Table of Contents

From the print edition (US, UK)

• A Bitcoin FAQ 7
  
• Introduction 9
  
• Chapter 1: What is a bitcoin? 11
  • Why Bitcoin? 11
  • What you have when you have “a bitcoin” 11
  • The blockchain 13
    
  • Secured by waste: Proof of Work 13
• Chapter 2: The Bitcoin ideology 17
  • Libertarianism and cyberlibertarianism 17
  • Pre-Bitcoin anonymous payment channels 18
  • The prehistory of cryptocurrencies 19
  • The conspiracy theory economics of Bitcoin 20
  • Austrian economics 23
• Chapter 3: The incredible promises of Bitcoin! 25
  • Decentralised! Secured by math! 25
  • Anonymous! 26
    
  • Instant! No fees! 26
  • No chargebacks! 26
  • Be your own bank! 27
  • Better than Visa, PayPal or Western Union! 28
  • Remittances! 28
  • Bank the unbanked! 29
  • Economic equality! 30
  • The supply is limited! The price can only go up! 31
  • But Bitcoin saved Venezuela! 31
  • When the economy collapses, Bitcoin will save you! 32
  • You can use Bitcoin to buy drugs on the Internet! 33
• Chapter 4: Early Bitcoin: the rise to the first bubble 35
  • The tulip bulb era 35
  • The art of the steal 38
  • Pirateat40: Bitcoin Savings & Trust 40
  • Bitcoin exchanges: keep your money in a sock under someone else’s bed 42
  • The rise and fall of Mt. Gox 44
  • Drugs and the Darknet: The Silk Road 48
• Chapter 5: How Bitcoin mining centralised 55
  • The firetrap era 55
  • Abusing your hashpower for fun and profit 57
• Chapter 6: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? 59
  • Searching for Satoshi 59
  • Dorian Nakamoto 60
  • Professor Dr Dr Craig Wright: Nakamoto Dundee. That’s not a signature. 61
• Chapter 7: Spending bitcoins in 2017 69
  • Bitcoin is full: the transaction clog 69
  • Bitcoin for drugs: welcome to the darknet 71
  • Ransomware 72
  • Non-illegal goods and services 74
  • Case study: Individual Pubs 78
• Chapter 8: Trading bitcoins in 2017: the second crypto bubble 81
  • How to get bitcoins 81
  • From the first bubble to the second 82
  • Bitfinex: the hack, the bank block and the second bubble 83
• Chapter 9: Altcoins 91
  • Litecoin 92
  • Dogecoin 92
  • Ethereum 94
  • Buterin’s quantum quest 96
  • ICOs: magic beans and bubble machines 97
• Chapter 10: Smart contracts, stupid humans 101
  • Dr. Strangelove, but on the blockchain 101
  • So who wants smart contracts, anyway? 102
  • Legal code is not computer code 102
  • The oracle problem: garbage in, garbage out 103
  • Immutability: make your mistakes unfixable 105
  • Immutability: the enemy of good software engineering 105
  • Ethereum smart contracts in practice 106
  • The DAO: the steadfast iron will of unstoppable code 108
• Chapter 11: Business bafflegab, but on the Blockchain 111
  • What can Blockchain do for me? 112
  • But all these companies are using Blockchain now! 114
  • Blockchains won’t clean up your data for you 115
  • Six questions to ask your blockchain salesman 117
  • Security threat models 118
  • Permissioned blockchains 119
  • Beneficiaries of business Blockchain 120
  • Non-beneficiaries of business Blockchain 121
  • “Blockchain” products you can buy! 121
  • UK Government Office for Science: “Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond block chain” 123
• Chapter 12: Case study: Why you can’t put the music industry on a blockchain 125
  • The rights management quagmire 125
  • Getting paid for your song 126
  • The record industry’s loss of control and the streaming apocalypse 127
  • Berklee Rethink and blockchain dreams 128
  • Imogen Heap: “Tiny Human”. Total sales: $133.20 129
  • Why blockchains are a bad fit for music 131
  • Attempts to make sense of the hype 132
  • Other musical blockchain initiatives 134
  • SingularDTV 136
  • Summary 137
• Conclusion 139
• Further reading 141
• Acknowledgements 143
• About the author 145
• Glossary 147
• Index 149
• Notes 161