How Money Got Free: Bitcoin and the Fight for the Future of Finance

Description

In the space of a few years, Bitcoin has gone from an idea ignored or maligned by almost everyone to an asset with a market cap of more than $12 billion. Venture capital firms, Goldman Sachs, the New York Stock Exchange, and billionaires such as Richard Branson and Peter Thiel have invested more than $1 billion in companies built on this groundbreaking technology. Bill Gates has even declared it 'better than currency'. The pioneers of Bitcoin were twenty-first-century outlaws - cryptographers, hackers, Free Staters, ex-cons and drug dealers, teenage futurists and self-taught entrepreneurs - armed with a renegade ideology and a grudge against big government and big banks. Now those same institutions are threatening to co-opt or curtail the impact of digital currency. But the pioneers, some of whom have become millionaires themselves, aren't going down without a fight. Sweeping and provocative, How Money Got Free reveals how this disruptive technology is shaping the debate around competing ideas of money and liberty, and what that means for our future.

Brian Patrick Eha is a former editor at Entrepreneur and a journalist who has spent nearly five years following the rise of Bitcoin. His work has been published by the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Fortune, CNNMoney, American Banker, Outside, Port, Avaunt, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

'A tremendously entertaining story of the technology, ideology, and personalities behind Bitcoin's rise. Highly recommended.' -- Balaji Srinivasan, CEO of 21.co and board partner at Andreessen Horowitz 'Thrilling...How Money Got Free transports readers to the meeting rooms, startup couches, conference halls, online discussion boards, and proverbial water coolers where the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry took shape.' * CoinDesk * 'Eha pieces together the puzzle of Bitcoin's history in an engaging and accessible narrative... A great choice for anyone interested in technology, finance, politics, or the currency they spend.' * Library Journal * 'The definitive early history of the cryptocurrency revolution... Everyone has a take, an opinion, but precious few can articulate it in any kind of compelling way. Mr. Eha indeed hangs around early business venture booms and busts just long enough to give Bitcoiners fantastic inside-baseball morsels while helping those new to the anarchic culture feel welcome. How Money Got Free is exactly where it needs to be, here and now. Perfect timing.' * Foundation for Economic Education * '[An] entertaining look at a period of financial change that may have lasting implications for finance and the global economy.' * MoneyWeek * 'The rollicking, delightfully told tale of the creation of one of the most profound new technologies of our time.' -- Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief, Wired 'If Brian Patrick Eha can make me, a Luddite dunce, both understand and care about the enigmatic Bitcoin, and if he can also tantalize the novelist in me with a narrative of intellectual daring and primal risk...then he is some kind of journalistic magician. And so he is, because he did all those things and more... You'll never find a better guide.' -- Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air and Blood Will Out 'The sweeping, exhaustively researched and vividly painted story of a fascinating new form of financial technology, with a cast of characters worthy of a cyberpunk novel and enough drama and heartbreak to capture the imaginations of non-geeks.' -- Marc Hochstein, editor-in-chief, American Banker 'Fascinating...This book is like a fiber-optic cable extending into our uncertain economic future.' -- David Krakauer, president and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems, Santa Fe Institute '[A] fast-moving tale of digital currency and its discontents.' * Kirkus * 'Brian Patrick Eha does for Bitcoin what Michael Lewis did for high-frequency trading. He takes something extremely complex, technical, and important and explains it in a fascinating way that the average reader will understand. Yes, if you read Eha's book you will understand Bitcoin. More importantly, you will be treated to a vivid tale of a world-changing technology, with a colourful cast of entrepreneurs who risk everything to win.' -- The Honorable Edmund C. Moy, 38th Director of the US Mint (2006-2011) 'A definitive account not only of Bitcoin and its global implications but of the price innovators have to pay to bring us new technologies.' -- Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed and author of Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free 'Not only does [Eha] 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 it... [Reads] more like a financial thriller than a nonfiction explainer.' * The Epoch Times * 'If you want to be that person at the party who understands Bitcoin, this book is how you do it.' * Townhall *