Digital Gold is a great read about "the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money". The story would put most of the great political thrillers of the 70s to shame. I would recommend the book to anyone or everyone. It's a bumpy ride across the globe, from dark alleys and friends in low places to high finance and Wall Street connections. How I would love to see some crosscutting between cypherpunks, coders, utopians, pragmatics, libertarians, tin foil hats, entrepreneurs, hustlers, federal agents and CEO:s. Some parts of the book reads almost like a good 70s Gene Hackman film. A modern, real life French Connection. This is contemporary history at its best, where the real story seem stranger than fiction.
Nathaniel Popper has really done his research, he must have painstakingly recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with various people who were involved in the earliest days of bitcoin. (I think it's still early days, blockchain technology is at its infancy or childhood, in my opinion.)
It must have been a challenge for Popper to write such a massive recount about history while it was happening and it feels a little bit strange to read about historical events that happened less than a decade ago, this is still very early days for cryptocurrencies.
1492, 1914, 1945 and 1989 are common milestones in history books, years that acts as natural beginnings and endings for chapters in history. I guess its hard to write a good ending when the future of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is happening right now.
After putting the book down, I started thinking of how well this story would translate into a big budget TV series, HBO or Netflix something longer than a Soderbergh movie. Netflix "Banking on Bitcoin" was good but maybe a 15 hour documentary is a more suitable format.. Come on, Ken Burns, if you can do it for Jazz and Baseball, you can do it for Bitcoin :)
Sure, we've all heard it a thousand times before: "The book was better than the film." That is usually the case but still.. Even though I know how the book ends, I would love to see this story dramatised for TV.
I would not be surprised if Nathaniel Poppers is taking notes and dictating fast for a brick-sized follow up, rather than just a foreword for a new edition of the book. The subject is a goldmine.
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X
Have you read Digital Gold? What's your opinion? Comment below.