After reading 13 books about blockchain and cryptocurrency, What I’ve learned.
The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous
“First understand the function and history of money, then understand bitcoin,” according to the structure. The book Begins with primitive money, from seashells to commodities like silver, copper, and gold. In the era of government money or fiat money, The problem of financing war by taxation and varieties of loans, using World War I and World War II as examples. The connection between price, consumption, and production is apparent in the economics and capitalism chapter.
Bitcoin is a “purely peer-to-peer form of electronic cash” designed to solve third-party issues associated with traditional digital payment. The final section is about bitcoin technology, including Proof of Work (PoW), Mining, Block reward (Reward to nodes for verifying transactions), the 51 percent attack, and SHA256.
The disadvantages of blockchain technology are redundancy, scaling, regulatory compliance, irreversibility, and security.
Layered Money by Nik Bhatia
The layer structure of a monetary system is explained in this book.
First-Layer money begins with the history of Lydian coin, Denarii (Roman empire coin), and Fiorino d’Oro (Gold currency of the Republic of Florence) to explain “Fungible” concept and how government influences over money.
Second-layer money evolves from bills of exchange (a liability on the balance sheet) to notes. How does central banking work, and what is the Federal Reserve System (Fed) role in the system also explained in the 2008 financial crisis.
The final section explores the future of money, such as bitcoin and central bank digital currencies.
BLOCKCHAIN 2.0 simply explained by Jai Singh Arun, Jerry Cuomo, Nitin Gaur
A quick overview of “Blockchain Technology.”
The author presents predictions on how blockchain will solve business difficulties across various industries. Based on the following seven technological advantages:
1.Immutability (Ownership): Loyalty programs, Credit Cards, Games, Real estate, Trademark
2.Privacy (Data Protection): Patient Data, Vaccination Certificate, Chat & Communication
3.Trust (Smart Contracts): Lawyer, Regulation Platform, Gambling & Lottery, Insurances, Crowdfunding
4.Compatibility (Tokenization): Equities, Bonds, Company Registration
5.Discretion (Transparency): Tax Consulting, Audit, Logistics, Energy, Donation
6.Redundancy: Drones, Self-driving cars, Indestructible Data,
7.Inclusivity: Media, Internet Of Things
Introducing Ethereum And Solidity by Chris Dannen
The content inside this book focuses on EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), Solidity programming language, Ether mining method, Dapp (Decentralized application), and Use-case with samples of syntax and source code.
The Blockchain Innovator’s Handbook by Conor Svensson
Those are three-part in this book.
The first one is blockchain fundamentals. What surprises me is blockchain myths. The topic like Quantum computer vs. Cryptocurrencies, Encrypting sensitive data on the blockchain it’s easy to attack or not, Recover system from errors, all subjects are interesting.
The second part is about applying blockchain technology to enterprises or creating a new project (A lot of frameworks in this part).
The last part is a case studies about implementing blockchain technology in the real sector. The author is CEO & Founder of Web3 Labs.
Blockchain Bubble or Revolution by Neel Mehta, Aditya Agashe, Parth Detroja
A perspective from three authors who work in Google, Microsoft, Facebook about “Blockchain Technology.” interests me.
I’ve learned about the background of Bitcoin Cash, Monero, Binance, Huobi, Cryptokitties, and BitConnect (Scam), How MD5 & SHA-256 Hash function works, SegWit in Bitcoin Protocol, and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) from this book.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50746552-blockchain-bubble-or-revolution
The Real Business of Blockchain by David Furlonger, Christophe Uzureau
It was interesting to learn the blockchain technology adoption in a corporate or government process.
Starts with five elements of blockchain 1. Distribution 2. Encryption 3. Immutability 4. Tokenization 5. Decentralization, And compares blockchain-inspired solutions and blockchain-native solutions in many use-cases such as Q Coins(Tencent), Krisflyer (Singapore Airlines), rLoop (Token-enable DAO), Fetch (Blockchain Start-up), and Golem (Computing Platform).
*Risk factors for a business to implement blockchain include retirement of legacy systems, infrastructure cost, integration cost, security vulnerability, scalability, speed are essential issues.
Technology forecasting about the combination of IoT, AI, SSI, and Blockchain is exciting!
The Infinite Machine: by Camila Russo
This book contains crucial periods of Ethereum, Such as Ethereum Classic Hard Forks, The DAO attack (2016), The Beginning of ERC-20, and ICOs hype (2017). Even MyEtherwallet (MEW) was a side project built by Taylor Monahan. A film-producer turned web developer!.
Token Economy by Shermin Voshmgir
The author clarifies the difference between Web2.0 and Web 3.0 by many use-cases. Essential information like infrastructure and ecosystem behind the blockchain network, protocol, node, and smart contract are included. My favorite topic is “DAOs vs Traditional Organizations” and “How to design a token system.”
The Internet of Money vol 1 & 2 by Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Aspects of the bitcoin mechanism, client-server architecture, censorship, bitcoin adoption, distributed ledgers (DLTs), proof of work history, and the lightning network.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31869077-the-internet-of-money
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36804136-the-internet-of-money-volume-two
The NFT Handbook: How to Create, Sell and Buy Non-Fungible Tokens
Starting with the insight “Why are people collecting things.” if it isn’t NFT, People always collect other stuff, such as McDonald’s Happy Meals, etc. Traditional art has problems like forgery scams, fake sales, and connoisseur fallibility. NTF can solve problems by using blockchain technology.
Types of NFTs include Digital art, Images, Videos, GIFs, 3D models, Books, Game items, Digital trading cards, Digital real estate, Domain names, and Event tickets. In Ethereum, smart contract tokens run on ERC721 or ERC1155.
Proof of Provenance factor defined by Historical significance, Sentiment, Condition, and Collection completion. (Because it’s rare doesn’t mean it’s valuable)
An English auction is typical where bids start low and then increase. A Dutch auction is where the price starts high and then slowly decreases over time.
“Mint” term came from minting physical coin.
