Brian Patrick Eha How Money Got Free Review
Brian Patrick Eha'southward ballsy work tells the story of bitcoin through the people who helped build it
Desire to learn everything y'all need to know about bitcoin, and have fun doing it? Then read Brian Patrick Eha'south definitive history of the cryptocurrency, told through the stories of the individuals and companies who helped to build it, thereby fusing philosophy with engineering and individual destinies with the financial revolution of our time.
For most people, the bailiwick of bitcoin seems rather dry—an obscure new engineering science that pretends to be money and is horribly difficult to sympathise for someone who isn't a financial good or a software developer. And yet, with bitcoin at present worth almost $70 billion and up 300 percentage in 2017, information technology'south also incredibly interesting and exciting, and something worth knowing and learning about.
Eha solved this apparent dichotomy in his 496-page bitcoin epic "How Money Got Free." Not just does he manage to explain all of the technological nuts and bolts of how bitcoin works, he also explains the philosophy behind it and its disruption of finance as we know information technology.
Yet, he tells these complicated issues through the histories of individual people and companies—all in great detail—making the book read more similar a fiscal thriller than a nonfiction explainer.
The Troublemaker
Take, for example, the story of sometime hacker Charlie Shrem, a twenty-something, heart-grade kid from Brooklyn who co-founded the early bitcoin startup BitInstant. The startup was the get-go e'er to receive more $1 million in venture funding, and Shrem made expert coin as its CEO, earlier he had to serve 13 months in prison for aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmitter.
Eha describes the constant boxing of the ideals of providing people with a new type of global coin, free from the shackles of the cyberbanking arrangement and regime control, versus edifice a company that complies with regulations designed for fiat money, and the difficulties of promoting and explaining the benefits of the currency of liberty to global consumers and regulators akin.
"I came to realize that the story of bitcoin opened a window onto some of the about of import issues of our time, from the financial crunch and Nifty Recession to the debate at present raging between globalism and its discontents," Eha wrote in an e-mail.
Did Shrem'south company simply grow too fast, and was its CEO too naïve and greedy, causing him to pay the price?
"He was mayhap the one nearly gratified by the attention and near eager for the publicity, fame, and respect that came from his leadership role in the community. He likewise ended up suffering more than most. … So there'due south a desolation there: the story of a eye-class kid made proficient and his fall from grace—and now, his attempt at a comeback," Eha said.
The Poster Children
Then there are stories similar those of Ben Reeves and Nic Cary, the people behind Blockchain, which today is the most pop wallet provider for bitcoin, with millions of users.
They designed Blockchain every bit a software company and not a financial services firm so that the visitor could provide individuals with the liberty to administer their bitcoins without e'er taking custody of the funds.
This approach avoids much of the onerous regulation that led to BitInstant'southward downfall, or the orchestrated hacking that brought downwards the so-biggest bitcoin commutation, Mt. Gox, another episode Eha tells in great detail.
"[Bitcoin inventor] Satoshi Nakamoto'south revolutionary thought had been to take trust out of commerce: no more banks, no more reliance on third parties to shop and safeguard your money," wrote Eha. Blockchain gives command of the funds to the user, setting information technology apart from other service providers like Coinbase, which has custody of the funds and therefore operates more like a bank.
Eha describes Blockchain as a visitor keeping the free spirit of bitcoin, and Coinbase equally emulating the old banking system. Only Coinbase did take the route of complying with all existing regulations and is a fully legitimate and licensed business with several big investors, like the New York Stock Exchange.
Barry Silbert's Bitcoin Investment Trust is a similar business firm. It buys bitcoin on behalf of investors and is the first publicly traded investment vehicle for bitcoin, with a net nugget value of nearly $730 million.
Silbert was another trailblazer for bitcoin who did everything to a higher place lath, fully complying with regulations. By definition, he had to sacrifice some of the freedom inherent in bitcoin, but he is the all-time example of combining the new technology with the old world of regulation. It was Silbert's efforts that virtually singlehandedly made bitcoin stylish on Wall Street; he went all-in on the procedure and won big.
"If I'm going to brand an investment in a high-risk opportunity like bitcoin, I'm only going to do information technology if it's going to move the needle for me," he says in the book.
Of course, this is but a small sample of the impressive list of companies and individuals Eha features, but everything is at that place.
From Satoshi's proclamation of digital cash on an obscure cryptographic mailing listing in 2008, to the famous bitcoin pizza, to the broad adoption of bitcoin on the black marketplace site Silk Road and the later jailing of site founder Ross Ulbricht, to early angel investors similar the Winklevoss twins and Roger Ver, to the billions of dollars of venture majuscule funding for bitcoin companies—"How Money Got Free" is a complete guide to the history and philosophy of bitcoin, all packed into one fascinating read.
"How Coin Got Gratuitous, Bitcoin and the fight for the future of finance," 496 pages, 2017, OneWorld Publications.
Valentin Schmid is the business editor of the Epoch Times. His areas of expertise include global macroeconomic trends and fiscal markets, China, and Bitcoin. Before joining the paper in 2012, he worked as a portfolio manager for BNP Paribas in Amsterdam, London, Paris, and Hong Kong.
Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/book-review-how-money-got-free_2295922.html
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