Kings Of Crypto

"Tech writer Roberts debuts with a page-turning account of the rise of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase from the Y Combinator startup incubator to becoming a 'pillar of the larger crypto economy.'" — Publisher's Weekly For a moment late in 2018, one bitcoin, which physically amounts to a few electrons blipping on a tiny bit of silicon, was worth $20,000—the same as a pound of gold. Libertarian technologists who believed bitcoin would be the foundation of a new world order saw the moment as an apotheosis. Everyone else saw a bubble. Everyone else was right, and the bubble burst. But bitcoin survived, and the battle for its soul rages on. Kings of Crypto drops us into the unfolding drama, tracing the rise, fall, and rebirth of cryptocurrency through the experiences of major players across the globe. We follow Silicon Valley entrepreneur Brian Armstrong and the turbulent rocket ride of his startup, Coinbase, as he tries to take bitcoin mainstream while fighting off hackers, thieves, and zealots. Author Jeff John Roberts keenly observes the world of virtual currencies and what happens when startups try to disrupt the world of high finance. Clear explanations of crypto technology are woven into an amazing landscape full of meme-fueled startup hijinks, hacking (so much hacking!), shady investors, government investigations, billionaire bros and their Lambos, and closed-door meetings with Jamie Dimon. This is the surprising story of the origins of cryptocurrency and how it is changing money forever.

Discover how $55 million in cryptocurrency vanished in one of the most bizarre thefts in history Out of the Ether: The Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist that Almost Destroyed It All tells the astonishing tale of the disappearance of $55 million worth of the cryptocurrency ether in June 2016. It also chronicles the creation of the Ethereum blockchain from the mind of inventor Vitalik Buterin to the ragtag group of people he assembled around him to build the second-largest crypto universe after Bitcoin. Celebrated journalist and author Matthew Leising tells the full story of one of the most incredible chapters in cryptocurrency history. He covers the aftermath of the heist as well, explaining the extreme lengths the victims of the theft and the creators of Ethereum went to in order to try and limit the damage. The book covers: The creation of Ethereum An explanation of the nature of blockchain and cryptocurrency The activities of a colorful cast of hackers, coders, investors, and thieves Perfect for anyone with even a passing interest in the world of modern fintech or daring electronic heists, Out of the Ether is a story of genius and greed that’s so incredible you may just choose not to believe it.

The story of the idealists, technologists, and opportunists fighting to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. In their short history, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone through booms, busts, and internecine wars, recently reaching a market valuation of more than $2 trillion. The central promise of crypto endures--vast fortunes made from decentralized networks not controlled by any single entity and not yet regulated by many governments. The recent growth of crypto would have been all but impossible if not for a brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and his creation: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the founding of this novel cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, thus creating a new crypto fever. She introduces readers to larger-than-life characters like Buterin, the Web3 wunderkind; his short-lived CEO, Charles Hoskinson; and Joe Lubin, a former Goldman Sachs VP who became one of crypto's most well-known billionaires. Sparks fly as these outsized personalities fight for their piece of a seemingly limitless new business opportunity. This fascinating book shows the crypto market for what it really is: a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.

She met the man of her dreams and suddenly had it all. Then, in one fateful night, she lost everything, and the nightmare began Jennifer Robertson was working hard to build a life for herself from the ashes of her first marriage. Still only twenty-six, she swiped right on a dating app and met Gerry Cotten, a man she would not normally have considered—too young and not her type—but found she’d met her match. Eccentric but funny and kind, Cotten turned out to be a bitcoin wizard who quickly amassed substantial wealth through his company, Quadriga. The couple travelled the world, first class all the way, while Cotten worked on his multitude of encrypted laptops. Then, while the couple was on their honeymoon in India, opening an orphanage in their name, Gerry fell ill and died in a matter of hours. Jennifer was consumed by grief and guilt, but that was only the beginning. It turned out that Gerry owed $250 million to Quadriga customers, and all the passwords to his encrypted virtual vaults, hidden on his many laptops, had died with him. Jennifer was left with more than one hundred thousand investors looking for their money, and questions, suspicions and accusations spiralling dangerously out of control. The Quadriga scandal touched off major investment and criminal investigations, not to mention Internet rumours circulating on dark message boards, including claims that Gerry had faked his own death and that his wife was the real mastermind behind a sophisticated sting operation. While Jennifer waited for a dead man’s switch e-mail that would probably never come, it became clear that Cotten had gambled away about $100 million of the funds entrusted to him for investment in his many schemes, leaving Robertson holding the bag. Bitcoin Widow is Catch Me If You Can meets a widow betrayed, a life of fairy-tale romance and private jets torched by duplicity, as Jennifer Robertson tries to reset her life in the wake of one of the biggest investment scandals of the digital age.

From the award-winning author of Sandworm comes the propulsive story of a new breed of investigators who have cracked the Bitcoin blockchain, exposing once-anonymous realms of money, drugs, and violence. “I love the book… It reads like a thriller… These stories are amazing.” (Michael Lewis) Over the last decade, a single innovation has massively fueled digital black markets: cryptocurrency. Crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely—whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking—than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers, these black marketeers have sought to rob law enforcement of their chief method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money. But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn’t so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could uncover an entire world of wrongdoing. Tracers in the Dark is a story of crime and pursuit unlike any other. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak, a Bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur, and a colorful ensemble of hardboiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld. The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, trafficking rings, and the biggest takedown of an online narcotics market in the history of the Internet. Utterly of our time, Tracers in the Dark is a cat-and-mouse story and a tale of a technological one-upmanship. Filled with canny maneuvering and shocking twists, it answers a provocative question: How would some of the world’s most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?

A comprehensive and authoritative exploration of Bitcoin and its place in monetary history When a pseudonymous programmer introduced “a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party” to a small online mailing list in 2008, very few people paid attention. Ten years later, and against all odds, this upstart autonomous decentralized software offers an unstoppable and globally accessible hard money alternative to modern central banks. The Bitcoin Standard analyzes the historical context to the rise of Bitcoin, the economic properties that have allowed it to grow quickly, and its likely economic, political, and social implications. While Bitcoin is an invention of the digital age, the problem it purports to solve is as old as human society itself: transferring value across time and space. Author Saifedean Ammous takes the reader on an engaging journey through the history of technologies performing the functions of money, from primitive systems of trading limestones and seashells, to metals, coins, the gold standard, and modern government debt. Exploring what gave these technologies their monetary role, and how most lost it, provides the reader with a good idea of what makes for sound money, and sets the stage for an economic discussion of its consequences for individual and societal future-orientation, capital accumulation, trade, peace, culture, and art. Compellingly, Ammous shows that it is no coincidence that the loftiest achievements of humanity have come in societies enjoying the benefits of sound monetary regimes, nor is it coincidental that monetary collapse has usually accompanied civilizational collapse. With this background in place, the book moves on to explain the operation of Bitcoin in a functional and intuitive way. Bitcoin is a decentralized, distributed piece of software that converts electricity and processing power into indisputably accurate records, thus allowing its users to utilize the Internet to perform the traditional functions of money without having to rely on, or trust, any authorities or infrastructure in the physical world. Bitcoin is thus best understood as the first successfully implemented form of digital cash and digital hard money. With an automated and perfectly predictable monetary policy, and the ability to perform final settlement of large sums across the world in a matter of minutes, Bitcoin’s real competitive edge might just be as a store of value and network for the final settlement of large payments―a digital form of gold with a built-in settlement infrastructure. Ammous’ firm grasp of the technological possibilities as well as the historical realities of monetary evolution provides for a fascinating exploration of the ramifications of voluntary free market money. As it challenges the most sacred of government monopolies, Bitcoin shifts the pendulum of sovereignty away from governments in favor of individuals, offering us the tantalizing possibility of a world where money is fully extricated from politics and unrestrained by borders. The final chapter of the book explores some of the most common questions surrounding Bitcoin: Is Bitcoin mining a waste of energy? Is Bitcoin for criminals? Who controls Bitcoin, and can they change it if they please? How can Bitcoin be killed? And what to make of all the thousands of Bitcoin knockoffs, and the many supposed applications of Bitcoin’s ‘block chain technology’? The Bitcoin Standard is the essential resource for a clear understanding of the rise of the Internet’s decentralized, apolitical, free-market alternative to national central banks.

"In the next 10 years, we'll see more disruption and changes to the banking and financial industry than we've seen in the preceding 100 years"—Brett King Breaking Banks: The Innovators, Rogues, and Strategists Rebooting Banking is a unique collection of interviews take from across the global Financial Services Technology (or FinTech) domain detailing the stories, case studies, start-ups, and emerging trends that will define this disruption. Features the author's catalogued interviews with experts across the globe, focusing on the disruptive technologies, platforms and behaviors that are threating the traditional industry approach to banking and financial services Topics of interest covered include Bitcoin's disruptive attack on currencies, P2P Lending, Social Media, the Neo-Banks reinventing the basic day-to-day checking account, global solutions for the unbanked and underbanked, through to changing consumer behavior Breaking Banks is the only record of its kind detailing the massive and dramatic shift occurring in the financial services space today.

Competition, the drive for efficiency, and continuous improvement ultimately push businesses toward automation and later towards autonomy. If a business can operate without human intervention, it will minimize its operational cost. If Uber can remove the expense of a driver with an autonomous vehicle, it will provide its service cheaper than a competitor who can’t. If an artificially intelligent trading company can search, find, and take advantage of some arbitrage opportunity, then it can profit where its competitors cannot. A business that can analyze and execute in real-time without needing to wait for a human to act, is a business that will be able to take advantage of brief inefficiencies from other markets or businesses. This trend following a thesis that is based on 100 years of proven economic theory. Short-wave economic cycles, those 5- to 10-year cycles, are driven by credit but the long-wave economic cycles, those 50- to 60-year cycles, are driven by technological revolution. We’ve had 5 cycles over the past 200 years with the last wave, the Age of Information & Telecommunications. We've seen evidence that a new cycle has begun. Technological revolutions come by way of a cluster of new innovations. About a decade ago, you started to see AI, robotics and IoT (sensors) delivering on automation. That’s been powerful, but not transformational. It does not force businesses to fundamentally change how they do business. The last piece of the puzzle was cryptocurrency because it allows us to process and transfer economic value without human intervention. Soon, there will be a global race to build autonomous operations. Businesses and organizations without autonomous operations simply will not be able to compete with those that do because … autonomy is the ultimate competitive advantage. Crypto is the mechanism that will accrue value from being the infrastructure for the next digital financial revolution. Crypto Asset Investing lays out a case that we’ve begun a new technological revolution similar to the Internet Age of the 1990’s. Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, robotics and cryptocurrency are converging to deliver on a new age, what I call the Age of Autonomy. Understanding the transformation that’s taken place before anyone else can yield enormous investment opportunity. In this book, you’ll learn how and why to invest in crypto assets.