cryptocurrency Concepts

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

…

…

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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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.”

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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.

…

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

…

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.

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

…

: 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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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,

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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”

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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.

…

, 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

…

,” 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

…

.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

…

-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

…

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

…

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

…

‘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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

-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

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’

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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,

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

—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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

, 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. * * *

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

—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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

’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

…

/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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

’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

…

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

…

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

…

-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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

. “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

…

, 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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

. 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

…

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

…

“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

…

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

…

(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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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)

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

(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

…

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

…

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

…

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),

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

…

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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,

…

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

…

–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

…

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.

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

–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

…

, 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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

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),

…

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,

…

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,

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

, 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,

…

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

…

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

…

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

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

…

—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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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.

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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,

…

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

…

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

…

° ° ° 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

…

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

…

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

…

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.

…

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

…

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

…

“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.

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

, 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

…

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

…

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

…

. 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

…

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,

…

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

…

. 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.

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

-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

…

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

…

-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

…

(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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

,” 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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

–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,

…

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

…

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.

…

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

…

–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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

…

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

Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond

by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar · 19 Oct 2017 · 416pp · 106,532 words

define that coming world. —MICHAEL J. CASEY, senior advisor to the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT Media Lab and coauthor of The Age of Cryptocurrency In this sweeping and lucid work, Burniske and Tatar make a compelling case that cryptoassets are foundational to the second generation of the Internet and

…

makes us all potential winners. —GEORGE GILDER, cofounder of the Discovery Institute and author of The Scandal of Money The growth and importance of cryptocurrency and cryptocomputing rivals the early growth of the commercial Internet and web, and the technical and economic revolution that will result is perhaps even more

…

of their thinking in an easy-to-digest manner. —DAVID KINITSKY, VP of research and innovation at Fidelity Labs For the uninitiated, the world of cryptocurrencies is fraught with risks and pitfalls. No one should venture into this world without preparation. Cryptoassets explains, in simple to understand terms, the full

…

investor and principal developer at Medici Ventures Newcomers often try to wiggle their way into the world of accepted financial tools. Most fail miserably. But cryptocurrency and its accompanying blockchain technology have made their mark and will likely have an ongoing impact on how we all do business. Burniske and Tatar

…

that are arguably just as important as our physical commodities, and when provisioned via a blockchain network, they are most clearly defined as cryptocommodities. Beyond cryptocurrencies and cryptocommodities—and also provisioned via blockchain networks—are “finished-product” digital goods and services like media, social networks, games, and more, which are

…

physical world, where currencies and commodities fuel an economy to create finished goods and services, so too in the digital world the infrastructures provided by cryptocurrencies and cryptocommodities are coming together to support the aforementioned finished-product digital goods and services. Cryptotokens are in the earliest stage of development, and will

…

likely be the last to gain traction as they require a robust cryptocurrency and cryptocommodity infrastructure to be built before they can reliably function. In summation, we believe that a clearer view of this brave new world

…

of blockchain architecture includes cryptocurrencies, cryptocommodities, and cryptotokens, just as we have had currencies, commodities, and finished goods and services in the preceding centuries. Be it a currency, commodity,

…

or service, blockchain architectures help provision these digital resources in a distributed and market-based manner. In this chapter, we focus on the most important cryptocurrencies today, including bitcoin, litecoin, ripple, monero, dash, and zcash. The next chapter covers the world of cryptocommodities and cryptotokens, the development of which has

…

as digital gold.14 THE BIRTH OF ALTCOINS Within a couple years of launching, it had become clear that bitcoin was the first fully decentralized cryptocurrency to gain significant adoption, but there were some aspects with which people were not fully satisfied. For example, bitcoin’s 10-minute block time

…

to keep track of the debits and credits of the new native asset. Through this combination of open-source software and ingenious programmers, many other cryptocurrencies have been brought into existence. Those that are only slight modifications of Bitcoin are often referred to as altcoins. BITCOIN’S FIRST DIGITAL SIBLING

…

asset. Litecoin While a handful of altcoins were released through 2011, Litecoin was the first that would retain significant value to this day. The cryptocurrency was developed by Charlie Lee, an MIT graduate who was a software engineer at Google. When Lee learned of Bitcoin he quickly understood its power

…

-fourth as valuable as a unit of bitcoin because there are four times as many units outstanding. This is an important lesson, because all cryptocurrencies differ in their supply schedules, and thus the direct price of each cryptoasset should not be compared if trying to ascertain the appreciation potential of

…

basis for other cryptoassets. At the start of 2017, litecoin was the fourth largest cryptoasset in terms of network value.20 Ripple Ripple is a cryptocurrency created in 2004 by Ryan Fugger, a web developer from Vancouver, British Columbia. Work on the project actually began before Satoshi and Bitcoin,21

…

OpenCoin, had secured funding from prestigious venture capitalists, including Andreessen Horowitz.25 This was a notable development—a sign of approval of the viability of cryptocurrency from one of the most revered venture capital firms in the world. OpenCoin would later rebrand as Ripple Labs. Ripple’s technology did several

…

we’ll discuss this further in Chapter 12). If the core community feels the distribution is unfair, that may forever plague the growth of the cryptocurrency. Ripple has since pivoted away from being a transaction mechanism for the common person and instead now “enables banks to send real-time international payments

…

Auroracoin’s creator also had a fictitious name: Baldur Friggjar Óðinsson. Baldur created Auroracoin based on Litecoin’s code and decided to “air-drop” the cryptocurrency to Icelanders with the intent of providing 50 percent of all auroracoin in existence to residents. The hope was that such a distribution would jump

…

-start national use of the cryptocurrency. A key to Baldur’s plan was his access to the government’s national identification system, which led speculators to believe mistakenly that Auroracoin

…

illegal activity is better off using cash than bitcoin. With every transaction, bitcoin leaves an indelible digital mark in Bitcoin’s blockchain. Currently, three notable cryptocurrencies put privacy and anonymity first. In order of launch, they are Dash, Monero, and Zcash. All three pursue this value proposition differently. Monero is

…

in the book and suitable only for the most experienced cryptoasset investors. Monero and Its Predecessor, Bytecoin Monero is a descendent of a lesser-known cryptocurrency called Bytecoin. Bytecoin was crafted quite differently from Bitcoin, using technology known as CryptoNote. Similar to Litecoin’s scrypt, CryptoNote’s block hashing algorithm

…

for example, specifically chose not to continue building off Bytecoin because the premine distribution had been perceived as unfair. Zcash The most interest in a cryptocurrency in 2016 was generated by a new cryptoasset called Zcash. The Bitcoin and blockchain community has always been excited by new developments in anonymity and

…

rapidly growing segment of this budding new asset class. First, let’s look at cryptocommodities. In some ways, cryptocommodities are more tangible in value than cryptocurrencies. For example, the largest cryptocommodity, Ethereum, is a decentralized world computer upon which globally accessible and uncensored applications can be built. It’s easy to

…

would be “used entirely to pay salaries and bounties to developers, and invested into various for-profit and non-profit projects in the Ethereum and cryptocurrency ecosystem.” In addition to the 60 million ether sold to the public, roughly 6 million was created to compensate early contributors to Ethereum, and

…

book we will be making the case that we believe there is much more price appreciation potential yet to come from both bitcoin and select cryptocurrencies, cryptocommodities, and cryptotokens. Dollar cost averaging is a means by which the innovative investor can avoid extreme sensitivity to the starting point of investing.

…

growth. Cryptoassets are a class that falls between the C/T and store of value superclasses. Within the cryptoassets class there are the subclasses of cryptocurrencies, cryptocommodities, and cryptotokens. ETFS AND MUTUAL FUNDS ARE WRAPPERS, NOT ASSET CLASSES It should be noted that when we talk about asset classes we

…

the speculation of crowds. This is especially true as people fixate on the incredible returns some early bitcoin investors enjoyed and hope that the latest cryptocurrency, cryptocommodity, or cryptotoken will make them rich too. However, remember that just because the unfettered enthusiasm of a crowd takes an asset to unreasonable

…

The Zcash Bubble One of the most meteoric rises and crashes was the October 2016 rollout of the new privacy-focused cyptocurrency zcash (ZEC). Few cryptocurrencies have been more anticipated than this one, and rightfully so, given its strong engineering team. Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin was an advisor and described

…

an entire ecosystem of hardware, software developers, companies, and users built around it. Essentially, it has created its own economy, and while a superior cryptocurrency could slowly gain share, it would have an uphill battle given the foothold bitcoin has gained. On the other hand, a newly launched cryptoasset is

…

support is assessing company support for a cryptoasset. Websites like SpendBitcoins.com16 inform visitors how many places accept a specific cryptoasset; a metric important for cryptocurrencies but not so much for cryptocommodities and cryptotokens. A different approach is to monitor the number of companies supporting a cryptoasset, which can be done

…

wallets support bitcoin. The Ledger Nano S provides support to some cryptoassets beyond bitcoin, and KeepKey is now integrating with ShapeShift to support additional cryptocurrencies beyond bitcoin.37 We’re sure to see this space grow over the next few years as more hardware wallets expand their capabilities to support

…

. Similarly, we will likely have funds of cryptoassets based on their functionality, such as a cryptocommodity fund, or perhaps a fund of the privacy focused cryptocurrencies like monero, dash, and zcash. Lastly, given the growing trend of indexation, as the cryptoasset space matures significantly, we could see network value weighted

…

send bitcoin or ether to an address to reserve their share of an ICO. Depending on the intent of the ICO, investors may receive a cryptocurrency, cryptocommodity, or cryptotoken in return for their initial investment. How an investor receives the appropriate cryptoasset can differ, as some may require the creation

…

with cloud computing offerings, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google? If companies can get paid more quickly and with lower transaction fees using the latest cryptocurrency, will that have an impact on credit card providers like Visa and American Express? EXPONENTIAL DISRUPTION Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, wrote

…

this to say: Millennials, assisted by a cadre of impressively socially awkward Bitcoin startup VC types, are piling intellectual and financial capital into this whole cryptocurrency idea—Bitcoin, Ethereum, all of it. What “e-” in front of any noun did for techie investor excitement in the 1990s, “crypto” and “blockchain”

…

(free) data on trading and volume patterns, but also technical indicators, social media stats, developer activity, and more. Education: https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency There are a growing number of quality courses available online that provide a deep understanding of bitcoin and cryptoassets. One of our favorites is the

…

“Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies” course provided by Princeton University via Coursera. Etherscan: https://etherscan.io/charts The best place for charts and easily downloadable CSV files of Ethereum

…

a cryptoasset. 2. https://coinmarketcap.com/. 3. http://cryptome.org/jya/digicrash.htm. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/quick-history-cryptocurrencies-bbtc-bitcoin-1397682630/. 7. http://karmakoin.com/how_it_works. 8. MoIP is a riff off the term “VoIP,” which stands for Voice-over-Internet

…

2015. 15. https://namecoin.org/. 16. https://bit.namecoin.org/. 17. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0. 18. https://litecoin.info/History_of_cryptocurrency. 19. https://litecoin.info/Comparison_between_Litecoin_and_Bitcoin/Alternative_work_in_progress_version. 20. https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20170101/. 21. http://ryanfugger.com/. 22

…

34. Ibid. 35. https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/issues/23. 36. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-dogecoin-2013-12. 37. http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/education-centre/what-is-dogecoin/. 38. http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3931812.htm. 39. https://99bitcoins.com/price-chart-history/. 40. https

…

://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/worth-1-billion-icelands-cryptocurrency-is-the-third-largest-in-the-world. 41. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/auroracoin/. 42. https://medium.com/the-nordic-web/the-failed-crypto-currency-

…

Content/application/pdf/GWMOL/Q1MarketQuarterly04172013.pdf. 14. https://www.pershing.com/our-thinking/thought-leadership/advisor-perceptions-of-alternative-investments. 15. https://www.thebalance.com/cryptocurrencies-are-the-new-alternative-investment-4048017. Chapter 7 1. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/do-bitcoins-belong-in-your-retirement-portfolio-2013-08-29. 2

…

bitcoinity.org/markets/exchanges/USD/30d. Screenshot taken February 18, 2017. 7. CryptoCompare, Log scale. 8. https://www.wired.com/2017/01/monero-drug-dealers-cryptocurrency-choice-fire/. 9. http://www.coindesk.com/chinas-central-bank-issues-warnings-major-bitcoin-exchanges/. 10. An example of increased regulation dampening liquidity and trading

…

the geographic distribution of the hardware maintaining and building a blockchain. 11. http://startupmanagement.org/2015/02/15/best-practices-in-transparency-and-reporting-for-cryptocurrency-crowdsales/. 12. Here are bitcoin’s social repository points from CryptoCompare: https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/btc/influence. You can substitute any cryptoasset symbol

…

nice list of ICO resources and websites at http://startupmanagement.org/2017/03/13/the-ultimate-list-of-ico-resources-18-websites-that-track-initial-cryptocurrency-offerings/. 20. https://www.smithandcrown.com/icos/. 21. http://www.icocountdown.com/. 22. https://cyber.fund/. 23. http://nakamotoinstitute.org/. 24. http://nakamotoinstitute.org/

…

ROE), 172 Returns, 73, 98 expectation of, 75 volatility and, 97 Rewards, 57 for developers, 60 risk and, 96, 99 Ring signatures, 47 Ripple, 196 cryptocurrencies as, 41–43 developers for, 197 volatility and, 130 Risk, 70 discounting, 180 diversification and, 101 investments and, 71 for investors, 72–73 rewards and

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts

by David Gerard · 23 Jul 2017 · 309pp · 54,839 words

bitcoin” The blockchain Secured by waste: Proof of Work Chapter 2: The Bitcoin ideology Libertarianism and cyberlibertarianism Pre-Bitcoin anonymous payment channels The prehistory of cryptocurrencies The conspiracy theory economics of Bitcoin Austrian economics Chapter 3: The incredible promises of Bitcoin! Decentralised! Secured by math! Anonymous! Instant! No fees! No

…

blockchains are not a technology story, but a psychology story: bubble economy thinking and the art of the steal. Despite the creators’ good intentions, the cryptocurrency field is replete with scams and scammers. The technology is used as an excuse to make outlandish near-magical claims. When phrases like “a whole

…

certainly is. In this book, I cover the origins and history of Bitcoin to the present day, with some of the important stories, the other cryptocurrencies it spawned – particularly Ethereum – and smart contracts and the attempts to apply blockchains to business. There’s also a case study on blockchains in the

…

money laundering. Some Bitcoiners regarded Liberty Reserve as a predecessor to Bitcoin and worried at the possible precedent this might set.11 The prehistory of cryptocurrencies Cryptographic money was first mooted by David Chaum in his 1982 paper “Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments”12 and his 1985 paper “Security without Identification

…

the list, is all about the promise of money and commerce with no government oversight, and anticipates many of the future promises and aspirations of cryptocurrency.14 Chaum’s DigiCash was not acceptable to the Cypherpunks, as a single company confirmed every participant’s signature. They wanted something that didn’t

…

Austrian economists aren’t fans – even as Bitcoiners remain huge fans of Austrian economics.27 You will find Austrian jargon in common use in the cryptocurrency world. Proponents of Austrian economics include the fringe economics blog Zero Hedge, which has confidently predicted two hundred of the last two recessions. Zero Hedge

…

incentive to spend your bitcoins if they’ll always be worth more tomorrow. This means economic activity goes down, and if there are alternatives – other cryptocurrencies, or just using existing payment systems – Bitcoin loses users and interest. In practice, the price of Bitcoin goes up when there is demand for it

…

and held in custody for several months, with his trial starting in July 2017 (though he maintains his innocence). McCaleb went on to develop the cryptocurrencies Ripple and Stellar; his LinkedIn page107 details his career back to eDonkey, but chooses to omit Mt. Gox. Drugs and the Darknet: The Silk

…

and Ross Ulbricht created dark markets to help people hide from violent oppressors who were trying to hurt peaceful people. – Roger Ver108 Anonymous or pseudonymous cryptocurrency has one obvious application: paying for things you’d rather not be caught buying or selling. Drug users take to new communication channels as soon

…

Google’s data centres worldwide at the time.134 There have been occasional calls to re-democratise mining by changing the hash function; some other cryptocurrencies deliberately chose hash functions that wouldn’t be efficient on a graphics card or an ASIC. But it is always the case that any

…

backdated entries to his personal blog with references to Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related concepts: A post dated August 2008 mentions he will be releasing a “cryptocurrency paper” and references “Triple Entry Accounting,”159 a 2005 paper by financial cryptographer Ian Grigg. One post dated November 2008 includes a PGP key owned

…

rebate in advance. His company DeMorgan claimed in 2015 that it was eligible for up to AUD$54 million for a supercomputer “dedicated to Cryptocurrency and smart contract research”.162 In June 2015, Wright got his former colleague Stefan Matthews to put him in touch with Robert MacGregor of Canadian

…

when he had around 10% of all the Bitcoins out there. Mr Kleiman would have had a similar amount.”168 emails purportedly from 2009 discussing cryptocurrency-related ideas with Kleiman. a letter from supercomputer vendor SGI to Wright’s company Cloudcroft saying it would be assisting in the development of “hyper

…

head. But, though Kleiman, as a security expert, was familiar with cryptography, there was no evidence during his life that he had any interest in cryptocurrency or C++ programming, let alone Bitcoin – every word of such came via Wright, sources close to Wright or the Wired/Gizmodo “leaker.” Wright disappeared

…

The Lightning Network: bolt on a completely different non-Bitcoin network, and do all the real transactions there. (This is also vapourware.) Use a different cryptocurrency that hasn’t clogged yet. (The darknets are exploring this option.) The Bitcoin community is now sufficiently dysfunctional that even such a simple proposal as

…

ridiculously volatile price messing up deals, and transactions taking hours or days to be confirmed with an unpredictable fee. Some small darknet markets allow minor cryptocurrencies like Monero. In May 2017, AlphaBay, the largest darknet market, started offering Ethereum as an option204 – because Bitcoin was failing to serve its primary

…

far easier to use, but then the authorities realised they were handy street-corner money-laundering devices and started requiring KYC/AML-quality identification. Other cryptocurrencies can be bought similarly, or you can buy bitcoins and then buy the other coin with those. Some banks in the UK241 and Australia242 have

…

price” was highest there (even if unrealisable) and because they loved it as a trading platform. The trapped “USD” also gets used to buy other cryptocurrencies – the price of altcoins tends to rise and fall with the price of bitcoins – and this has fueled new ICOs (“Initial Coin Offerings,” detailed next

…

critical of Bitcoin, why don’t you short it?” “Well …” Chapter 9: Altcoins Bitcoin was an open protocol implemented in open source code. So alternate cryptocurrencies, or altcoins, quickly sprang up – mostly slightly-tweaked versions of the Bitcoin code, many generated automatically at the now-defunct service coingen.io. Other blockchains

…

effortlessly list all the problems with them – while failing to note that most of these are also problems with the substantially early-adopter-owned Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency advocates and lazy journalists like to talk about the “market cap” of a crypto, which is the total number of coins or tokens in existence

…

to mess around with; and who knows, maybe we’ll all get rich! Dogecoiners (“shibes”), gathering on Reddit /r/dogecoin, still dreamt of a cryptocurrency payday – but they made an explicit point of being nicer as a community than Bitcoin advocates, who had quite a reputation by this stage. Dogecoin

…

attracted the attention of a fellow calling himself Alex Green. “My name is Alex Green. I have zero online footprint.” He quickly set up UK cryptocurrency exchange Moolah. While others tipped single Dogecoins, worth a fraction of a penny, Green caught attention with tips of thousands of dollars. Dogecoin then raised

…

creating scam startups that raised funds and then vanished.289 Moolah shut down in October and “Green” disappeared with the money. Moolah had taken over cryptocurrency exchange Mintpal in July 2014. That exchange shut down with Moolah in October after a “hack”. Kennedy was caught selling the Mintpal bitcoins on LocalBitcoins

…

spirit somewhat, refused to worry about prices any more and is back to just having fun, though with wistful dreams of crypto riches. Unlike other cryptocurrencies’ claims about their prices, Dogecoin may succeed in going “to the moon!” – the community sponsored sending a physical Dogecoin on an Astrobotic commercial moon

…

an Excel spreadsheet, then Ethereum is like a spreadsheet with macros. This new idea was interesting enough to quickly make Ethereum the second most popular cryptocurrency. Transactions and smart contract programs (which they call “dapps,” short for “distributed applications”) require gas (a certain amount of the currency token, ether, abbreviated

…

theory. The ideas themselves are as bad as the worst dot-com IPOs. Digix, the first token crowdsale on the Ethereum blockchain itself, is a cryptocurrency backed by gold;309 Golem offers a “decentralized” (buzzword alert!) market in computing, like Amazon Web Services except you can only pay using their

…

$4000 as of June 2017.328 Chapter 10: Smart contracts, stupid humans Dr. Strangelove , but on the blockchain Smart contracts were originally quite separate from cryptocurrencies and blockchains. They were first proposed by Nick Szabo in 1994.329 You set up a legal agreement in the form of a computer program

…

to a bank if I then smuggle the aluminum out of the warehouse through the back door.”335 Technology and business journalists writing about non-cryptocurrency use cases for smart contracts never seem to mention that their “trustless” system will still involve trusting humans wherever it touches the physical world.

…

lines of code.348 (For comparison, Microsoft code averages 15 obvious bugs per 1000 lines, NASA spacecraft code around 0 per 500,000 lines.) Since cryptocurrency enthusiasts had already self-selected for gullibility, the very first smart contracts they wrote were chain letters, lotteries and automatic Ponzi schemes. These ably demonstrated

…

s legal footing was uncertain, and widely questioned. Selling tokens in The DAO closely resembled trading in unregistered securities – particularly when DAO tokens themselves hit cryptocurrency exchanges – and the SEC had come down on similar schemes in the past. There was no corporate entity, so it would default in most legal

…

been further euphemised to “distributed ledger technology,” which would on the face of it include shared Excel spreadsheets. In the real world, nobody outside the cryptocurrency subculture uses blockchains proper, because they are ridiculously impractical and the most prominent one uses as much electricity as all of Ireland. This means their

…

that “it is not clear that all parties understand fairness or fair trade in the same way.” Which blockchain does all this run on, what cryptocurrency is our medium of exchange? Are any technically up to the task? (spoiler: no.) MusicTechFest’s “#MTFLabs: Blockchain” meeting420 broke down on the problem

…

to no obvious utility.423 PeerTracks is one of several companies attempting to set up a system where every artist would sell their own separate cryptocurrency tokens as shares in their future earnings, and streaming royalties would be allocated to the owners of the tokens via smart contracts.424 Apparently the

…

bad ideas. SingularDTV is a platform for filmmakers and TV producers to fund their content and then distribute it. This involves a native ICO-style cryptocurrency token called SNGLS (running on the Ethereum blockchain), with funding and revenues administered by a smart contract called CODE.429 This is the poison pill

…

returns failed to manifest. I would not have predicted a second bubble in Bitcoin, with tabloid newspaper finance sections enthusing about the fabulous potential of cryptocurrencies to normal people who have no business going within a mile of such horrifyingly risky investments. I would not have anticipated a matching bubble in

…

,” a fancy name for a smart contract in Ethereum. Darknet: sites only available via Tor, where you can buy illegal goods and services using a cryptocurrency. Distributed ledger technology: a euphemism for blockchain. DRM: Digital Rights Management, an entertainment industry term for “that song I just bought and downloaded won’

…

t play.” Music industry blockchain applications frequently involve a version of it, whether by name or not. Ethereum: a cryptocurrency whose value proposition is smart contracts. Arguably the first popular smart contract platform. Exchange: A site to buy or sell cryptos for actual money. Many

…

Helen Smith, Humberto Solis, Andrew Stallings, Tim Starling, Jorge Stolfi, Joe Thompson, Sarah Thompson, Hester Tidcombe, Nicholas Turnbull, Django Upton, Alison Wheeler and the acerbic cryptocurrency skeptics of Reddit /r/buttcoin and Something Awful YOSPOS. Alli Kirkham for her applied excellence not only in art (I love Scared Business Guy) but

…

91 CoinLab 47 cold wallet 12 consensus model 91, 119 ConsenSys 129, 136 Conversation, The 62 Cooper, Charley 111 Corda 123 Crypto Anarchist Manifesto 19 cryptocurrency 11 Cryptography and Cryptography Policy (mailing list) 20, 23 CryptoLocker 73 Cryptonomicon 19 Cryptowat.ch 83 Cryptsy 44 Cunk, Philomena 124 Curecoin 91 cyberlibertarianism 17

…

“Bitcoin 0.1 released”. Cryptography and Cryptography Policy mailing list, 10 January 2009. [41] Jim Epstein. “The Secret, Dangerous World of Venezuelan Bitcoin Mining: How cryptocurrency is turning socialism against itself”. Reason, January 2017. [42] Kamilia Lahrichi. “Growing number of Venezuelans trade bolivars for bitcoins to buy necessities”. The Guardian, 16

…

Ltd Group of Companies to receive up to $54 million from AusIndustry R&D tax rebate scheme: Australia’s fastest Top500 HPC is dedicated to Cryptocurrency and smart contract research”. DeMorgan Ltd (press release), 11 May 2015. (archive) [163] Andrew O’Hagan. “The Satoshi Affair”. London Review of Books, 38 (

…

Founder Seemingly Tried to Start a Ponzi Scheme”. Cryptocoins News, 8 June 2016. (archive) [285] http://folding.stanford.edu/ [286] “DafuqCoin, the first malware coin.” Cryptocurrency Times (blog), 4 May 2014. (archive) [287] The code that injects the rootkit is jawdroppingly blatant and worth reading. Richiela. “READ ME NOW! – dafuqcoin is

…

a trojan – pool operators/exchanges beware”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Alternate cryptocurrencies > Altcoin Discussion, 22 April 2014. (archive) [288] Wikipedia: Doge (meme). [289] Clay Michael Gillespie. “Dogecoin Leaders Present Evidence that CEO of Troubled Bitcoin Exchange

…

[319] “EOS Token Purchase Agreement”. EOS.IO. (archive) [320] CoinHoarder. “EOS – Asynchronous Smart Contract Platform - (Dan Larimer of Bitshares/Steem)”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Alternate cryptocurrencies > Altcoin Discussion, 6 May 2017. (archive) [321] “Decentralized content publishing”. press.one. [322] Red Li. “Exchanges Alerts ICO Scams and Illegal Fundraising in China Punishable

…

Ether. (archive) [352] “Hi! My name is Rubixi. I’m a new Ethereum Doubler. Now my new home – Rubixi.tk”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Alternate cryptocurrencies > Marketplace (Altcoins) > Service Announcements (Altcoins), 11 April 2016. (archive) [353] Vitalik Buterin. “Live example of ‘underhanded solidity’ coding on mainnet”. Reddit /r/ethereum, 10

The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything

by Gottfried Leibbrandt and Natasha de Teran · 14 Jul 2021 · 326pp · 91,532 words

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance

by Eswar S. Prasad · 27 Sep 2021 · 661pp · 185,701 words

Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

by Melanie Swan · 22 Jan 2014 · 271pp · 52,814 words

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

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

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

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

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

by J. K. Lasser Institute · 21 Dec 2021

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

by Nouriel Roubini · 17 Oct 2022 · 328pp · 96,678 words

Stake Hodler Capitalism: Blockchain and DeFi

by Amr Hazem Wahba Metwaly · 21 Mar 2021 · 80pp · 21,077 words

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

by George Gilder · 16 Jul 2018 · 332pp · 93,672 words

DeFi and the Future of Finance

by Campbell R. Harvey, Ashwin Ramachandran, Joey Santoro, Vitalik Buterin and Fred Ehrsam · 23 Aug 2021 · 179pp · 42,081 words

The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

by Gil Durán · 17 Aug 2026 · 317pp · 114,570 words

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

by Katharina Pistor · 27 May 2019 · 316pp · 117,228 words

Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets

by Brett Scott · 4 Jul 2022 · 308pp · 85,850 words

The History of Money

by David McWilliams · 330pp · 110,174 words

The Industries of the Future

by Alec Ross · 2 Feb 2016 · 364pp · 99,897 words

The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)

by Jamie Bartlett · 4 Apr 2018 · 170pp · 49,193 words

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

by Nathaniel Popper · 18 May 2015 · 387pp · 112,868 words

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

by Nik Halik and Garrett B. Gunderson · 5 Mar 2018 · 290pp · 72,046 words

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

by Nathan Schneider · 10 Sep 2018 · 326pp · 91,559 words

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

by Nik Bhatia · 18 Jan 2021

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism

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

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists

by Julia Ebner · 20 Feb 2020 · 309pp · 79,414 words

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

by Michael Lewis · 2 Oct 2023 · 263pp · 92,618 words

The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-Hackers Is Building the Next Internet With Ethereum

by Camila Russo · 13 Jul 2020 · 349pp · 102,827 words

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

by Donald MacKenzie · 24 May 2021 · 400pp · 121,988 words

The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony

by David G. W. Birch · 14 Apr 2020 · 247pp · 60,543 words

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

by Nate Silver · 12 Aug 2024 · 848pp · 227,015 words

How to DeFi

by Coingecko, Darren Lau, Sze Jin Teh, Kristian Kho, Erina Azmi, Tm Lee and Bobby Ong · 22 Mar 2020 · 135pp · 26,407 words

Red Moon

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

Mastering Blockchain, Second Edition

by Imran Bashir · 28 Mar 2018

The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology

by William Mougayar · 25 Apr 2016 · 161pp · 44,488 words

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World

by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott · 9 May 2016 · 515pp · 126,820 words

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

by John Y. Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai · 25 Jul 2025

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

by David G. W. Birch and Victoria Richardson · 28 Apr 2024 · 249pp · 74,201 words

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

by Kenneth Rogoff · 27 Feb 2025 · 330pp · 127,791 words

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

by Adam Greenfield · 29 May 2017 · 410pp · 119,823 words

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

by Ben Mezrich · 20 May 2019 · 304pp · 91,566 words

Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and DApps

by Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Gavin Wood Ph. D. · 23 Dec 2018 · 960pp · 125,049 words

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

by Benjamin Wallace · 18 Mar 2025 · 431pp · 116,274 words

Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events

by Robert J. Shiller · 14 Oct 2019 · 611pp · 130,419 words

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything

by Matthew Ball · 18 Jul 2022 · 412pp · 116,685 words

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson · 26 Jun 2017 · 472pp · 117,093 words

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

by Jacob Silverman · 9 Oct 2025 · 312pp · 103,645 words

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

by David Birch · 14 Jun 2017 · 275pp · 84,980 words

The Curse of Cash

by Kenneth S Rogoff · 29 Aug 2016 · 361pp · 97,787 words

Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

by Paul Krugman · 28 Jan 2020 · 446pp · 117,660 words

The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory

by Kariappa Bheemaiah · 26 Feb 2017 · 492pp · 118,882 words

Bitcoin for the Befuddled

by Conrad Barski · 13 Nov 2014 · 273pp · 72,024 words

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

by Michal Zalewski · 11 Jan 2022 · 337pp · 96,666 words

Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World

by Bruce Schneier · 3 Sep 2018 · 448pp · 117,325 words

Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms

by Mark Spitznagel · 9 Aug 2021 · 231pp · 64,734 words

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber · 29 Oct 2024 · 292pp · 106,826 words

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

by Edward Chancellor · 15 Aug 2022 · 829pp · 187,394 words

Bitcoin: The Future of Money?

by Dominic Frisby · 1 Nov 2014 · 233pp · 66,446 words

Sabotage: The Financial System's Nasty Business

by Anastasia Nesvetailova and Ronen Palan · 28 Jan 2020 · 218pp · 62,889 words

The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America

by Mehrsa Baradaran · 7 May 2024 · 470pp · 158,007 words

The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State

by Jill Lepore · 24 Aug 2026 · 363pp · 122,400 words

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

by Ben Buchanan · 25 Feb 2020 · 443pp · 116,832 words

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles

by William Quinn and John D. Turner · 5 Aug 2020 · 297pp · 108,353 words

Magic Internet Money: A Book About Bitcoin

by Jesse Berger · 14 Sep 2020 · 108pp · 27,451 words

Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy

by Quinn Slobodian · 4 Apr 2023 · 360pp · 107,124 words

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

by Spencer Jakab · 1 Feb 2022 · 420pp · 94,064 words

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

by Adam Becker · 14 Jun 2025 · 381pp · 119,533 words

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

by Cory Doctorow · 6 Oct 2025 · 313pp · 94,415 words

After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order

by Rana Dasgupta · 27 Apr 2026 · 686pp · 188,424 words

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization

by Michael O’sullivan · 28 May 2019 · 756pp · 120,818 words

Silk Road

by Eileen Ormsby · 1 Nov 2014 · 269pp · 79,285 words

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

by Frank Pasquale · 14 May 2020 · 1,172pp · 114,305 words

Python for Algorithmic Trading: From Idea to Cloud Deployment

by Yves Hilpisch · 8 Dec 2020 · 1,082pp · 87,792 words

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

by Max Chafkin · 14 Sep 2021 · 524pp · 130,909 words

Blockchain Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction in 25 Steps

by Daniel Drescher · 16 Mar 2017 · 430pp · 68,225 words

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil · 25 Jun 2024

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats

by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake · 15 Jul 2019 · 409pp · 112,055 words

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing

by Jacob Goldstein · 14 Aug 2020 · 199pp · 64,272 words

The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions

by Victor Haghani and James White · 27 Aug 2023 · 314pp · 122,534 words

Elon Musk

by Walter Isaacson · 11 Sep 2023 · 562pp · 201,502 words

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

by Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell · 23 May 2023

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks

by Scott J. Shapiro · 523pp · 154,042 words

Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do About It

by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris · 10 Jul 2023 · 338pp · 104,815 words

Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World

by Jeffrey Tucker · 7 Jan 2015

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

by Tim Wu · 4 Nov 2025 · 246pp · 65,143 words

The Internet of Money

by Andreas M. Antonopoulos · 28 Aug 2016 · 200pp · 47,378 words

Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need

by Grant Sabatier · 5 Feb 2019 · 621pp · 123,678 words

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All

by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares · 15 Sep 2025 · 215pp · 64,699 words

The AGI Chronicles

by Kevin Roose · 481pp · 151,124 words

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future

by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe · 6 Dec 2016 · 254pp · 76,064 words

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

by Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie · 6 May 2019 · 328pp · 84,682 words

Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter

by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac · 17 Sep 2024

Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul

by Kurt Wagner · 20 Feb 2024 · 332pp · 127,754 words

Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare

by Edward Fishman · 25 Feb 2025 · 884pp · 221,861 words

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

by Katherine Clarke · 13 Jun 2023 · 454pp · 127,319 words

How Money Became Dangerous

by Christopher Varelas · 15 Oct 2019 · 477pp · 144,329 words

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World

by Dambisa Moyo · 3 May 2021 · 272pp · 76,154 words

The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us

by James Ball · 19 Aug 2020 · 268pp · 76,702 words

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis

by Scott Patterson · 5 Jun 2023 · 289pp · 95,046 words

The Rebel and the Kingdom: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Overthrow the North Korean Regime

by Bradley Hope · 1 Nov 2022 · 257pp · 77,612 words

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

by Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden · 24 Oct 2022 · 392pp · 114,189 words

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing

by Ed Finn · 10 Mar 2017 · 285pp · 86,853 words

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

by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler · 28 Jan 2020 · 501pp · 114,888 words

We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory

by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin · 1 Oct 2018

Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century

by W. David Marx · 18 Nov 2025 · 642pp · 142,332 words

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups

by Ali Tamaseb · 14 Sep 2021 · 251pp · 80,831 words

Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms: How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk

by Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak and Paul Swartz · 8 Jul 2024 · 259pp · 89,637 words

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

by Keach Hagey · 19 May 2025 · 439pp · 125,379 words

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society

by Eric Posner and E. Weyl · 14 May 2018 · 463pp · 105,197 words

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane

by Brett King · 5 May 2016 · 385pp · 111,113 words

How I Invest My Money: Finance Experts Reveal How They Save, Spend, and Invest

by Brian Portnoy and Joshua Brown · 17 Nov 2020 · 149pp · 43,747 words

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

by Klaus Schwab · 7 Jan 2021 · 460pp · 107,454 words

The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis

by Tim Lee, Jamie Lee and Kevin Coldiron · 13 Dec 2019 · 241pp · 81,805 words

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

by Douglas Rushkoff · 1 Mar 2016 · 366pp · 94,209 words

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

by Mark O'Connell · 13 Apr 2020 · 213pp · 70,742 words

The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans

by Eben Kirksey · 10 Nov 2020 · 599pp · 98,564 words

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire

by Jeff Berwick and Charlie Robinson · 14 Apr 2020 · 491pp · 141,690 words

Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis

by Jeanna Smialek · 27 Feb 2023 · 601pp · 135,202 words

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider

by Michiko Kakutani · 20 Feb 2024 · 262pp · 69,328 words

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

by Martin Kleppmann · 16 Mar 2017 · 1,237pp · 227,370 words

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

by Martin Kleppmann · 17 Apr 2017

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

by Hawon Jung · 21 Mar 2023 · 401pp · 112,589 words

Cryptoeconomics: Fundamental Principles of Bitcoin

by Eric Voskuil, James Chiang and Amir Taaki · 28 Feb 2020 · 365pp · 56,751 words

Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service

by Michael Lewis · 18 Mar 2025 · 186pp · 61,027 words

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao · 19 May 2025 · 660pp · 179,531 words

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World

by Timothy Ferriss · 14 Jun 2017 · 579pp · 183,063 words

Radicalized

by Cory Doctorow · 19 Mar 2019 · 444pp · 84,486 words

Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner

by Po Bronson · 14 Jul 2020 · 320pp · 95,629 words

Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away

by Julien Saunders and Kiersten Saunders · 13 Jun 2022 · 268pp · 64,786 words

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late

by Cory Doctorow · 22 Jun 2026 · 175pp · 51,295 words

Strange Sally Diamond: A BBC Between the Covers Book Club Pick

by Liz Nugent · 2 Mar 2023 · 355pp · 103,988 words

Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way)

by Rachel Slade · 9 Jan 2024 · 392pp · 106,044 words

Facebook: The Inside Story

by Steven Levy · 25 Feb 2020 · 706pp · 202,591 words

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside

by Xiaowei Wang · 12 Oct 2020 · 196pp · 61,981 words

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

by Jane McGonigal · 22 Mar 2022 · 420pp · 135,569 words

The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley

by Jimmy Soni · 22 Feb 2022 · 505pp · 161,581 words

The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy

by Nick Romeo · 15 Jan 2024 · 343pp · 103,376 words

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari · 9 Sep 2024 · 566pp · 169,013 words

Buy Now, Pay Later: The Extraordinary Story of Afterpay

by Jonathan Shapiro and James Eyers · 2 Aug 2021 · 444pp · 124,631 words

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

by Anupreeta Das · 12 Aug 2024 · 315pp · 115,894 words

The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth

by Guillaume Pitron · 14 Jun 2023 · 271pp · 79,355 words

End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World

by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor · 14 Sep 2026 · 393pp · 124,539 words

Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax

by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks · 3 Mar 2026 · 291pp · 83,422 words

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

by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham · 27 Jan 2021 · 460pp · 107,454 words

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

by Jake Bernstein · 14 Oct 2019 · 470pp · 125,992 words

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

by Saifedean Ammous · 23 Mar 2018 · 571pp · 106,255 words

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment

by Sangeet Paul Choudary · 14 Sep 2015 · 302pp · 73,581 words

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work

by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams · 1 Oct 2015 · 357pp · 95,986 words

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

by Tyler Cowen · 8 Apr 2019 · 297pp · 84,009 words

American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History

by Casey Michel · 23 Nov 2021 · 466pp · 116,165 words

The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information

by Frank Pasquale · 17 Nov 2014 · 320pp · 87,853 words

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

by Sebastian Mallaby · 1 Feb 2022 · 935pp · 197,338 words

The Smartphone Society

by Nicole Aschoff

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism

by Peter Frase · 10 Mar 2015 · 121pp · 36,908 words

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

by Tom Chivers · 12 Jun 2019 · 289pp · 92,714 words

Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism

by Wendy Liu · 22 Mar 2020 · 223pp · 71,414 words

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It

by Kashmir Hill · 19 Sep 2023 · 487pp · 124,008 words

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

by Aaron Dignan · 1 Feb 2019 · 309pp · 81,975 words

Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral

by Ben Smith · 2 May 2023

Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn

by Nick Kostov · 8 Aug 2022 · 327pp · 90,013 words

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All

by Adrian Hon · 14 Sep 2022 · 371pp · 107,141 words

Personal Finance with Python

by Max Humber · 156pp · 15,746 words

Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet

by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider · 14 Aug 2017 · 237pp · 67,154 words

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

by Sarah Frier · 13 Apr 2020 · 484pp · 114,613 words

Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference

by Bregman, Rutger · 9 Mar 2025 · 181pp · 72,663 words

Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis

by Tao Leigh. Goffe · 14 Mar 2025 · 441pp · 122,013 words

Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge

by Ian Kumekawa · 6 May 2025 · 422pp · 112,638 words

Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare

by Thomas Rid

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid

by Lawrence Wright · 7 Jun 2021 · 391pp · 112,312 words

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

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

Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy

by Philippe van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght · 20 Mar 2017

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

The Scandal of Money

by George Gilder · 23 Feb 2016 · 209pp · 53,236 words

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

by Anna Wiener · 14 Jan 2020 · 237pp · 74,109 words

Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam

by Vivek Ramaswamy · 16 Aug 2021 · 344pp · 104,522 words

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order

by Rush Doshi · 24 Jun 2021 · 816pp · 191,889 words

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

by Kai-Fu Lee and Qiufan Chen · 13 Sep 2021

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

by Clive Thompson · 26 Mar 2019 · 499pp · 144,278 words

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

by Yuval Noah Harari · 29 Aug 2018 · 389pp · 119,487 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 New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World

by Peter Frankopan · 14 Jun 2018 · 352pp · 80,030 words

Sunfall

by Jim Al-Khalili · 17 Apr 2019 · 381pp · 120,361 words

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It

by Robert B. Reich · 24 Mar 2020 · 154pp · 47,880 words

The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption - Endangering Our Democracy

by Frank Vogl · 14 Jul 2021 · 265pp · 80,510 words

Just Keep Buying: Proven Ways to Save Money and Build Your Wealth

by Nick Maggiulli · 15 May 2022 · 287pp · 62,824 words

Narcotopia

by Patrick Winn · 30 Jan 2024 · 425pp · 131,864 words

How to Spend a Trillion Dollars

by Rowan Hooper · 15 Jan 2020 · 285pp · 86,858 words

The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results

by Andrew McAfee · 14 Nov 2023 · 381pp · 113,173 words

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

by Kyle Chayka · 15 Jan 2024 · 321pp · 105,480 words

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US

by Rana Foroohar · 5 Nov 2019 · 380pp · 109,724 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

Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World

by Tom Burgis · 7 Sep 2020 · 476pp · 139,761 words

Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat

by John P. Carlin and Garrett M. Graff · 15 Oct 2018 · 568pp · 164,014 words

Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future

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

Investing Amid Low Expected Returns: Making the Most When Markets Offer the Least

by Antti Ilmanen · 24 Feb 2022

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

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

The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend

by Rob Copeland · 7 Nov 2023 · 412pp · 122,655 words

Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire

by Hans Gremeil and William Sposato · 15 Dec 2021 · 404pp · 126,447 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

Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter

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

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths · 4 Apr 2016 · 523pp · 143,139 words

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech

by Jamie Susskind · 3 Sep 2018 · 533pp

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

by David E. Sanger · 18 Jun 2018 · 394pp · 117,982 words

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

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

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

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination

by Mark Bergen · 5 Sep 2022 · 642pp · 141,888 words

Unknown Market Wizards: The Best Traders You've Never Heard Of

by Jack D. Schwager · 2 Nov 2020

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future

by James Bridle · 18 Jun 2018 · 301pp · 85,263 words

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff · 15 Jan 2019 · 918pp · 257,605 words

The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

by Walter Isaacson · 6 Oct 2014 · 720pp · 197,129 words

The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines

by William Davidow and Michael Malone · 18 Feb 2020 · 304pp · 80,143 words

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters

by Diane Coyle · 15 Apr 2025 · 321pp · 112,477 words

Growth: A Reckoning

by Daniel Susskind · 16 Apr 2024 · 358pp · 109,930 words

The Simple Path to Wealth (Revised & Expanded 2025 Edition): Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life

by JL Collins · 191pp · 66,998 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

Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex

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

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

by Christopher Wylie · 8 Oct 2019

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

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

Your Computer Is on Fire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere

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

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

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

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

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

My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress

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

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

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

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber and David Wengrow · 18 Oct 2021

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

Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships

by James Muldoon · 7 Sep 2026 · 217pp · 71,182 words

Engineering Security

by Peter Gutmann

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

The Rust Programming Language

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

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

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

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

Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery

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

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

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

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

Data and the City

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

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

by Amy B. Zegart · 6 Nov 2021

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

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller

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

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

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy

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

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

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 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

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

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

Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell

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

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roads and Bridges

by Nadia Eghbal · 139pp · 35,022 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

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

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

Apple: The First 50 Years

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

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

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

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

Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War

by Sharon Weinberger · 21 Sep 2026 · 281pp · 98,857 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

Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age

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

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

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

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

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

Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

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

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

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

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

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

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income

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

Give People Money

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