This excellent book was first published in 2015. It peaked my interest since it was referred to as the source material for some really old emails between Hal Finney and Satoshi. Apparently the author, Nathaniel Popper, was able to get access to these emails from Hal’s wife, Fran Finney, and some of them were latter released by The Wall Street Journal:

I think the best part of this book is probably the first few chapters which focus on the very early days of Bitcoin’s origin story with Satoshi Nakamoto, Wei Dai, Hal Finney, Adam Back, Marti Malmi and numerous other characters who were there at the genesis of Bitcoin. The book really does justice to telling the origin story of Bitcoin.

It outlines many of the commonly known stories and narratives around Bitcoin’s quirky cypherpunks, aficionados, and rebels. It also helped verify a few of the older stories I heard in passing about silk road, MTGOX, and Malmi’s emails with Satoshi. I do wish it had focused on these original characters more. But it eventually moves onto the second stage of Bitcoin’s journey, where it gets picked up by silicon valley and venture capital types.

Some interesting stories in there as well, including a good synopsis of the silk road saga, featuring Dread Pirate Roberts, aka Ross Ulbricht. The climax of the book focuses on MTGOX and the downfall of Mark Karpeles.

It’s strange reading this book now, and seeing the resolution of many of these stories, such as MTGOX creditors getting repaid. Or perhaps even the release of Ross latter this year, God willing. Stranger still, I knew most of these stories already by heart, but they all came back in livid colour reading through them in detail. There’s a good amount of references and supporting evidence provided as well for each narrative.

This is a great book for anyone who didn’t live through the early days of Bitcoin history and wants to know how beautifully chaotic it all was at the start. Much the way it is still now, just at a larger scale An astute reader may find that many of these stories are still repeating to this day. If your curious about Bitcoin’s origin stories, this is the book to read to get up to speed. Preferably on a beach in El Salvador.

A part two continuation of this book would probably look like the Blocksize Wars book by Jonathan Bier. Both are great reads, but Digital Gold predates the Blocksize Wars, so its a good one to read first, and a great introduction to Bitcoin’s history.

Worthy of the Bitcoin Book List:

5/5 Stars