are also reportedly working on further improvements to the proof-of-stake method of securing

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Block Time: Around 20 seconds Block Reward: 5 Ether per block Maximum Blocksize: 1MB Total Number: No limit I conclude with perhaps the most exciting cryptocurrency since Bitcoin. Ethereum is more than a coin, describing itself thus: “Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as

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then communities and developers alike can become discouraged. I think the most important and interesting innovations to come from the altcoin space—both actual alternative cryptocurrencies and “coins” built on top of Bitcoin—will come from communities that realize chasing the price is a fruitless endeavor. I talked earlier about Arscoin

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be. I believe more niche economies such as LTBCoin will spring up over time. Shortly before this book was finished, Uphold announced the Voxel, a cryptocurrency designed to be a currency for virtual reality content creation. What else does the future hold? One of the most heady concepts surrounding Bitcoin is

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services could be handled in a collaborative, volunteer way. Before Bitcoin, I was more socialist than libertarian. But I now foresee systems being built with cryptocurrencies that satisfy the individual freedoms of libertarian ideals and the social safety nets desired by more progressive people. In a far-flung future, even local

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might arise. If that happens, running it on a blockchain makes perfect sense. Not to mention that these communities will eventually need a currency, and cryptocurrencies are uniquely designed to operate in the digital world. It’s not that traditional governments will go away completely; few are that optimistic. Nathan Wosnack

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and informational freedom provided by the Internet. If Bitcoin reaches its potential, billions of people will have their economic lives impacted by the growth of cryptocurrencies. They will gain an economic freedom that will enable them to climb the economic ladder in ways they never imagined possible. In short, Bitcoin will

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13, 2014. Accessed June 22, 2015. http://cointelegraph.com/news/112268/op-ed-how-bitcoin-could-change-how-we-interact-with-sports. Index A Alternative Cryptocurrencies: Arscoin, 283 Blackcoin, 309 Bytecoin, 304 Dash/Dark, 294 Dogecoin, 289 Ethereum, 311 Litecoin, 287 LTBCoin, 318 Monero, 304 Namecoin, 68, 305 NuBits, 296 NXT

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Cloud Mining, 189, 194 Cody Wilson, 86 Coin Mixing, 77 CoinJoin, 79 Darkwallet, 87 Coinality, 178 Coinbase, 140 [blockchain input. See also: Coinbase, Bitcoin Exchanges] Cryptocurrency 2.0 Projects: Bit/BlackHalo, 66 Counterparty, 273, 300 Distributed Automated Corporations (DACs), 69, 324 Factom, 302 iNation, 323 Maidsafe, 302 Mastercoin (see Omni) Omni

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud

by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman  · 17 Jul 2023  · 329pp  · 99,504 words

12: Chapter 11 CHAPTER 13: Preacher’s Father Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendix Notes Index AUTHOR’S NOTE If you currently own, or have ever owned, cryptocurrency and have lost money on that investment, rest assured that you are not alone. In fact, you join the ranks of the vast majority of

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—particularly prior to the invention of securities laws—created and destroyed fortunes overnight. Almost a century later, the casino descriptor proves even more apt: Cryptocurrencies and their assorted byproducts are generally regarded by economists as at best zero-sum. One person’s gain is another’s loss. You may have

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spread of a distorted economic narrative that led to its downfall. Narrative Economics was published in 2019, prior to both the current viral spread of cryptocurrency and the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that, it is remarkable to observe how intertwined these two viruses would become in the following years. To

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understand the origins of economic narratives surrounding Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, we have to go back to the events that inspired them. Both crypto and the “easy money” policies from which this book derives its

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s the good news: You are now free to forget everything I just said. The operational details of blockchain technology are not important to understanding cryptocurrency’s rise in popular culture. Remember, blockchain is at least thirty years old and barely used by businesses outside of the crypto industry. Since

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use case gambling? Ironically enough, the more important technology is the one that predates it: public key encryption. What is important to understand about cryptocurrency is the economic narrative that developed around it, a constellation of sometimes overlapping stories that built up over the course of its existence. The original

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most popular digital currency, but it was not the first. In a 1982 paper, cryptographer David Chaum theorized the intellectual scaffolding of blockchain, upon which cryptocurrency would emerge some quarter of a century later. Chaum started his own digital currency company, DigiCash, in the late 1980s. Although it was technically

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mean a kind of financial anarchy. Criminals could use crypto to avoid taxes, sanctions, launder money, and collect profits from ransomware. A deluge of cryptocurrencies appeared, not just Ethereum but hundreds and then thousands of others, with the wave cresting during the so-called Initial Coin Offering (ICO) boom of

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money and circulating it through offshore markets. In terms of propensity for fraud, what could be more appealing? Stepping back even further, what did these cryptocurrencies do? From where did their value derive? They were bizarre. Imagine a conventional security, such as a share of stock in the company Apple.

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writing a few articles on the subject? Establish our bona fides, as it were, before we go to market with the book. Celebrities are endorsing cryptocurrencies left and right. Why not start with your superpower? ° ° ° On October 7, 2021, Slate published an article with the unambiguous title “Celebrity Crypto Shilling

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Lindsay Lohan for their involvement in promoting various crypto projects. Along with former NBA star Paul Pierce, Kim and Floyd had been shilling an obscure cryptocurrency called EthereumMax. Kim’s Instagram post from June 2021 read as follows: ARE YOU GUYS INTO CRYPTO???? THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE BUT SHARING

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from the industry’s charming parlance, EthereumMax was a shitcoin. The hastily assembled crypto project seemed purposely designed to be confused with the second biggest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, even though the two were not related. Kim’s post, sent out to her then 251 million (!) followers, was an enormous publicity success

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an all-time high of around $3 trillion. According to a Pew study, 16 percent of adult Americans had invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrency, meaning some forty million people had been lured into the crypto casino. A December 2021 study commissioned by Grayscale, a prominent crypto company, found that

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influencers appear uncannily similar to someone pushing an old-fashioned MLM. Crypto-world celebrities employ a number of social media channels, hawking this or that cryptocurrency based on technobabble “fundamentals,” rumors, misinformation, or just a sense of optimism. Twitter, YouTube, Discord, Telegram, and TikTok were essential platforms for crypto influencers,

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eventually central banks were created to better manage the franchisee banks and ensure the safety of customer deposits. Among the many butcherings of language in cryptocurrency, historians may find this the cruelest cut of all. The purported “future of money” is in fact the past of money, a failed experiment

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myself, I searched for decent podcasts on the subject. Instead, I got a lot of shows with dudes—really loud dudes—hawking this or that cryptocurrency while waxing philosophically on freedom and privacy and displaying a garbage understanding of economics. It was annoying, tedious, and a tad suspect: If these

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° ° ° Two weeks after the Super Bowl, the headline in Variety blared: ‘The O.C.’ Star Ben McKenzie, Journalist Jacob Silverman Sell ‘Easy Money,’ Book About Cryptocurrency, to Abrams Press. After a few setbacks, Jacob and I had managed to convince Abrams Press, an imprint of the storied New York publisher initially

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such extreme financial risks. One man told us that he belonged to at least four DAOs—decentralized autonomous organizations—from which he earned several different cryptocurrencies. A DAO starts with a loose group of people who share a common goal. They build (or attempt to build) an organization without a

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through automated computer programs called smart contracts and stored on ledgers called blockchains. Membership in the organization is denoted in a governance token, aka a cryptocurrency, which is sort of like a voting share of a stock. If it all sounds painfully complicated, it’s not you. DAOs are notoriously

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offerings. CZ responded by moving his operation to Japan, only to have to move it again the following year when Japanese authorities warned against selling cryptocurrencies to the public without a license. Since 2018, Binance has refused to give a location for its global operations, claiming it has no headquarters.

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position liquidated when the price continued to rise. The response from Binance was of little help to users. It nevertheless revealed something fundamental about how cryptocurrency exchanges exist as murkily operated casinos that are essentially unaccountable to their customers. Instead of acknowledging the full scale of the problem, the official

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aggrieved customers. Kim and Ahmed connected with Liti Capital, a Switzerland-based blockchain private equity firm—essentially a litigation finance firm that issues its own cryptocurrency and tries to incorporate public decision-making into which cases it takes on. Liti staked $5 million to support the suit, which was being

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“world’s coolest dictator,” and his profile picture sported laser eyes favored by Bitcoin maximalists, or maxis, who believed that Bitcoin was the one true cryptocurrency and the rest imposters, mere shitcoins. Bukele bragged that he bought Bitcoin, using the state treasury, on his phone while sitting on the toilet.

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the same. Hilary Allen, professor of law at American University, wrote a paper in February 2022, just three months before the crash, referring to cryptocurrency and its assorted DeFi products as effectively a new form of shadow banking. Broadly speaking, shadow banking refers to a company offering banking services while

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drunk after last call. It was nearing its moment of subprime catastrophe. Of all the ironies crypto presented, this was surely near the top. Cryptocurrency, which was supposedly created as a solution to the myriad failures of our regulated financial system laid bare during the subprime crisis, had effectively reproduced

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Sam moved Alameda Research to Hong Kong in search of a more favorable regulatory environment. Hong Kong benefited from being close to mainland China, where cryptocurrency had exploded in popularity, due in no small part to the desire of wealthy Chinese to avoid state capital controls. In Hong Kong, everyone seemed

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dollars on its crypto investments. Elon Musk, the supposed genius billionaire who had gone on Saturday Night Live the year before and promoted Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency he admitted was “a hustle,” had apparently been hustled himself. (Musk was simultaneously in the midst of receiving the most expensive lesson in contract

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, Bitcoin followed in the financial lineage of beef futures. For many coiners, it was taken as good news, a way of legitimizing the first cryptocurrency by enshrining it under the existing regulatory regime. One year later, the CFTC announced that TeraExchange had engaged in illegal wash trading surrounding that very

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and others considered derivatives contracts commodities, which was justifiable under a strict reading of the Commodity Exchange Act. Because such contracts existed for Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency itself was one. Bitcoin’s a pretty weird commodity, in that it obviously isn’t tied to any specific physical good, as commodities were

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lot to make sure there is no fraud or other manipulation. Thank you, Mr. Bankman-Fried, for helping us understand the extensive guardrails a cryptocurrency exchange like FTX has in place to ensure sound crypto spot markets for investors.” Rep. Emmer was hopeful that further discussions might let them proceed

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. They never have a chance. David can never know for sure, but he suspects that forex was how his father stumbled upon Stallion Wings, a cryptocurrency investment firm promising incredible returns. ° ° ° Lin and Aaron Sternlicht run a boutique addiction services firm in New York City catering to high–net worth

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are effectively valueless are often described as Ponzi schemes, which are regulated under American law by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In my opinion, the cryptocurrency industry represents the largest Ponzi scheme in history.” I hit the red button and glanced up. Thirty feet away, on the dais above me,

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bought every CEL token in the market at least one time and in some instances, twice.” Given the opaque and largely unregulated nature of the cryptocurrency industry, there was little stopping Celsius from engaging in what would otherwise constitute blatant fraud. While the euphoria of the crypto bubble lasted, such

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. While the bank served a wide variety of clients, from law firms to real estate developers to taxi medallion businesses, it had recently ventured into cryptocurrency. At the time of its closure, Signature held approximately $100 billion worth of assets, and $16.52 billion in digital asset–related client deposits.

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the failures was alarming, I couldn’t help but notice that two of the three collapsed banks had significant exposure to the volatile world of cryptocurrency, and the third (SVB) counted as clients the crypto companies Ripple, BlockFi, Circle, Avalanche, and Yuga Labs, among others. I thought back to the

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Critics’ Corner. Thank you to Stephen Diehl for being as generous to fellow skeptics as he is eloquent in his deconstructions of the myths surrounding cryptocurrency. Thank you to Molly White for chronicling the absurdities of crypto and Web3 through her website web3isgoinggreat.com. I’m grateful for the work

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Harriet Agnew, “Jim Chanos: ‘We are in the golden age of fraud,’” Financial Times, July 24, 2020. 4 A few thousand cryptos: CoinMarketCap, “Today’s Cryptocurrency Prices by Market Cap,” https://Coinmarketcap.com. 4 An estimated forty million Americans: Pew Research Center, November 11, 2021. 5 In his 2019 book: Robert

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FTX Shareholders Facing Wipeout,” Bloomberg, January 10, 2023. 52 42% of men: Michelle Faverio and Navid Massarat, “46% of Americans who have invested in cryptocurrency say it’s done worse than expected,” Pew Research Center, August 2022. 53 “In theory, the difference seems to be”: Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language

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against the world’s largest crypto exchange,” Washington Post, April 1, 2022. 92 crypto took off in China . . . to avoid capital controls: Karen Yeung, “Cryptocurrencies help Chinese evade capital and currency controls in moving billions overseas,” South China Morning Post, August 26, 2020. 92 Binance has . . . no headquarters: Patricia Kowsmann

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down as FTX CEO as his crypto exchange files for bankruptcy,” CNBC, November 11, 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/11/sam-bankman-frieds-cryptocurrency-exchange-ftx-files-for-bankruptcy.html. 228 “ ‘God Mode’ to short coins . . .”: Alex Mashinsky (@Mashinsky), Twitter, December 3, 2022, https://twitter.com/mashinsky/with

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District Court (Southern District of New York), December 21, 2022, https://www.cftc.gov/media/8021/enfftxtradingcomplaint122122/download. 237 In January 2023: Giulia Heyward, “Cryptocurrency giant Coin-base strikes a $100 million deal with New York regulators,” NPR, January 4, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146915338/coinbase

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-settlement-cryptocurrency-exchange-new-york-dfs. CHAPTER 13: PREACHER’S FATHER 243 a story about his dad, Hal: Multiple interviews with David Henson in 2022; reporting

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to Stop Issuing Binance Stablecoin,” Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2023. 262 the government charged . . . Bitzlato: press release, “Founder and Majority Owner of Bitzlato, a Cryptocurrency Exchange, Charged with Unlicensed Money Transmitting,” US Attorney’s Office (Eastern District of New York), https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/founder-and-majority

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-owner-bitzlato-cryptocurrency-exchange-charged-unlicensed-money. 264 Silvergate made a “risk based decision”: Rachel Louise Ensign, “Crypto Bank Silvergate to Shut Down, Repay Deposits,” Wall Street

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(1936) Commodity Exchange Authority (CEA) Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) cooling out the mark COVID-19 pandemic Credit Suisse Cressey, Donald Crypto Critics’ Corner (podcast) cryptocurrency. See specific topics Cultish (Montell) Damon, Matt Davidson, Warren Davies, Dan Davies, Kyle decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) decentralized finance (DeFi) Dell, Michael Democratic Party

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P. multi-level marketing scheme (MLM) Murdoch, Lachlan Mushegian, Nikolai Musk, Elon Nadkarni, Tushar Nailwal, Sandeep Narrative Economics (Shiller) National Bureau of Economic Research National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team National League Championship Series naturally occurring Ponzi schemes Neuner, Ran New Republic Newsome, Jim New York magazine New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) New

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall

by Zeke Faux  · 11 Sep 2023  · 385pp  · 106,848 words

-three: Inside the Orchid Epilogue Photo Insert Dedication Acknowledgments Notes Index About the Author _144880586_ PROLOGUE Nassau, Bahamas February 17, 2022 Total Value of All Cryptocurrencies: $2 Trillion (Yes, Trillion with a “T”) “I’m not going to lie,” Sam Bankman-Fried told me. This was a lie. We were

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back. * * * — AROUND 2020, AN Internal Revenue Service agent working from his basement in Grand Rapids, Michigan, found a clue. People had once assumed that cryptocurrencies were untraceable, because the blockchain doesn’t record users’ names. But the way the blockchain database works, transaction records are never erased. And while it

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said during one livestream. “That’s like going to the Olympics and getting fifteen medals in fifteen different fields.” Celsius was effectively a bank for cryptocurrencies. Users deposited their Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Tether and received weekly interest payments. But the rates Celsius paid were tens or hundreds of times higher

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mansion, semi-incoherent, his unknown enemies sneaking closer. But instead of mountains of cocaine, Bankman-Fried was clinging to spreadsheet tabs filled with wildly optimistic cryptocurrency valuations. * * * — WHAT EXACTLY HAD happened to all the money? By the time I arrived at Bankman-Fried’s penthouse, multiple news reports had emerged

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Summit via Getty Images) Jason Stone, a thirty-four-year-old DeFi trader, was entrusted by Celsius with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency to invest. “I’m just like click, click, click, make money, make money, make money,” Stone explained of his trading strategy. (Dave Krugman) Sam

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job,” a spokesperson for the company wrote. “Our attention is better focused on our customers and the success of the Bitcoin community.” A note on cryptocurrency prices: For coin prices, trading volumes, and market capitalizations, I generally used CoinMarketCap.com, which I checked against other sources. NFT prices came from

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,” Bloomberg, January 9, 2022. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter One: “I Am Freaking Nostradamus!” even Dogecoin’s creator: Jackson Palmer, “My Joke Cryptocurrency Hit $2 Billion and Something Is Very Wrong,” Vice, January 11, 2018. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT I pulled up Drudge Report: “Reddit Frenzy

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3, 2015. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT and stole 119,754 Bitcoins: “Two Arrested for Alleged Conspiracy to Launder $4.5 Billion in Stolen Cryptocurrency,” United States Department of Justice, February 8, 2022. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT reduced the balances of all customers: Clare Baldwin, “Bitfinex Exchange

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TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT raised a total of $6.5 billion: Mircea Constantin Șcheau, Simona Liliana Crăciunescu, Iulia Brici, and Monica Violeta Achim, “A Cryptocurrency Spectrum Short Analysis,” Journal of Risk and Financial Management 13, no. 8 (August 17, 2020). GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT It raised $4

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Slide.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter Seven: “A Thin Crust of Ice” Castiglione wrote in a letter: “A.G. Schneiderman Launches Inquiry into Cryptocurrency ‘Exchanges,’ ” New York State Attorney General, April 17, 2018. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Four exchanges didn’t respond at all: “Virtual Markets

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General, https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/​nyscef/​ViewDocument?docIndex=2CN3UUPclyTIOms93ZTYGQ==. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “The market just doesn’t care”: Paul Vigna, “Cryptocurrency Investors Shrug Off Tether Woes,” Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2019. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Latin for one, but a lion: Pete

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decade now.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT touched an all-time high: MacKenzie Sigalos, “Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High Above $68,000 as Cryptocurrencies Extend Rally,” CNBC, November 8, 2021. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT topped $3 trillion: Joanna Ossinger, “Crypto World Hits $3 Trillion Market Cap

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Metz, “She Was a Little-Known Crypto Trader. Then FTX Collapsed,” New York Times, November 23, 2022. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “We Do Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Arbitrage”: Sylvie Douglas, “Sam Bankman-Fried and the Spectacular Fall of His Crypto Empire, FTX,” Planet Money, NPR, November 16, 2022. GO TO

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60 Billion Crypto Collapse Reveals a New Kind of Bank Run,” Bloomberg Businessweek, May 19, 2022. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Comedian John Oliver: “Cryptocurrencies II,” Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, HBO, April 23, 2023. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Tether’s tech chief, Paolo Ardoino: Olga Kharif

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Y Z A Adams, John, 70 affiliate marketing, 100 Aimin, Xu, 192 Akin Gump, 241–242 Akon, 27 Alameda Research bailout of Bitfinex by, 64 cryptocurrency owed by, 214 effective altruism movement and, 86, 223 founding of, 85–86 FTX loan to, 223, 226 Hong Kong move by, 87 Japan arbitrage

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–125, 127 FTX and, 124 increase in user base, 122–123 investors, 165 Lapina and, 121–122 returns from, 124 Smooth Love Potion as official cryptocurrency of, 120 B Back, Jason “Icetoad,” 176–177, 178, 179, 182 Bahamas. See also Crypto Bahamas conference basic facts about, 76 Deltec Bank & Trust, 

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66, 67, 136 Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Bill (2020), 77 drug traffickers in, 77 legal footing of cryptocurrencies in, 77–78 as money laundering haven, 76–77 penthouse of Bankman-Fried in, 218–220 as pirates’ haven, 76 prison conditions in, 233–234

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medications used by, 230 as owner of Alameda and FTX, 88 as political donor, 91 relationship with Ellison, 228 on reputation, 92 on solvency of cryptocurrency exchanges (2022), 168 talk to Economic Club of New York by, 78–79 as Tether customer, 74 on trustworthiness of Tether, 95 U.S.

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on “yield farming,” 134–135 Zhao and, 213, 214 Bank of America, 147 banks. See also specific institutions business model of, 58 Celsius as, for cryptocurrencies, 110, 118 central function of, 17 Crypto Capital and, 61 effect of rise in interest rates on, 239 runs on, 70, 71 Tether and, 52

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–130 sponsors, 136 topics, 127–128 Crypto Capital Bitfinex and, 61, 62 money laundering by, 62 relationship with Tether as subject of federal investigation, 68 cryptocurrencies. See also specific currencies anonymity of users, 18, 19 Celsius as bank for, 110, 118 commercial applications of, ICOs, 49 crash, 236–237 decentralized

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eyes and, 22 legal footing of, in Bahamas, 77–78 money laundering and, 27, 37 regulation of, 87 run on, 161–163 traceability of, 98 cryptocurrency exchanges. See also specific exchanges Bankman-Fried on solvency of (2022), 168 banks and, 52, 56–57 first big, 48, 102 hacking of, 101–103

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career as plastic surgeon, 11, 40–41 Chalopin and, 67 as de facto CEO of Tether, 137 Faux’s article blasted by, 68–69 first cryptocurrency bubble and, 51 Keiser and Herbert and, 205, 210, 239 loan to FTX refused by, 231 on Madoff, 45 money transfers from Crypto Capital, 61

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157–158 Dr. Scum, 150, 158, 159 “the Drowning Child” thought experiment, 81 Drudge Report, 10 drugs at ApeFest, 152, 157 Crypto Capital and, 62 cryptocurrencies and, 19, 28 in Puerto Rico, 116 traffickers in Bahamas, 77 DuckTales, 55–56 E Eagle, Ryan, 100 earning to give, 82–83 Economic Club

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Facing Up to Scarcity: The Logic and Limits of Nonconsequentialist Thought (Fried), 81–82 Fallon, Jimmy, 141, 158 FBI Bitcoins stolen from Bitfinex, 105–107 cryptocurrency cases and, 105 Devasini and Bitcoins seized by, 109 Felch, Alpheus, 71 Ferrell, Will, 17 “fiat money,” 16 Financial Investigation Agency (British Virgin Islands), 12

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pollution produced by, 20 process of, 19 as solution to “double-spending problem,” 18 Monaco, Lisa, 107 money laundering Bahamas as haven for, 76–77 cryptocurrency exchanges and, 61, 62 in Switzerland, 209 Tether and, 27, 37, 170–171, 199 “Moon n Stars” (Morgan), 106 MoonPay, 154 Morgan, Heather basic

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buying, 147–149 Stone and, 110, 155, 160, 241 Mutant Ape Yacht Club, 144, 150, 155 N Nakamoto, Satoshi basic facts about, 18 development of cryptocurrency by, 18, 21, 147 Nass, Matt, 81 NBA and non-fungible tokens, 143 Netflix, 107 The New Yorker, 22–23 The New York Review of

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Books, 196 New York State cryptocurrency investigation basic facts about, 59 Bitfinex as focus of, 60 questionnaire sent to thirteen largest crypto exchanges, 60 settlement of, 64–65 team members, 59

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Phong Bui, 188, 189–190 Picozzi, Valentina, 205–206, 207, 239 Pierce, Brock acting career of, 32 appearance of, 27, 31 Bukele and, 201 as cryptocurrency promoter, 27 DEN and, 32, 33 EOS promoted by, 49 EverQuest and, 33 genesis of stablecoins and, 32, 36 home of, 29 IGE and, 34

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move to Hong Kong by, 223 run on Alameda Research and, 226 Sky Mavis, 123, 124, 126 “smart contracts,” 114 Smooth Love Potion as official cryptocurrency of Axie Infinity, 120 purpose of, 124 used as cash, 122 Snoop Dogg, 142, 157–158 social engineering, 103 Soho, Jessica, 123 Solana, crash of

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109, 117, 118–119, 164 Chalopin on assets of, 67–68 conspiracy theories about, 27, 96, 138, 139 creation of, 11, 27, 34–35, 36 cryptocurrency exchanges and, 52 daily trading of, 13 Deltec and, 66, 67 effect of rise in interest rates on, 239 El Salvador and, 199, 203 first

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holder of commercial paper, 23 as holder of debt of Chinese companies, 68, 69 as holder of U.S. government bonds, 239 importance of, in cryptocurrency economy, 135 investments made by, 68 line of credit to Bitfinex, 63–64 management of, 11, 27, 39, 137 New York State investigation of, 62

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192, 193–195, 199 Thailand, 104 Thatch, Edward, 76 Thiel, Peter, 29 Three Arrows Capital bankruptcy of, 166–167, 238 loans from Celsius and other cryptocurrency companies, 165–166 ownership of non-fungible tokens, 166 Tradeloop, 43 Transparency International Russia, 170 Trump, Donald, Jr., 30 U Ulbricht, Ross, 19 USDC, 170

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226 Watters, Jesse, 216 Web3, 120, 132, 141–142 Weil, Joseph “Yellow Kid,” 177–178 Wells Fargo, 52 Whitehurst, Brian Bitfinex focused on by, 60 cryptocurrency assignment, 59 SEC and, 64 Willett, J. R., 34–36 The Wolf of Wall Street, 50 World of Warcraft, 34 Wu, John, 132 Y Yellen

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey  · 27 Feb 2018  · 348pp  · 97,277 words

the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. For Liz, Jenny, Sarah, and Di —MC For my mom and dad —PV Preface In The Age of Cryptocurrency, we explored the digital currency bitcoin and its promise of a fairer global payments system, one that functions without banks and other financial intermediaries. As

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investors are entering into early stage investment rounds typically reserved for venture capitalists and other professionals. Not to be outdone, Bitcoin, the granddaddy of the cryptocurrency world, has continued to reveal strengths—and this has been reflected in its price. Despite a bitter fight between developers and the “miners” that validate

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t have to rely on all those separate, trusted third parties to process it on your behalf. The key architectural feature of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency systems that lets these peer-to-peer transactions happen is the distributed nature of the blockchain ledger. That decentralized structure is made possible because of

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to protect that device. Admittedly, that opens up new challenges in terms of education around the management of private keys and encryption strategies. Optimizing the cryptocurrency future will require people to take charge of their own security. But even with this new challenge in terms of device protection, we should see

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world’s transactions and information exchanges. The challenges include those posed by regulators, who are struggling to keep up with the category-defying changes that cryptocurrency poses. It took two years for the New York Department of Financial Services to come up with its benchmark-setting BitLicense regulation for money transmission

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a blockchain will, for example, depend on the attestation of some authority figure such as a government registrar. This dependence on a trusted middleman, some cryptocurrency purists would argue, overly compromises a blockchain’s security function, rendering it unreliable. For that reason, some of them say, a blockchain is inappropriate for

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comes to mind. It turns out that building a network outside the traditional political system requires a lot of political decisions. Success for a decentralized cryptocurrency or blockchain network comes down to designing the right rule set—the software protocol—by which participants interact with each other. Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin

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magnitude of Nakamoto’s breakthrough. There are other elements to Bitcoin that, for all intents and purposes, achieved the Cypherpunks’ Holy Grail: a fully decentralized cryptocurrency that no single person, entity, or consortium of members anywhere could control. The Bay Area–based Cypherpunk community, which fought hard to achieve decentralization for

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-participatory democratic models through which crisis policymaking is enacted by national governments. And since Ethereum is more of a community of software engineers than of cryptocurrency investors, it was less contentious than Bitcoin’s struggle over hard-fork proposals. What’s more, it turned out that disgruntled Ethereum participants weren’

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prove that holders of the currency aren’t double-spending without being able to trace the addresses. Zcash, along with other new, cryptographically secured anonymous cryptocurrencies, such as Dash and Monero, have sparked a great deal of interest. And not just from libertarians and others who want to hide from snoopers

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were generated by an Ethereum-validated smart contract that kept track of the issuance and exchanges by token holders. These tokens, like bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies, still needed the immutable ledger of a blockchain truth machine to maintain their provable status as non-replicable digital assets. But because of the ERC

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another way to spread tokens, build a network, and fund the development of a platform without attracting SEC action—and, in the eyes of many cryptocurrency advocates, maintain your integrity. And that’s to do things the old-fashioned crypto way: by introducing tokens into the ecosystem through the ongoing mining

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truth machine to put a value on honesty sounds appealing. Already, the blockchain startup Augur is exploring these ideas. The firm has built a decentralized, cryptocurrency-based prediction market on top of Ethereum, where players place bets on an outcome of some event or other, the result of which depends on

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jettisoned other Bitcoin features, including those that obviate the need for banks as payment intermediaries. Most notably, this system did not include its own native cryptocurrency for rewarding miners and for maintaining a permissionless system of validation. In essence, Symbiont was promising “blockchain without bitcoin”—it would maintain the fast, secure

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validation, a permissionless network won’t arise, which falls short of what many see as the prerequisite for a truly decentralized system of value exchange. Cryptocurrency-less systems necessarily end up as permissioned, or private, blockchains, in which the computers that run the network are approved by the company or groups

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Street movement was born four years earlier. Using a distributed ledger that functioned similarly to Bitcoin’s blockchain—with the vital omission of an independent cryptocurrency—Symbiont’s platform aimed to reorganize the core functions of a global financial market system that managed more than $200 trillion in assets. It promised

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: Private Blockchains Though Bitcoin fans frowned upon permissioned blockchains, Wall Street continued to build them. These tweaked versions of Bitcoin shared various elements of the cryptocurrency’s powerful cryptography and network rules. However, instead of its electricity-hungry “proof-of-work” consensus model, they drew upon older, pre-Bitcoin protocols

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sexy. But Wall Street had deep pockets, which did help in recruitment. In particular, the funders of these projects attracted some key developers and early cryptocurrency adopters during the worst moments of Bitcoin’s block-size civil war. At that time, people were frustrated by the lack of progress in Satoshi

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financial institutions. Some of that money went to hire people like Mike Hearn, a once prominent Bitcoin developer who dramatically turned his back on the cryptocurrency community with an “I quit” blog post complaining about the bitter infighting. R3 also hired Ian Grigg—who later left to join EOS—another prominent

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onetime rebel from the cryptocurrency space. Leading its research team was the ever-thoughtful and well-regarded full-time IBM blockchain guru Richard Gendal-Brown. These were serious engineering hires

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Tim Swanson as research director. Swanson was a distributed ledger/blockchain analyst who was briefly enthused by Bitcoin but who later became disillusioned with the cryptocurrency’s ideologues. He became a vocal, anti-Bitcoin gadfly who seemed to delight in mocking its travails. Of a similar breed was Preston Byrne,

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interests of the very same big institutions that already control the financial system, those responsible for the systemic risks, gatekeeping restrictions, and political crises that cryptocurrencies seek to overcome. You could argue that permissioned ledgers in the banking system will just take us back to 2008, the moment of systemic and

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societal breakdown that triggered the backlash and the motivation for cryptocurrencies to take off. That’s why we argue that individuals, businesses, and governments really need to support the various hard-core technical solutions that

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in adopting digital currency technology, the industry facing the biggest disruption will eventually be the banking system. In the last chapter of The Age of Cryptocurrency, we speculated that governments and central banks might explore issuing their own digital currencies. Well, as of January 2017, twenty-six different central banks

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that among its more than one hundred members as of the end of 2016, there were numerous Bitcoin-focused companies inserting their case for decentralized cryptocurrency systems. These included Blockstream, blockchain applications provider Bloq, and Blockchain.info, the bitcoin wallet and data-processing company. Still, the biggest players in this

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merely becomes a vessel within which information about some right or claim is conveyed to the world. This is possible because, as we’ve discussed, cryptocurrency on a blockchain gives money a capacity that it doesn’t have in the traditional monetary system—it becomes programmable, able to communicate information and

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itself). Nine years on, though, adoption of the digital currency by people outside of the tech sector remains low. Part of the problem is that cryptocurrencies continue to sustain a reputation among the general public for criminality. This was intensified by the massive “WannaCry” ransomware attacks of 2017 in which attackers

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. The approach is paying dividends, as evident in the recent success of BitPesa, which was established in 2013 and was profiled in The Age of Cryptocurrency. The company, which offers cross-border payments and foreign-exchange transactions in and out of Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, reported 25 percent month-

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of transaction flows across the Bitcoin network can reveal all sorts of insights into the behavior, and even probable intent, of its users. New encrypted cryptocurrencies such as Zcash and Monero, designed as part of a pro-privacy backlash against the efforts of Chainalysis and others, could of course give criminals

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enough by the myriad Web site passwords they have to remember, let alone having to look after the private keys to their digital identity or cryptocurrency assets. In fact, this custodian model is how many bitcoin wallet providers, including the biggest of all, Coinbase, are structured. You ask Coinbase to

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help. This, at its core, is why the blockchain matters. Acknowledgments It’s hard for anyone to keep up with the frenetic pace at which cryptocurrency and blockchain development evolves. For an author, it can be downright exhausting. The rhythms of the community attached to this technology run on a cycle

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-131. CHAPTER THREE For more technically minded people looking for greater detail on how Bitcoin works, we recommend: Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies (O’Reilly Media, 2014). Visa, whose network handles about 65,000 transactions per second: “Visa Inc. Overview,” Visa, April 2017, https://usa.visa.com/

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and Vitalik Buterin, “Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts,” August 11, 2017, http://plasma.io/plasma.pdf. As Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, founder of a new cryptocurrency called Zcash: Presentation recorded by “Triangle Bitcoin & Business Meetup,” April 4, 2017, available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZu4u_5L0l8. When

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/articles/how-a-bitcoin-clone-helped-a-company-raise-12-million-in-12-minutes-1495018802?tesla=y&mod=e2tw. In fact, says Cornell cryptographer and cryptocurrency expert: Phone interview with Michael J. Casey, June 22, 2017. Big-name firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital: Laura Shin, “Crypto Boom: 15

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Promise of Managing Identity on the Blockchain,” TechCrunch, September 10, 2017, https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/10/the-promise-of-managing-identity-on-the-blockchain/. cryptocurrency journalist Juan Galt: Juan Galt, “Andreas Antonopoulos: The Case Against Reputation and Identity Systems,” Bitcoin Magazine, December 19, 2015, https://news.bitcoin.com/andreas-

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antonopoulos-case-reputation-identity-systems/. Influential cryptocurrency thinker Andreas Antonopoulos: ibid. And hackers have demonstrated: Russell Brandon, “Your Phone’s Biggest Vulnerability Is Your Fingerprint,” The Verge, May 2, 2016, http://www

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to these you can add a project called Algorand: Yossi Gilad, Rotem Hemo, Silvio Micali, Georgios Vlachos, and Nickolai Zeldovich, “Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreements for Cryptocurrencies,” MIT CSAIL, https://people.csail.mit.edu/nickolai/papers/gilad-algorand-eprint.pdf. Listen to this January 2016 report: “Distributed Ledger Technology: Beyond Block Chain

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interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below. Aadhaar Abra Abu Dhabi Accenture adChain advertising industry Age of Cryptocurrency, The (Casey and Vigna) Aho, James Ahoolee Airbnb Akinyemi, Julius Ali, Robleh Alibaba Allen, Chris Allison, Julia Al-Mheimed, Najah Saleh al-Shabaab altcoins

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. See also United Kingdom Brody, Paul Burniske, Chris Buterin, Vitalik BuzzFeed Byrne, Preston capitalism Carlson-Wee, Olaf Casares, Wences Casey, Michael. See also Age of Cryptocurrency, The (Casey and Vigna) CCcoin. See also Creative Commons censorship resistance Chain Inc. Chainalysis Charrúa China Chipotle Chowdry, Bhagwan Christianity Chromaway Cisco climate change Climate

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also R3 CEV Cosmos costs-per-impression measures (CPMs) Craigslist Creative Commons credit default swap (CDS) Crowdfunder crowdfunding crypto-asset analysts crypto-assets Crytpo Company cryptocurrency and criminality and Cypherpunk movement and decentralization and fair distribution and financial sector and Fourth Industrial Revolution hoarding investors and privacy and quantum computing and

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, Narendra Monax Monero monetary and banking systems central bank fiat digital currency and community connections and digital counterfeiting mobile money systems money laundering See also cryptocurrency; financial sector Moore’s law Mooti Morehead, Dan Mozilla M-Pesa Nakamoto, Satoshi (pseudonymous Bitcoin creator) Nasdaq Nelson, Ted New America Foundation New York Department

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Pacioli, Luca Pantera Capital Parity Wallet peer-to-peer commerce and economy Pentland, Alex “Sandy” Perkins Coie permissioned (private) blockchains advantages of challenges of and cryptocurrency-less systems definition of and finance sector open-source development of scalability of and security and supply chains permissionless blockchains Bitcoin and Cypherpunks Ethereum financial

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World Food Program (WFP) universal basic income (UBI) user attention Veem venture capital (VC) Ver, Roger Veripart Verisign Vertcoin Vigna, Paul. See also Age of Cryptocurrency, The (Casey and Vigna) Vogelsteller, Fabian Walden, Jesse Wall Street. See financial sector WannaCry ransom attacks Waze Web 3 Foundation Weber, Mark WeTrust Wilcox-O

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Muhammad Zaatari refugee camp (Jordan). See also Azraq refugee camp (Jordan) Zcash Zemlin, Jim Also by Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order Also by Michael J. Casey The Unfair Trade: How Our Broken Financial System Destroys

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape From Corporate America

by Dan Conway  · 8 Sep 2019  · 218pp  · 68,648 words

instances, I’ve changed identifying details for these people and families to further screen their identities. Although I write in detail about my experiences in cryptocurrency and other financial and business matters, this is a memoir and a commentary rather than a book of business advice. Readers who are seeking information

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blockchains. I do not capitalize bitcoin and ether when I refer to these currencies. Prologue When the Financial Times interviewed me for a story about cryptocurrency millionaires in March 2018, I told them the unvarnished truth: “I invested because I wanted the underdogs to win, for once—losers like me who

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limited means to achieve it. Then I discovered Bitcoin and Ethereum, technologies based on an entirely new organizing principle. A priesthood of true believers said cryptocurrencies could disrupt the banks, corporations, and other organizations that ran society. Or at least provide an alternative to them. I could fund these networks by

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buying bitcoin and ether, the cryptocurrencies that power their blockchains. I could help change the world and get rich ... not necessarily in that order. The Onion has created a helpful guide

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need to think of Ethereum not as a way to buy coffee with digital money but as a computer that can be accessed with the cryptocurrency, ether (ETH). The role of trust is a big deal in blockchain philosophy. Corporations do business by pooling resources and establishing trust with their customers

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man like myself could write content for a public relations campaign without having to fake confidence. We’d all be rewarded with ether or other cryptocurrency, which could be converted to dollars. It sounds touchy-feely, a little scary, and also too good to be true. We aren’t there yet

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Ravikant think this is more likely to happen now, years after the migration to the gig economy and independent contractors is underway? Blockchains powered by cryptocurrency. He says, “The Internet evolved media from physical to digital, from paid to free, from editorial to social. Next up: from corporate to ownerless.” The

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decentralized. It was run by thousands of disconnected computers all over the world. I couldn’t think of anything else like it. The philosophy underpinning cryptocurrency wasn’t what excited me initially. It was greed, or in polite company, “financial planning.” I’ve always been drawn to the big score, for

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the entrenched 1 percent and deserving blame for the 2008 financial crisis. They intended to get rich doing it. I decided to go to a cryptocurrency meetup in Palo Alto. As I prowled University Avenue looking for a parking space, I felt like I was on a secret mission. I arrived

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booze as a distraction, I dove deeper into my research on blockchain. This is when I learned about Ethereum, a new blockchain with its own cryptocurrency called ether. They said Ethereum was the world computer, with the potential to do to corporations what Bitcoin could do to banks—knock the shit

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when he was seventeen and attending the University of Waterloo in Ontario. He started Bitcoin Magazine on the side to explore and write about the cryptocurrency space. Unsatisfied with Bitcoin’s limitations, he dropped out of college and took it upon himself to build a new blockchain and an entirely new

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’s performance. I’d recently read an anecdote in Fortune detailing similar intellectual wizardry. As part of the profile, the writer followed him into a cryptocurrency boot camp at Cornell. The assistant professor was teeing up a difficult logic puzzle. Vitalik offered a solution before the puzzle was fully described. Of

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of blockchain, and none of them had heard of Ethereum. A friend broke out in laughter when I said that I was considering investing in cryptocurrency, as if I’d admitted I was going to buy Smurfberries or Scooby Snacks. I kept thinking of the developers. In the late 1990s, I

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more questions, I’d talk her ear off about some new obsession. She moved on. I was careful not to mention that the technology was cryptocurrency, because I knew she could’ve easily said, “Well, just as long as you don’t invest in it,” a throwaway comment that would’ve

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homework and fully committed to learning the ins and outs of the thing I was pitching. All of the skeptics who wouldn’t invest in cryptocurrency reminded me of the PR people who would only do cursory research, then quickly come to the conclusion that what they were pitching was bullshit

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of ETH dropped 40 percent over the next three days. There was no telling when the bleeding would stop. At this stage of its development, cryptocurrency in general and Ethereum in particular were prone to extremes. Mind-blowing highs and earth-rattling lows. ETH is a currency of black swans. If

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afford to sit around, though. I needed to start up a new career and make some money. It was time to see if blockchain and cryptocurrency were make-believe or the real deal. Chapter Eighteen Zealot Eileen and I decided to start our own PR firm. She was already a successful

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computing devices of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. None of these people control the network. Each of them is rewarded individually with cryptocurrency for contributing their computing power towards its maintenance. Bitcoin is the oldest blockchain, and it is already three hundred thousand times more powerful than the

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breaches (“Yahoo’s Data Breach and the $12B Antidote”). I also wrote a piece with recommendations for PR professionals working in crypto (“Mainstream PR, Meet Cryptocurrency”) as if I were a grizzled veteran rather than someone figuring out if I could make a living in the space. Through one of Eileen

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’s contacts at the venture capital firm Redpoint, I won my first crypto account, a well-known and respected early cryptocurrency wallet company called BitGo. Their CEO, Mike Belshe, was a sharp pioneer in the space. I impressed him with my knowledge of the

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cryptocurrency universe, which by that time was extensive, up to a certain technical point. He brought me aboard to work on an upcoming launch. Eileen and

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and crypto legends like Erik Voorhees, who invented the first popular Bitcoin application, Satoshi Dice, and was now running ShapeShift, a service that allowed one cryptocurrency to be easily exchanged for another. At meetups, I met other blockchain luminaries, including Andreas Antonopoulos, the well-known

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cryptocurrency evangelist who’d written the definitive book on Bitcoin and was now working on one for Ethereum. I interfaced with the executives at the powerful

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, which is an odd choice for a mosh pit celebration song, but hey, it was my daydream. I’d been posting articles on Medium about cryptocurrency throughout 2015 and 2016. Now that crypto was in the news, friends and acquaintances began asking me about it. With big profits in my sales

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for three hundred dollars a pop on the secondary market. In any previous version of our lives, there was no way we’d consider going. Cryptocurrency would pay for this phenomenal family experience. Eileen was thrilled. But I realized we needed some help figuring out how to deal with our new

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wondered how long it would take until those little fuckers made fun of me behind my back. I pictured me leading a study session on cryptocurrency and blockchain. How many times would I say the same thing a different way while still not properly explaining the concept before they tuned me

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after regulators in Vermont took action against them for allegedly making unrealistic claims to investors. Arthereium was planning an ICO for art collectors. They said cryptocurrency would democratize access to fine art by utilizing blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Paragon, which was founded by a Russian multi-millionaire tech

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the philosophy of these people: “Over long hours in anonymous group chats, San Francisco bars and Settlers of Catan game nights, they talk about how cryptocurrency will decentralize power and wealth, changing the world order.” Amen. They might have been douchebags, I might be a douchebag, but this was worth fighting

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a recent pay-stub, the name, and a link to your employer. 2) What is your source of funds used to purchase cryptocurrency? 3) What is your history in trading cryptocurrency? 4) If you are an early investor in crypto currency then please provide documentation which supports your early investments. 5) Please

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Pay. And there I was again. This time I sounded like I had a degree in economics with a minor in psychology. I explained how cryptocurrency will send Apple Pay to the trash heap where it belongs. It feels uncomfortable, like I’ve left home and am pretending to be someone

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the lottery. But the mania that led me to crypto was fueled by a big idea beyond riches. It was based on a belief that cryptocurrency based on decentralization was so disruptive that it could create a new free and open Internet, reshuffle the economy, and change the pecking order. In

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, watching the sights go by as I drove. I needed the meditation to pull myself away from the Reddits and a Twitter feed filled with cryptocurrency mania. I needed an escape from my own mind, which had become addicted to speculation, panic, and euphoria. I was trying to even out and

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meaningfully disrupt the corporation, allowing people to avoid the organizational structures and corporate cultures that make many of us miserable? Will public blockchains run by cryptocurrency hand the Internet back to the people? Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google—plus scores of others who created what is called Web 2.0 continue

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the token. A million corporate task forces aren’t going to stop that. Chapter Twenty-Nine Next In mid-January 2018, ether and every other cryptocurrency crashed hard. The crash intensified as the year went on. ETH hit a low of $80 on December 1, 2018, an 88 percent decline from

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the invention of Bitcoin in 2009, it is a concept that has almost completely disappeared from thoughtful debate outside of academia. Public blockchains based on cryptocurrency have reintroduced decentralization as an organizing principle worth exploring. Could solutions to problems like global warming that require broad consensus across the globe, which no

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Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy

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The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto

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Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies

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Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World

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5 Day Weekend: Freedom to Make Your Life and Work Rich With Purpose

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Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From Money That We Understand to Money That Understands Us (Perspectives)

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Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

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Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

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The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism

by David Golumbia  · 25 Sep 2016  · 87pp  · 25,823 words

Red Moon

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 22 Oct 2018  · 492pp  · 141,544 words

Silk Road

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The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics

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Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

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Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World

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Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets

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The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality

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Mastering Blockchain, Second Edition

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The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors

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On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

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Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead

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Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

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More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity

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Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and DApps

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Money in the Metaverse: Digital Assets, Online Identities, Spatial Computing and Why Virtual Worlds Mean Real Business

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Fixed: Why Personal Finance is Broken and How to Make it Work for Everyone

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Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future

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The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives

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The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions

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J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2022: For Preparing Your 2021 Tax Return

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Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms

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Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality

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MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them

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Bitcoin for the Befuddled

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Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption

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Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists

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Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money

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Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles

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Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers

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Magic Internet Money: A Book About Bitcoin

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The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

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The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits' Improbable Crusade to Save the World From Cybercrime

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Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society

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Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane

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New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI

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Blockchain Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction in 25 Steps

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Python for Algorithmic Trading: From Idea to Cloud Deployment

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The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future

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Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women's Rights Worldwide

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Notes From an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back

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Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing

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The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power

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The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

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Cryptoeconomics: Fundamental Principles of Bitcoin

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Facebook: The Inside Story

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Radicalized

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Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World

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Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

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The Laundromat : Inside the Panama Papers, Illicit Money Networks, and the Global Elite

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Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero

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The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity's Future

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Beyond Diversification: What Every Investor Needs to Know About Asset Allocation

by Sebastien Page  · 4 Nov 2020  · 367pp  · 97,136 words

Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future

by Mike Maples and Peter Ziebelman  · 8 Jul 2024  · 207pp  · 65,156 words

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian  · 7 Oct 2024  · 336pp  · 104,899 words

Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics

by Elle Reeve  · 9 Jul 2024

Nomad Capitalist: How to Reclaim Your Freedom With Offshore Bank Accounts, Dual Citizenship, Foreign Companies, and Overseas Investments

by Andrew Henderson  · 8 Apr 2018  · 403pp  · 110,492 words

The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Banks

by Ann Pettifor  · 27 Mar 2017  · 182pp  · 53,802 words

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World

by Jamie Bartlett  · 12 Jun 2017  · 390pp  · 109,870 words

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh  · 14 Apr 2018  · 286pp  · 87,401 words

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma

by Mustafa Suleyman  · 4 Sep 2023  · 444pp  · 117,770 words

This Is for Everyone: The Captivating Memoir From the Inventor of the World Wide Web

by Tim Berners-Lee  · 8 Sep 2025  · 347pp  · 100,038 words

The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip

by Stephen Witt  · 8 Apr 2025  · 260pp  · 82,629 words

The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life

by Sahil Bloom  · 4 Feb 2025  · 363pp  · 94,341 words

Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter

by Zoë Schiffer  · 13 Feb 2024  · 343pp  · 92,693 words

Divided: Why We're Living in an Age of Walls

by Tim Marshall  · 8 Mar 2018  · 256pp  · 75,139 words

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein  · 23 Apr 2018  · 282pp  · 81,873 words

How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs

by Tim Draper  · 18 Dec 2017  · 302pp  · 95,965 words

The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy

by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz  · 4 Nov 2016  · 374pp  · 97,288 words

Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

by Christopher Wylie  · 8 Oct 2019

The Enlightened Capitalists

by James O'Toole  · 29 Dec 2018  · 716pp  · 192,143 words

Angrynomics

by Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth  · 15 Jun 2020  · 194pp  · 56,074 words

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech

by Brian Merchant  · 25 Sep 2023  · 524pp  · 154,652 words

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism

by Arun Sundararajan  · 12 May 2016  · 375pp  · 88,306 words

Give People Money

by Annie Lowrey  · 10 Jul 2018  · 242pp  · 73,728 words

Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back

by Oliver Bullough  · 5 Sep 2018  · 364pp  · 112,681 words

Building Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems

by Heather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Ana Oprea, Piotr Lewandowski and Adam Stubblefield  · 29 Mar 2020  · 1,380pp  · 190,710 words

Learn Algorithmic Trading

by Sebastien Donadio  · 7 Nov 2019

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning

by Justin E. H. Smith  · 22 Mar 2022  · 198pp  · 59,351 words

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next

by Jeanette Winterson  · 15 Mar 2021  · 256pp  · 73,068 words

The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit

by Aja Raden  · 10 May 2021  · 291pp  · 85,822 words

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy

by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake  · 4 Apr 2022  · 338pp  · 85,566 words

The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul

by Isabel Kershner  · 16 May 2023  · 472pp  · 145,476 words

Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History

by Ben Mezrich  · 6 Nov 2023  · 279pp  · 85,453 words

Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms and the Corruption of Justice

by David Enrich  · 5 Oct 2022  · 373pp  · 108,788 words

Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley

by Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans  · 25 Apr 2023  · 427pp  · 134,098 words

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning With the Myth of the Good Billionaire

by Tim Schwab  · 13 Nov 2023  · 618pp  · 179,407 words

War for Eternity: Inside Bannon's Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers

by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum  · 14 May 2020  · 307pp  · 88,745 words

Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex

by Yasha Levine  · 6 Feb 2018  · 474pp  · 130,575 words

Engineering Security

by Peter Gutmann

The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

by Raghuram Rajan  · 26 Feb 2019  · 596pp  · 163,682 words

Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It

by Scott Kupor  · 3 Jun 2019  · 340pp  · 100,151 words

What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems

by Linda Yueh  · 4 Jun 2018  · 453pp  · 117,893 words

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today

by Linda Yueh  · 15 Mar 2018  · 374pp  · 113,126 words

The Latte Factor: Why You Don't Have to Be Rich to Live Rich

by David Bach and John David Mann  · 6 May 2019  · 146pp  · 34,934 words

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller

by Alec Nevala-Lee  · 1 Aug 2022  · 864pp  · 222,565 words

Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence

by James Bridle  · 6 Apr 2022  · 502pp  · 132,062 words

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything

by Kelly Weill  · 22 Feb 2022

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

by Amy B. Zegart  · 6 Nov 2021

Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster

by Nick Timiraos  · 1 Mar 2022  · 357pp  · 107,984 words

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze  · 15 Nov 2021  · 561pp  · 138,158 words

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar  · 6 Sep 2021  · 447pp  · 111,991 words

Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World

by Mo Gawdat  · 29 Sep 2021  · 259pp  · 84,261 words

The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

by Andrew Yang  · 2 Apr 2018  · 300pp  · 76,638 words

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income

by Guy Standing  · 3 May 2017  · 307pp  · 82,680 words

Data and the City

by Rob Kitchin,Tracey P. Lauriault,Gavin McArdle  · 2 Aug 2017

Your Computer Is on Fire

by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip  · 9 Mar 2021  · 661pp  · 156,009 words

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber and David Wengrow  · 18 Oct 2021

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere

by Tsedal Neeley  · 14 Oct 2021  · 223pp  · 60,936 words

Nothing but Net: 10 Timeless Stock-Picking Lessons From One of Wall Street’s Top Tech Analysts

by Mark Mahaney  · 9 Nov 2021  · 311pp  · 90,172 words

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

by Anil Seth  · 29 Aug 2021  · 418pp  · 102,597 words

Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence

by Calum Chace  · 28 Jul 2015  · 144pp  · 43,356 words

The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality

by Blake J. Harris  · 19 Feb 2019  · 561pp  · 163,916 words

Playing With FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early): How Far Would You Go for Financial Freedom?

by Scott Rieckens and Mr. Money Mustache  · 1 Jan 2019

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

by Amy Webb  · 5 Mar 2019  · 340pp  · 97,723 words

The Rust Programming Language

by Steve Klabnik and Carol Nichols  · 14 Jun 2018  · 821pp  · 178,631 words

Reset: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money: The Unconventional Early Retirement Plan for Midlife Careerists Who Want to Be Happy

by David Sawyer  · 17 Aug 2018  · 572pp  · 94,002 words

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us

by Dan Lyons  · 22 Oct 2018  · 252pp  · 78,780 words

Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy

by Eric O'Neill  · 1 Mar 2019  · 299pp  · 88,375 words

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

by Nadia Eghbal  · 3 Aug 2020  · 1,136pp  · 73,489 words

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt

by Sinan Aral  · 14 Sep 2020  · 475pp  · 134,707 words

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini  · 14 Sep 2020  · 1,171pp  · 309,640 words

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

by Kurt Andersen  · 14 Sep 2020  · 486pp  · 150,849 words

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

by Reeves Wiedeman  · 19 Oct 2020  · 303pp  · 100,516 words

We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News

by Eliot Higgins  · 2 Mar 2021  · 277pp  · 70,506 words

Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century

by Jeff Lawson  · 12 Jan 2021  · 282pp  · 85,658 words

The Rust Programming Language, 2nd Edition

by Steve Klabnik and Carol Nichols  · 27 Feb 2023  · 648pp  · 183,275 words

The Disappearing Act

by Florence de Changy  · 24 Dec 2020

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom

by Grace Blakeley  · 11 Mar 2024  · 371pp  · 137,268 words

The Day the World Stops Shopping

by J. B. MacKinnon  · 14 May 2021  · 368pp  · 109,432 words

These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

by Christopher Summerfield  · 11 Mar 2025  · 412pp  · 122,298 words

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

by Vauhini Vara  · 8 Apr 2025  · 301pp  · 105,209 words

The Great Fragmentation: And Why the Future of All Business Is Small

by Steve Sammartino  · 25 Jun 2014  · 247pp  · 81,135 words

Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream

by Nicholas Lemann  · 9 Sep 2019  · 354pp  · 118,970 words

Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

by J. Bradford Delong  · 6 Apr 2020  · 593pp  · 183,240 words

As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age

by Matthew Cobb  · 15 Nov 2022  · 772pp  · 150,109 words

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back

by Bruce Schneier  · 7 Feb 2023  · 306pp  · 82,909 words

Still Broke: Walmart's Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism

by Rick Wartzman  · 15 Nov 2022  · 215pp  · 69,370 words

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

by Siddharth Kara  · 30 Jan 2023  · 302pp  · 96,609 words

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World

by David Sax  · 15 Jan 2022  · 282pp  · 93,783 words

The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning, Revised and Updated

by Gautam Baid  · 1 Jun 2020  · 1,239pp  · 163,625 words

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth  · 9 Feb 2021  · 651pp  · 186,130 words

The Startup Wife

by Tahmima Anam  · 2 Jun 2021  · 297pp  · 83,528 words

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 5 Oct 2020  · 583pp  · 182,990 words

Alpha Trader

by Brent Donnelly  · 11 May 2021

The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth

by Nicolas Niarchos  · 20 Jan 2026  · 654pp  · 170,150 words

The Everything Blueprint: The Microchip Design That Changed the World

by James Ashton  · 11 May 2023  · 401pp  · 113,586 words

Perfection

by Vincenzo Latronico  · 18 Mar 2025  · 88pp  · 29,578 words

Apple: The First 50 Years

by David Pogue  · 10 Mar 2026  · 686pp  · 216,944 words

The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence

by Sebastian Mallaby;  · 30 Mar 2026  · 607pp  · 161,998 words

Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI

by Carissa Véliz  · 21 Apr 2026  · 503pp  · 129,255 words

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth  · 22 Mar 2017  · 403pp  · 111,119 words

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

by Scott Belsky  · 1 Oct 2018  · 425pp  · 112,220 words

Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery

by Andrew Greenway,Ben Terrett,Mike Bracken,Tom Loosemore  · 18 Jun 2018

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global

by Rebecca Fannin  · 2 Sep 2019  · 269pp  · 70,543 words

The Price of Life: In Search of What We're Worth and Who Decides

by Jenny Kleeman  · 13 Mar 2024  · 334pp  · 96,342 words

Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life

by Richard Beck  · 2 Sep 2024  · 715pp  · 212,449 words

Future Sex

by Emily Witt  · 10 Oct 2016  · 197pp  · 64,958 words

Austin Like a Local

by DK  · 171pp  · 34,369 words

My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir

by Barrett Brown  · 8 Jul 2024  · 332pp  · 110,397 words

The Soul of Wealth

by Daniel Crosby  · 19 Sep 2024  · 229pp  · 73,085 words

Madoff: The Final Word

by Richard Behar  · 9 Jul 2024

Roads and Bridges

by Nadia Eghbal  · 139pp  · 35,022 words

Becoming Kim Jong Un: A Former CIA Officer's Insights Into North Korea's Enigmatic Young Dictator

by Jung H. Pak  · 14 Apr 2020  · 395pp  · 103,437 words

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World

by Jevin D. West and Carl T. Bergstrom  · 3 Aug 2020

The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation Is the Key to an Abundant Future

by Jeff Booth  · 14 Jan 2020  · 180pp  · 55,805 words

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

by Benjamin H. Bratton  · 19 Feb 2016  · 903pp  · 235,753 words

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

by David Wallace-Wells  · 19 Feb 2019  · 343pp  · 101,563 words

Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson  · 3 Jun 2019  · 993pp  · 318,161 words

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction

by Adrian Hon  · 5 Oct 2020  · 340pp  · 101,675 words

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

by Ashlee Vance  · 8 May 2023  · 558pp  · 175,965 words

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century

by Rodrigo Aguilera  · 10 Mar 2020  · 356pp  · 106,161 words

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency

by Vicky Spratt  · 18 May 2022  · 371pp  · 122,273 words

Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos and the Trillion-Dollar Space Race

by Christian Davenport  · 6 Sep 2025  · 441pp  · 127,950 words

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

by Andrew Ross Sorkin  · 14 Oct 2025  · 664pp  · 166,312 words

Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters

by Joanna Walsh  · 22 Sep 2025  · 255pp  · 80,203 words

The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump: What the Trade War Means for the World

by Philip Coggan  · 1 Jul 2025  · 96pp  · 36,083 words

Inner Entrepreneur: A Proven Path to Profit and Peace

by Grant Sabatier  · 10 Mar 2025  · 442pp  · 126,902 words

My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress

by Rachel Deloache Williams  · 15 Jul 2019  · 297pp  · 92,083 words