An experimental new Internet-based form of money is created that anyone can generate at home; people build frightening firetrap computers full of video cards, putting out so much heat that one operator is hospitalised with heatstroke and brain damage.
A young physics student starts a revolutionary new marketplace immune to State coercion; he ends up ordering hits on people because they might threaten his great experiment, and is jailed for life without parole.
Fully automated contractual systems are proposed to make business and the law work better; the contracts people actually write are unregulated penny stock offerings whose fine print literally states that you are buying nothing of any value.
The biggest crowdfunding in history attracts $150 million on the promise that it will embody “the steadfast iron will of unstoppable code”; upon release it is immediately hacked, and $50 million is stolen.
How did we get here?
David Gerard covers the origins and history of Bitcoin to the present day, the other cryptocurrencies it spawned including Ethereum, the ICO craze and the 2017 crypto bubble, and the attempts to apply blockchains and smart contracts to business. Plus a case study on blockchains in the music industry.
Bitcoin and blockchains are not a technology story, but a psychology story.
Remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
Author(s): David Gerard
Edition: 4
Publisher: Createspace
Year: 2017
Language: English
Commentary: this is the actual print PDF, uploaded by the author.
Pages: 182
Tags: bitcoin, ethereum, crypto
Contents
A Bitcoin FAQ 7
Introduction 9
Chapter 1: What is a bitcoin? 11
Why Bitcoin? 11
What you have when you have “a bitcoin” 11
The blockchain 13
Secured by waste: Proof of Work 13
Chapter 2: The Bitcoin ideology 17
Libertarianism and cyberlibertarianism 17
Pre-Bitcoin anonymous payment channels 18
The prehistory of cryptocurrencies 19
The conspiracy theory economics of Bitcoin 20
Austrian economics 23
Chapter 3: The incredible promises of Bitcoin! 25
Decentralised! Secured by math! 25
Anonymous! 26
Instant! No fees! 26
No chargebacks! 26
Be your own bank! 27
Better than Visa, PayPal or Western Union! 28
Remittances! 28
Bank the unbanked! 29
Economic equality! 30
The supply is limited! The price can only go up! 31
But Bitcoin saved Venezuela! 31
When the economy collapses, Bitcoin will save you! 32
You can use Bitcoin to buy drugs on the Internet! 33
Chapter 4: Early Bitcoin: the rise to the first bubble 35
The tulip bulb era 35
The art of the steal 38
Pirateat40: Bitcoin Savings & Trust 40
Bitcoin exchanges: keep your money in a sock under someone else’s bed 42
The rise and fall of Mt. Gox 44
Drugs and the Darknet: The Silk Road 48
Chapter 5: How Bitcoin mining centralised 55
The firetrap era 55
Abusing your hashpower for fun and profit 57
Chapter 6: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? 59
Searching for Satoshi 59
Dorian Nakamoto 60
Professor Dr Dr Craig Wright: Nakamoto Dundee. That’s not a signature. 61
Chapter 7: Spending bitcoins in 2017 69
Bitcoin is full: the transaction clog 69
Bitcoin for drugs: welcome to the darknet 71
Ransomware 72
Non-illegal goods and services 74
Case study: Individual Pubs 78
Chapter 8: Trading bitcoins in 2017: the second crypto bubble 81
How to get bitcoins 81
From the first bubble to the second 82
Bitfinex: the hack, the bank block and the second bubble 83
Chapter 9: Altcoins 91
Litecoin 92
Dogecoin 92
Ethereum 94
Buterin’s quantum quest 96
ICOs: magic beans and bubble machines 97
Chapter 10: Smart contracts, stupid humans 101
Dr. Strangelove, but on the blockchain 101
So who wants smart contracts, anyway? 102
Legal code is not computer code 102
The oracle problem: garbage in, garbage out 103
Immutability: make your mistakes unfixable 105
Immutability: the enemy of good software engineering 105
Ethereum smart contracts in practice 106
The DAO: the steadfast iron will of unstoppable code 108
Chapter 11: Business bafflegab, but on the Blockchain 111
What can Blockchain do for me? 112
But all these companies are using Blockchain now! 114
Blockchains won’t clean up your data for you 115
Six questions to ask your blockchain salesman 117
Security threat models 118
Permissioned blockchains 119
Beneficiaries of business Blockchain 120
Non-beneficiaries of business Blockchain 121
“Blockchain” products you can buy! 121
UK Government Office for Science: “Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond block chain” 123
Chapter 12: Case study: Why you can’t put the music industry on a blockchain 125
The rights management quagmire 125
Getting paid for your song 126
The record industry’s loss of control and the streaming apocalypse 127
Berklee Rethink and blockchain dreams 128
Imogen Heap: “Tiny Human”. Total sales: $133.20. 129
Why blockchains are a bad fit for music 131
Attempts to make sense of the hype 132
Other musical blockchain initiatives 134
SingularDTV 136
Summary 137
Conclusion 139
Further reading 141
Acknowledgements 143
About the author 145
Glossary 147
Notes 161
