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Books, Crypto, Entertainment, Finance, Observation

The Best Books on Cryptocurrency

Above:Photo Credit / Krzysztof Kowalik on Unsplash

So much is going on in the area of Crypto-currencies, Blockchain, Alt Coins, and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) that it can make your head spin. And that is not to even mention Crypto Mining, Farming, Baking and Trading, all of which have had skyrocketing activity recently.

How much interest there is runs the gamut from the curious onlooker to the serious professional. And then there are predictions regarding the future of the world financial system, the political and legal ramifications of the rise of crypto and all the opinions going every which way, and more.

Based on all of the above it only makes sense to put together a list of fundamental ground floor guidebooks to help anyone who wants and needs to really understand what all the fuss is about. Bitcoin and the whole area of blockchain technology has come so far already, and is so established and entrenched that it is unlikely to disappear completely anytime soon, no matter which way the political winds may blow.

So if you are a beginner an intermediate or even advanced learner that wants to know more, these are the best books to really dig into the phenomena and explosion of information and viewpoints. To make it easier they are featured front and center, below, along with descriptions, provided courtesy of the Bookshop (and the various publishers), and with some links for a variety of options of where to purchase.

Mastering Blockchain – Third Edition: A deep dive into distributed ledgers, consensus protocols, smart contracts, DApps, cryptocurrencies

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Blockchain technology is the backbone of cryptocurrencies, and it has applications in finance, government, media, and many other industries. With a legacy of providing technologists with executable insights, the third edition of Mastering Blockchain is thoroughly revised and updated with the latest blockchain research, including four new chapters on consensus algorithms, Serenity (Ethereum 2.0), tokenization, and enterprise blockchains.

Apart from covering the basics, including blockchain’s technical underpinnings, cryptography, and consensus protocols, this book provides you with expert knowledge on decentralization, decentralized application development on Ethereum, Bitcoin, alternative coins, smart contracts, alternative blockchains, and Hyperledger.

Furthermore, you will explore how to implement blockchain solutions beyond cryptocurrencies, such as the Internet of Things with blockchain, blockchain scalability, enterprise blockchains, and tokenization using blockchain, and the future scope of this fascinating and disruptive technology.

By the end of this book, you will have gained a thorough understanding of the various facets of blockchain technology and be comfortable applying them to diverse real-world scenarios.

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Key Features

  • Updated with four new chapters on consensus algorithms, Ethereum 2.0, tokenization, and enterprise blockchains
  • Dive deep into foundational pillars of blockchain technology such as decentralization, cryptography, and consensus protocols
  • Get to grips with Solidity, Web3, cryptocurrencies, smart contract development and solve scalability, security, and privacy issues
  • Discover the architecture of different distributed ledger platforms including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth, Corda, and Quorum

Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain Technology& Altcoins For Beginners: Explore The Decentralized World, Investing in Crypto Blueprint, Mining Basics+

Buy at Bookshop

Do you want to understand what Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency actually is? Do you want to understand how it could change the world & finance industry FOREVER? Do you want to discover how you can get started investing in Crypto TODAY?

By now we’ve all heard of it, yet few of us understand it, and without understanding it how could you even dream of investing in it?

You hear all the tech ‘bros’ talking about it, you hear the media slandering it, you can see the bankers are scared by it’s potential, but you still don’t quite get the fuss.

Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.

But, luckily, this book has been written for people just like you.

The purpose of it is to demystify the world of Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Decentralization & The Blockchain.

And, if those 4 words currently sound like a foreign language to you, you’re not alone. But, after this book, you’ll be the one explaining about the ‘Crypto Craze’ to everyone you see!

Inside, we will go over the origins & history of Bitcoin, it’s potential to change the world, as well as how it could all go wrong.

And, of course, we will go over how you can invest in potentially the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever seen.

Here’s a tiny Example of what’s inside..

  • Exactly What Bitcoin Actually Is And How It Is Drastically Disrupting The Global Economy 
  • Everything You Need To Know About The ‘Bitcoin Halving’ Cycles & How To Maximize Your Gains From Them
  • What Is A ‘Blockchain’ And How It Could Quite Literally Revolutionize EVERY Aspect Of Your Life In The Coming Decades
  • What Are ‘Altcoins’ And How They Are Different To Bitcoin & What Their Purpose In All Of This Is…
  • Why We Are Still In The VERY Early Days Of The Crypto ‘Boom’

And SO Much More!

So, If You Want To FINALLY Understand The World Of Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency So You Can Actually Understand What All The Fuss Is About And Whether You Want To Get Involved, Then Scroll Up And Click

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Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe

buy at Bookshop

From preeminent math personality and author of The Joy of x, a brilliant and endlessly appealing explanation of calculus–how it works and why it makes our lives immeasurably better.

Without calculus, we wouldn’t have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket.

Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down-to-earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number–infinity–to tackle real-world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.

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Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves (a phenomenon predicted by calculus). Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes “backwards” sometimes; how to make electricity with magnets; how to ensure your rocket doesn’t miss the moon; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.

As Strogatz proves, calculus is truly the language of the universe. By unveiling the principles of that language, Infinite Powers makes us marvel at the world anew.

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

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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 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 a new invention of the digital age, the problem it purports to solve is as old as human society itself: transferring value across time and space. 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 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.

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Crypto, Economics, Finance, Observation

Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey vs. Warren Buffett and the Status Quo

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Above: Photo Collage Lynxotic – various

Bitcoin and Crypto’s reached a major turning point: why is cryptocurrency worth anything?

In a recent interview clip Jack Dorsey quietly states his opinion on the difference between people who “get” blockchain and crypto, and those that will forever be married to the past:

watch:

This is the simply stated portion that says it all:

“People who have questions in the world, people who have curiosity (and are) recognizing that the current systems, wether they be corporate financial systems or the government financial systems just aren’t working for them…”

Although the context of his statement is regarding bitcoin as the native currency for the internet, and in particular how people are responding to the fact that financial systems “just aren’t working for them” it is, nevertheless, a perfect statement of how the world is changing.

It has already changed into two distinct groups: those that are clinging to the status quo, since it has worked very well for them, and those that want to find a new and better way, because, in most cases, the current system did not work for them.

It’s important to realize that this statement is not coming from a disgruntled outsider, but from the hugely successful founder of Square, now called Block.

The fact that a large group of highly successful business leaders, such as Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk, although benefiting massively from the current financial systems, are at the same time embracing a new way of thought and action for the future, is at the crux of the issues addressed in this post.

Buffet vs Musk & Dorsey and the zero sum mindset of Malthusian Capitalism

There is a war waging between those that are open to, and welcoming of, bitcoin, crypto, blockchain, DeFi and other new financial innovations and those that reject all of it and would like nothing more than to see it stopped, by any means necessary.

The derision, insults and disdain lobbed at bitcoin, crypto and anyone that believes in them, by the “old guard” epitomized by Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are now well known and documented:

A few quotes:

“Probably rat poison squared.” — Warren Buffett in Fox Business interview at 2018 meeting

“I think I should say modestly that the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization” – Charlie Munger vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway

“I certainly didn’t invest in crypto. I’m proud of the fact I’ve avoided it. It’s like a venereal disease or something. I just regard it as beneath contempt.” – Charlie Munger vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway

Interestingly, if you look deeper at the interviews and quotes, you’d see that, in spite of the headline grabbing hyperbole, it’s the price speculation that is at the heart of the criticism.

The comments that crypto and bitcoin “don’t produce anything” are ridiculous on their face, as if the fiat dollar “produces” products, services or anything else.

Oh, wait, the dollar does “produce” inflation (loss in value), and has done so very dependably over the last 100+ years.

Take a stat so well known that it is almost a cliché, any way you put it: a 2013 U.S. dollar (the year the federal reserve was created, not coincidentally) would be worth more than 16x what a dollar is worth today. One has to ask where that value is now?

Bitcoin, however, has over time only gained value. A lot. If bitcoin is rat poison, maybe the fiat system and the federal reverse are the rat?

100 year old billionaires are, aparently, not inclined to speak from enlightened self-interest. Or, to be kind, perhaps they are blinded by the success they enjoyed in a system that favors anyone at the top of the pyramid, one built on value theft?

One very big caveat, however, is clearly that the “everything bubble” is bursting, price speculation always ends in price crashes, and the massive gains in the value of various cryptocurrencies are a symptom of a larger systemic emergency, rather than a quality inherent to crypto itself. There’s that.

The gap between this kind of thinking vs. that of the forward looking cryptocurrency proponents, and what they consider to be positive innovations, is vast. In a time where divisive thought is nearly ubiquitous this is not news.

However, the fact that the legions of those that “get it” are as large as they are, and that they are constantly growing, has clearly taken the debate past the point of no return.

To get the full view of this divide it’s important to look also at just how the nearly 100 year old duo of Buffet & Munger got to be the “legends” that they are.

All the best known names they are associated with, from the initial Berkshire Hathaway purchase in 1962 to more recent investments in companies such as CocaCola, GEICO Insurance, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Sees Candy, Clayton Homes and so on, paint a clear picture of extreme hierarchal and exploitative capitalism that is solely based on making themselves and shareholders rich, and doing it on the backs of consumers.

In an example of the thinking of those that do not worship the duo, in The Nation, David Dayen wrote: “America isn’t supposed to allow moats, much less reward them. Our economic system, we claim, is founded on free and fair competition. We have laws over a century old designed to break up concentrated industries, encouraging innovation and risk-taking. In other words, Buffett’s investment strategy should not legally be available, to him or anyone else.”

Exactly this kind of double standard, corrupt to the core, is built on systemic greed founded on a Malthusian “zero-sum mindset”. This is what has led millions to conclude that the system just isn’t working for them.

Being championed ad nausea for this lifetime of “achievement” is part and parcel of the status quo that many, from many in the 99% to the “nouveau 1%”, such as Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Vitalik Buterin and many others, are actively seeking alternatives to.

That distinction, being rich and powerful and yet not satisfied with the legacy of corruption and greed, is at the heart of the new wave of thought that has made bitcoin, crypto and DeFi a force to be reckoned with.

Moreover, seeing the state of the world that centuries of this kind of thinking has engendered, it’s natural for the young and more enlightened to want to search for other ways for things to work, ways that perhaps champion something other than monopolistic greed and exploitation.

In a recent Interview Elon Musk addressed precisely this issue – how many in the current system are focused on prospering at the expense of others and maintaining a zero-sum mindset. In the clip he outlines how important it is to understand the failure of that approach.

watch:

The idea that crypto will disappear is wishful thinking by those that cling to the systems of the past

A clip of Harrison Ford speaking at the Global Climate Action Summit was banned on some platforms as incendiary. Why? Because he passionately accuses those that are financially linked to fossil fuels of working to spread disinformation and misinformation, in order to perpetuate their massive incomes, even while the planet is on the brink of climate disaster.

Blocking this opinion, from a rich and famous film star, no less, is typical in the way that the established system works to suppress the idea that you should do anything about the fact that “it’s just not working” for you.

This is the same divide, mentioned above, that is nearly all pervasive today, but will never stop innovation in thinking about financial systems. It will not stop DeFi or DAOs or crypto or bitcoin.

It will not stop sustainable energy from becoming an ever bigger part of the world’s energy infrastructure. The point of going back has long since passed.

How money works according to Musk

Jack Dorsey has an understated and somehow “quiet” way of expressing revolutionary ideas. Elon Musk, on the other hand, is well known for controversial and flamboyant statements, and especially tweets.

But to get a taste of just how radical his thinking really is, particularly to those that disagree, you have to dig deeper into lengthy interviews, such as those with Lex Fridman, where he reveals his thinking more specifically on money, crypto and the governments role in the system of money.

watch:

Coming from the wealthiest person on earth, some may find it odd, yet his thoughts on crypto vs fiat money are well documented. It’s just this kind of stance, taken by so many in the “new” establishment at the top of the current financial pyramid, who also see the necessity for change toward new ideas and systems that can so away with the worst of the status quo, well represented above by Buffet & Munger and other “crypto haters”.

Government is a corporation in the limit

In yet another interview excerpt, Musk goes even deeper into his belief that – in his exact words: “if you don’t like corporations should really hate governments”

watch:

While this particular statement arose out of a spat with Senator Elizabeth Warren regarding taxes, the overall concept of challenging the status quo and the, clearly failed, systems perpetuated, remains in play.

Web3, and how Web2 and legacy financial structures are linked

Although fraught with infighting – the typical bitcoin vs. Ethereum vs. Doge vs. Shiba Inu internal debates and criticisms are not on the magnitude of the division between those that generally support and benefit from, for example, status quo financial structure and fossil fuel business, vs those that favor Blockchain and Sustainable energy.

Further, the spirit of the clash between Web2 and Web3 rests not on the tech or the systems themselves, which it can be argued are the same, but on the beliefs and intent of each camp.

The surveillance capitalism business models of web2, epitomized by Facebook and Google are diametrically opposed to the spirit and stated goals of web3, just as bitcoin was created out of a time that, not coincidentally, corresponded to the 2008 crash and crisis born of the greed and corruption of the legacy economic establishment.

There are two distinct camps that have emerged.

Those, such as Tesla and Elon Musk, that reject the traditional holy grail of shareholder value and instead embrace, for example, a more enlightened mission “to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy”. This aligns with any individual choosing the support crypto as a “Hodler” or at least believer, vs. those that support the legacy systems of finance, the fossil fuel industrial complex and Web2’s exploitative business model.

This divide is the ultimate test of our time and it will only grow in stature and importance.

The correspondence between forward looking innovation in all human thought, communication and action is already too big to stop and cannot be wished away.

There will undoubtedly be setbacks to these new directions, and there will be attacks using more than insults, such as those quoted above, but the time for the unstoppable force to be quelled is long since past. Coke and a smile? No thanks.

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