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Digital Gold : Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money

Nathaniel Popper
BRAND NEW, HARDCOVER
Nathaniel Popper
BRAND NEW, HARDCOVER

RM30.00

A Fascinating Walkthrough Of Bitcoin Rise & It’s Impact On New World of Crypto-Currency

ISBN 9780062362490
Book Condition BRAND NEW
Format HARDCOVER
Publisher Harper
Publication Date 19/05/2015
Pages 416
Weight 0.6 kg
Dimension 23.6 × 16 × 3.3 cm
Availability: Out of stock

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Description

This International & New York Times bestseller in hardcover edition is a bran-new book and nicely wrapped with protective book-wrapper. The original new book is sold at usual price RM124.91 (Hardcover). Now here Only at RM30.

?? NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR?S CHOICE ??

?? SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 FINANCIAL TIMES ??

?? MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR ??

A New York Times technology and business reporter charts the dramatic rise of Bitcoin and the fascinating personalities who are striving to create a new global money for the Internet age.

Bitcoin, the landmark digital money and financial technology, has spawned a global social movement with utopian ambitions.

The notion of a new currency, maintained by the computers of users around the world, has been the butt of many jokes, but that has not stopped it from growing into a technology worth billions of dollars, supported by the hordes of followers who have come to view it as the most important new idea since the creation of the Internet.

Digital Gold is New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper?s brilliant and engrossing history of Bitcoin, the landmark digital money and financial technology that has spawned a global social movement.

Believers from Beijing to Buenos Aires see the potential for a financial system free from banks and governments. More than just a tech industry fad, Bitcoin has threatened to decentralize some of society?s most basic institutions.

An unusual tale of group invention, Digital Gold charts the rise of the Bitcoin technology through the eyes of the movement?s colorful central characters, including an Argentinian millionaire, a Chinese entrepreneur, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Bitcoin?s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Already, Bitcoin has led to untold riches for some, and prison terms for others.

With Digital Gold, New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper offers a brilliant and engrossing account of this new technology.

At each step of the way, Bitcoin has provided one of the most fascinating tests of how money works, who benefits from it, and what it might look like in the future.

Extremely entertaining history of the digital currency Bitcoin. The author does an exceptional job of showing the motivations and history of the people involved in Bitcoin’s creation and attempts to make it mainstream.

The technological aspects of the currency (commodity?) were not as easy to understand from the book and I had to research the specifics on my own to feel like I had a grasp of the basics.

If you?ve ever thought much about money, you may have wondered what gives it its value, especially if you?re aware that Richard Nixon took the dollar off the Gold Standard more than forty years ago.

And if you?re at all involved in the world of finance and investment, you know perfectly well that very little money is tangible in any way: it?s almost all electrons, whizzing around the Internet at unspeakable speeds ? and the ways in which we store and transfer money (bank accounts, credit and debit cards, checks, cash) are all notoriously vulnerable to loss, theft, and misappropriation.

Wouldn?t it stand to reason in this age of the Internet that there should be a better, faster, more secure, and more reliable way to transact business?

That?s the thinking that has led many venturesome individuals to create alternative currencies. Traditionally ? and unsurprisingly ? most of these alternative currencies have been paper-based. (Yes, there are dozens of them.)

In recent times, though, especially since the advent of the Internet, innovative thinkers have been programming computers to create entirely new forms of money that are completely divorced from material reality.

After all, there are just three fundamental functions that money must perform: ?providing a medium of exchange, a unit for measuring the cost of goods, and an asset where value can be stored.? And none of these requires that money must be something you can hold in your hands.

Enter Bitcoin, the best-known of a long line of software-based alternative currencies. Introduced in 2009 by someone using the name Satoshi Nakamoto (probably a pseudonym), Bitcoin has attracted more media attention than all the other alternative approaches combined.

The early adopters of Bitcoins were self-styled libertarians who saw the new currency as a way to free society from the grip of government everywhere.

However, Bitcoins didn?t rise to the attention of many others until one early adopter ? an anarchist, really, despite what he might have called himself ? set up a website for drug dealers and arms traffickers called Silk Road.

The enormous traffic in Bitcoins created by Silk Road raised the level of activity manyfold and helped Bitcoin gain wider acceptance.

Later, more mainstream investors and entrepreneurs became involved in the Bitcoin phenomenon, and government agencies inevitably took notice. ?The unmistakable irony of these wild days,? writes Nathaniel Popper in Digital Gold, ?was that a technology that had been designed, in no small part, to circumvent government power was now becoming largely driven by and dependent on the attitudes of government officials.?

Not just in the United States, either. The Chinese government cast an even more jaundiced eye on Bitcoins than the U.S. government.

As the word about Bitcoin spread through the financial marketplace, word leaked out that JPMorgan ?began secretly working with the other major banks in the country . . . on a bold experimental effort to create [a system based on the technology behind Bitcoin] that would be jointly run by the computers of the largest banks and serve as the backbone for a new, instant payment system that might replace Visa, MasterCard, and wire transfers.?

In other words, what began as a libertarian and anarchist effort to seize power from the hands of the Federal Reserve Bank, Wall Street, and the other arbiters of our financial lives might end up granting them even more power!

?[T]he system was set up so that, like gold,? Popper explains, ?Bitcoins would always be scarce ? only 21 million of them would ever be released ? and hard to counterfeit. . . With a hard cap on the number of Bitcoins, users could reasonably believe that Bitcoins would become harder to get over time and thus would go up in value.?

In fact, though Bitcoins were worthless when first created, the going price at this writing is now $235, having topped out last year at nearly $1,200. The price of Bitcoins is volatile, to say the least.

Just in case you?re thinking of taking a flyer and filling your piggy bank with Bitcoins, you might ponder its vulnerability. ?Bitcoin itself is always one big hack away from total failure,? as Popper writes.On several occasions, hackers have raised questions about the security of the currency: the holes they uncovered have been plugged, but it?s anyone?s guess whether there?s more to be discovered.

Digital Gold represents a thorough job of research. Its picture of the many strange characters who have played seminal roles in the development of Bitcoin is colorful ? worth reading for its entertainment value alone. If you?re interested in finance and money, you?ll enjoy this book.

HIGHLY recommended this book to anyone who would like a good introduction to Bitcoin.

About the Author
Nathaniel Popper is a reporter at The New York Times. Before joining The Times, he worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Forward. Nathaniel grew up in Pittsburgh and is a graduate of Harvard College. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

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