Review : It’s deffo a riveting classic about this modern-day gold rush. Popper tells fascinating stories about a different subset of early adopters, how bitcoin evolves. It also covers key events up till 2014 like the Mt Gox saga and the bust of Silk Road.
P.S. This is not the book to pick up if you want to know how Bitcoin works, tho there’s a sprinkle of technical aspects of blockchain like Proof-of-Work and hard fork which are well explained in plain English.
Quotes
The essential quality of successful money, through time, was not who issued it – or even how portable or durable it was – but rather the number of people willing to use it.
Chapter 2, Digital Gold (P.16)
“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work,” Satoshi wrote. “The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.”
Chapter 3, Digital Gold (P.30)
Gavin [Andresen] wrote: “Trust is Bitcoin’s biggest barrier to success. I don’t think there is anything we can do to speed up the process of getting people to trust that Bitcoin is solid; it takes time to build trust.”
Chapter 5, Digital Gold (P.62)
He [Wences Casares] saw the Bitcoin’s lack of any apparent intrinsic value didn’t matter when looked at against the history of money. The reason gold itself had been used as money was not that it was valuable; it had become valuable because it was used as money. And it was used as money because it did what all good money did: it served as a sort of physical ledger on which society could keep track of who was owed what. […] Bitcoin, Wences came to believe, was a purer version of that sort of ledger – a commonly verifiable place where everyone could keep track of who owned what.
Chapter 15, Digital Gold (P.157)
In the long run, though, Wences [Casares] assured everyone he knew what the cautiousness of the banks would matter less and less. At an event hosted by JPMorgan in the Valley, to discuss Bitcoin, Wences was dismissive when the topic of Jamie Dimon came up: “I think whatever Jamie does or doesn’t do will be as relevant as what the postmaster general did or didn’t do about email.”
Chapter 28, Digital Gold (P.306)
Mt. Gox had long been held up as an example of the dangers that arose when Bitcoin users relied on central institutions, rather than the system of private keys and personal wallets that Satoshi had designed.
Chapter 29, Digital Gold (P.316)