Bubble or Revolution? The Future of Bitcoin, Blockchains, and Cryptocurrencies Paperback – June 12, 2019

Great read, very well written and enjoyable. Finally I got to understand the fundamentals of the crypto, blockchain and broader digitalization behind... and connection to economics. Highly recommend..

As someone who works in finance, I was getting sick of feeling out of the loop on crypto conversations. The attitudes of my friends range from "crypto is a scam" to "Bitcoin is going to hit $100,000." So the title of this book definitely got my attention. Digging a bit deeper, I also found none of the authors of this book have direct financial interest in blockchain or cryptocurrency nor work directly in the space. I hate books which are really just advertising and that definitely wasn't the case here so I decided to pull the trigger and buy Bubble or Revolution.The book begins by thoroughly explaining how blockchain technology works with no assumed technical knowledge. The authors did an amazing job providing just the right amount of detail on this. They then go into the history of bitcoin and the social/economic context behind its creation. Then they describe the shortcoming of traditional payments infrastructure and how blockchain/cryptocurrency can add value. They also describe in detail the shortcoming of blockchain technology and the challenges it will face in garnering mainstream adoption.My favorite part of the book was all the case studies which help thoroughly break down how and when blockchain can be a gamechanger and when its being used purely for unwarranted hype. The book also offers really insightful analysis on the blockchain plays of top companies like Microsoft and Facebook and makes bold predictions on how blockchain technology will be adopted.I finished the entire book in a single two and half hour sitting. The authors did an amazing job making an educational read fun! Could not recommend this book enough and I believe everyone should check out this book!

The famous venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen, once said that blockchain was “the most important invention since the internet.”Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies are being developed throughout the world, and you can expect them to play a much larger role in near future. This book shares some of the basics and the challenges that arise when talking about this new technology. I gave this book 4 stars, and I’ll share some of the highlights that caught my attention.A humanitarian benefit: The UN or United Nations is using this new technology to help us with the refugee displacement, people who have lost personal documents they need just to survive. They will be able to store and track refugees’ identities, along with other critical paperwork that will help them find jobs, get loans, and if their passports or educational records were destroyed, they will use blockchain to store this information as well.Walmart created a private Blockchain after not being able to identify their suppliers that sent them that contaminated Romain Lettuce a couple of years ago. Now with this new blockchain technology, which was built with IBM, Walmart is able to spot any disruption or contaminated food suppliers within 2 seconds anywhere in the world and that gives them much more control.Facebook is building its own private centralized cryptocurrencies or tokens. Cryptocurrencies are supposed to be all about decentralization and going around powerful institutions, but Facebook’s cryptocurrency is the exact opposite. It will be controlled by Facebook and all payments and data will flow through Facebook.Challenges:One of the weaknesses of Blockchain technology is that if anyone miner controls 51% of the mining function, they could manipulate that blockchain and steal currencies. This has always been considered extremely difficult or almost impossible and has never occurred at Bitcoin’s blockchain, but considering that China has currently the majority of miners in the world, it is feasibly possible that multiple pools of miners could get together and manipulate this market. Again, while this has never happened to Bitcoin, the spinoff cryptocurrency Bitcoin Gold (which has a similar design to Bitcoin but uses its own blockchain) suffered a devastating 51% attack in 2018.Tokenizing a currency: China is aggressively preparing for a major move to tokenize a currency and leads the way in this new technology. China is testing a prototype tokenized yuan and testing it in Africa. China is Africa’s largest economic partner and has been investing heavily in infrastructure throughout the continent.Given how volatile African currencies are large parts of the continent may welcome the relative transparency and stability of a tokenized yuan. Once the kinks are worked out in Africa, China could then launch its tokenized yuan in China and then take it around the world. This would set the stage for China’s cryptocurrency to become the dominant currency for digital payments and thus, eventually, the world’s leading reserve currency.Brazil and Singapore are also exploring tokenizing a currency. But a tokenized fiat currency is still, economically speaking, a fiat currency. The government controls the currency, and the money’s value is based only on the faith of that country’s ability to manage it correctly.Scalability of blockchain:Bitcoin can only process about 3 transactions per second and Ethereum can do about 15. Each transaction costs money — at most a dollar or two per transaction, but that gets incredibly expensive if you start making millions of transactions an hour. If you use a private blockchain, you can get around the mining costs, but the limited transaction volume would remain a bottleneck; however, there are ways or tools that will address this problem.Volatility within the price of cryptocurrencies can be a challenge, but by using stable coins, or cryptocurrencies like Tether (USDT) that problem is solved. With Tether anyone can swap 1 USDT for $1 at any time. This forces the price of a USDT to $1. If the market price ever rose to $1.01, people would buy tons of USDT from Tether and sell it on the market for a profit until the market price fell back to $1, and if the market price ever fell to $0.99, people would buy tons of USDT from the market and sell it to Tether for a profit until the market price rose to $1In summary, I thought this book did a good job of introducing us to aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies that are not readily available in other resources. Naturally, this technology is so new it’s hard to get a thorough picture of this market in any one book.

Sensible! Understandable! I've worked developing and managing information systems for a few decades, so I've seen some changes and certainly some excess hype. I was looking for a book that would provide an overview of blockchain technology and its applications while providing a little depth and good perspective. Some other titles I sampled seemed intent on hyping the hype, bringing me into the revolution, selling me on this institution busting culture shifting replacement for money that will cure all economic ills. Other titles appeared focused on technology, which is fine (I'll probably go there next), but I wanted broader perspective to start. "Bubble or Revolution" got me oriented providing examples of applications (and misapplications) grounded in a real world context. Business and economic concepts are explained along with the technology so readers can follow the discussion and appreciate conclusions. The facts are well stated (and well documented) and opinions are laid out nicely. Yes, blockchain is definitely a significant development (worthy of some hype), and there will be exciting applications in the future. This book should help readers better recognize progress and missteps as blockchain technology is incorporated into more systems that will affect our society and economy.