Book Review.- Digital Gold
Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money
Author: Nathanaiel Popper
Pages: 414
Date: May 24th, 2016
In brief: This is NOT a book about Bitcoin! Instead is a book about the history of Bitcoin and how the cryptocurrency came to be; plenty of names and personal stories of those pioneers that came at the very beginning of the Bitcoin phenomenon as well the evolution of Bitcoin under their guidance and their philosophy of decentralized power and the contrast between them and the new powerful players that belong to the “old ways” of money, more interested in the underlying technology, Blockchain, than in any idea of personal freedom. Tempered expectations are advised but at the end an informative read after all.
The writing style is very engaging, each chapter starts almost like a thriller making us part of what we would witness in the following paragraphs and how organic and easily the author moves from thriller to investigative journalist and back again; plenty of time is dedicated to providing a background of each of the people introduced in each chapter and how that background influenced their attitudes and approach regarding Bitcoin.
The author makes a point to explain that at the very beginning of Bitcoin, with Satoshi himself a mysterious ghost, the intention and motivations of the pioneers of the Blockchain technology behind Bitcoin was to circumvent the power that central banks and governments have over money and their free circulation with the goal to provide a free and viable alternative of the whole concept of money, payments and financial services; that goal was the big incentive for all those pioneers in invest time and effort to develop the software and hardware that today’s constitute the backbone of the Blockchain technology behind Bitcoin; just private citizens eager to provide a solution for the masses taking away the power of government and financial institutions and making the point of no central authority but a consensus of those believers in the Bitcoin project.
But the success of Bitcoin, small and modest at the very beginning, slowly grab the attention of the big players in the financial world, and soon enough Central Banks and financial institutions like Chase and JP Morgan and hedge funds started to develop their own forums and study groups dedicated to exploiting for their own benefit the Blockchain technology and testing the water for Bitcoin investment; they are more interested in the decentralized model as well as the security provided by the technology, they are not interested in the “extreme democratization” of money -as the pioneers deeply believe- but in how to improve their bottom line.
The Author let the reader perceive that both groups are still at odds today, but they are both, for better or worse, part of the Bitcoin backbone, and both groups have invested a sizeable amount of money and assets in the new frontier of cryptocurrencies and in a system that requires consensus from the main players -miners and coders especially- those differences in goal and motivations are set to collide with unknown consequences to the future of Bitcoin… only time will tell… says the author or at least that’s how would be interpreted by the readers.
Warm Regards,
Gunther Sotomayor
