In late 2015, “Blockchain, not bitcoin” became the mantra on Wall Street, and from January 2014 into February 2017, more than fifty financial services firms invested in the space.

Soon financial institutions as powerful as JPMorgan Chase, Nasdaq, Visa, HSBC, State Street, UBS, Santander, and many others worldwide began exploring the technology. The preface included a helpful backdrop of what was occurring in the financial services area during this time frame. Spoiler Alert: there are a bunch of spoilers below!īefore we begin, worth pointing out that the book covers a roughly four year timespan (January 2014-January 2018) and was published in February 2022. Note: all transcription errors are my own. Calling everything a scam is the laziest form of concern trolling and fortunately readers have a list of citations to peruse instead of relying on innuendo from flash-in-the-pan Twitter personalities. Rather than dwell on those past differences, I think it is a credit to her reporting that she provided nuances in the story (such as the early days of Hyperledger project and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance) that pundits who are new to this space are unaware of or put no effort in understanding. But that likely would have distracted the main story around how Ethereum evolved as infrastructure.Īnd before I’m labeled a rose-tinted glasses fanboy, worth pointing out that when I first interacted with Shin years ago, we didn’t agree on a number of things. For instance, I probably would’ve highlighted how much aggregate fraud took place during the 2017-2018 ICO boom (e.g., why Chinese governmental authorities kicked out exchanges, etc.). With that said, there were a few areas that I had quibbles with. In terms of “inside baseball,” while I have bumped into and interacted with many of the people mentioned, I don’t know enough to comment on several figures discussed so the review below is largely about other portions of the book.

I look forward to seeing it turned into a mini-series (Luka Dončić will obviously play Vitalik). In contrast, The Cryptopians by Laura Shin was a breezy read and one that – from a technical perspective – I feel comfortable recommending to both geeky and non-geeky audiences trying to understand some of the people that created the Ethereum ecosystem (as well as a few other blockchains).įor instance, I enjoyed the steady dripping of GRE words like pastiche and bucolic which were carefully placed throughout each chapter alongside detailed (physical) descriptions of venues and individuals. For background, I have reviewed six other blockchain-focused books, most of which were pretty bad and/or filled with inaccuracies (the exception thus far was Digital Gold).

I have found a blockchain-related book that did not have me completely shaking my fist in the air.

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