Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money
Written by Nathaniel Popper
Narrated by Robert Fass
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR
A New York Times technology and business reporter charts the dramatic rise of Bitcoin and the fascinating personalities who are striving to create a new global money for the Internet age.
Digital Gold is New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper’s brilliant and engrossing history of Bitcoin, the landmark digital money and financial technology that has spawned a global social movement.
The notion of a new currency, maintained by the computers of users around the world, has been the butt of many jokes, but that has not stopped it from growing into a technology worth billions of dollars, supported by the hordes of followers who have come to view it as the most important new idea since the creation of the Internet. Believers from Beijing to Buenos Aires see the potential for a financial system free from banks and governments. More than just a tech industry fad, Bitcoin has threatened to decentralize some of society’s most basic institutions.
An unusual tale of group invention, Digital Gold charts the rise of the Bitcoin technology through the eyes of the movement’s colorful central characters, including an Argentinian millionaire, a Chinese entrepreneur, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Bitcoin’s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Already, Bitcoin has led to untold riches for some, and prison terms for others.
Nathaniel Popper
Nathaniel Popper covered the intersection of finance and technology for the New York Times. He is the author of Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money. Before joining the Times, he worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Forward. Nathaniel grew up in Pittsburgh and is a graduate of Harvard College. He lives in Oakland with his family.
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Reviews for Digital Gold
167 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Easy read, comprehensive history. Needs a “Volume 2” to catch us up on everything that has happened since this left off!!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gives you the history of bitcoin, the many challenges faced promoting the crypto currency in the early days. The early investors and believers, plus and how it gradually gained acceptance.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Completes all the timeline of bitcoin and the development of web 3.0 . Is lengthy but gives all the cause/effect relationship precisely in development of bitcoin and vision for future to participate more conciously in interney economy. THIS is what i felt to share, thanks for reading my review.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A good look at the history of bitcoin and it's underlying philosophy. Fair warning: This is not an instruction manual on getting into crypto.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A difficult to understand gossip column full of names but without much real information
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very detailed and easy to follow. Good book to read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book has a lot of interesting stories about the birth and early days of bitcoin, I recommend it if this is what interests you. It’s not a technical book which is a good thing for most readers, there are many other books that cover the technical side of cryptocurrency and blockchain.
The book climaxes when it gets to the downfall of the original Silk Road and becomes a bit dry and boring afterwards. The end of the book sort of stops abruptly with no future outlook or conclusions about the future as I was expecting. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5While giving a great account of the early days of Bitcoin and blockchain, the subtle question of true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto does impress throughout the book. More importantly than that, this book allows almost anyone to access the base of information needed to begin digesting the roots and the implications of the blockchain technology. Great place to start, or to expand your knowledge of Bitcoin. And even if you understand it well already, the historical accounts and dramas of the early adopters of Bitcoins are fascinating enough to keep you reading. Thank you for compiling this work and bringing it to us all!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Part adventure, part biography, part true crime - this fascinating look at the initial beginnings of Bitcoin was captivating. A variety of ideals and different personalities come into play in creating a new technology which will be as disruptive in the long term to the financial sector as Amazon has been to consumer retail.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I didn't pay much attention to BitCoin when it first came out. I've done a little web development over the years, but I'm not a coder. I've also had a curiosity surrounding encryption (when I taught middle school math, we had a unit on encryption), but again, am not an expert in the subject. But I think the main reason I didn't pay attention to BitCoin is that I'm a Luddite, and I have massive suspicion for any new technology, especially financial technologies (which I generally judge to be exploitative).I recently started helping out on a friend's blockchain venture, and finally had to study up on this field. The vast majority of this research has been online, but I was hoping to supplement my research with some books. This was the only one I could find that comes strongly recommended.The book was published two years ago, so it doesn't get into the recent Initial Coin Offering phase, or Ethereum and Smart Contracts. That said, it does cover the fascinating origins in 2008 up into 2014. Our author did a massive amount of research, and collated the seemingly-disparate threads into one unified narrative.Somewhat surprisingly, BitCoin's origins aren't closely tied with Silicon Valley, and only recently has it really been gaining a foothold there. Additionally, even with BitCoin's meteoric rise, it still only has provisional support from the IRS and SEC, and hasn't yet been adopted by any American banks. It seems as though we're still in the very beginnings of the cryptocurrency era.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an excellent overview of the history of Bitcoin and the many people involved with Bitcoin over the course of its creation and ascendance. Popper does an excellent job telling the human interest side of the story and leaves most technical details to the appendix. The book follows many individuals however the narrative abruptly stops with little to no conclusion about these individuals or the state of Bitcoin at the time this went to press. I also found the technical details lacking which was unfortunate since many questions about the technical details appeared in the book but were not mentioned in the appendix.