Just a couple years ago, you would struggle to find books about Bitcoin. Today, the subgenre is crowded, and deciding which titles to read and which to ignore is often the greater problem. In fact, new books about Bitcoin come onto the market faster than the average reader can keep up.
But here are a few titles that anyone should read who wants to be up to date on the latest trends and happenings in Bitcoin and in the wider blockchain space.
1. Mastering Bitcoin
Author Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a well-known figure within the Bitcoin space. He is an engaging public speaker with a lot of enthusiasm for Bitcoin and the blockchain technology that powers it. With a background in IT security that goes back into the early 1990s, Antonopoulos is one of the few people to be detailed in describing how Bitcoin works.
He published Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies in July 2014 after writing it as a collaborative project with the help of others. It was crowd written on GitHub and it was one of the first books about Bitcoin to be published.
Mastering Bitcoin is comprehensive and technical. This was deliberate, as Antonopoulos targeted the book for developers who wanted to learn how the technology worked under the hood and perhaps to participate in building on top of it.
2. Digital Gold
While Mastering Bitcoin gives a technical backdrop, Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money was written to provide a historical backdrop for understanding the space.
Published in 2016, this bestseller takes you to the human stories behind the scenes. It exposes the motivations and actions of early adopters such as Charlie Shrem, Erik Voorhees, Roger Ver and others.
It also gives you a sense of how cryptocurrency gradually moved from the edges of technology and business enterprise to the mainstream. You’ll learn about the origins of some of the major Bitcoin brands we have today and some that have since disappeared.
Digital Gold is a perfect read for anyone, from the ordinary novice user to entrepreneurs and developers. The author, Nathaniel Popper—a New York Times writer who focuses mostly on technology—has in recent years, because of the success of the book, increasingly covered stories about Bitcoin. He is also a common guest on TV talk shows where Bitcoin is the subject of discussion.
3. The Internet of Money
The second in Antonopoulos’s series of books about Bitcoin, The Internet of Money, is less technical and at the same time less basic than his first book, Mastering Bitcoin. It contains a series of transcribed lectures that were recorded in cities the author visited around the globe. You can access most of these lectures on his YouTube channel. Each covers different aspects of Bitcoin.
The advantage to reading the book over watching the videos is that the spontaneous speeches have been refocused, cleaned up and edited to make the ideas easier to understand.
The Internet of Money was published in September 2016. After positive reception from readers, Antonopoulos followed with volume two of the title in December 2017.
4. Blockchain Revolution
Don Tapscott and his son Alex Tapscott published Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World in 2016. It was targeted at entrepreneurs and business leaders who wanted to be at the centre of the revolution blockchain technology is expected to bring.
Don is an experienced author of books that tackle technology topics. He has written more than ten titles that touch on theories around new technologies and the impact they bring to business and society. Blockchain Revolution approaches Bitcoin technology from the same angle.
The CEO of the Tapscott Group, Don is a speaker and guest at forums that discuss the impact of technology. Meanwhile, his son sits on several boards, including those of technology startups.
5. The Business Blockchain
The author of The Business Blockchain: Promise Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology is a general partner at Virtual Capital Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund with an interest in technology startups.
Since late 2015, William Mougayar has shown a keen interest in initial coin offerings (ICOs), or crowdfunding using the blockchain. He organized a token summit in New York in May 2016 and another in 2017. He also sits on the boards of several blockchain startups and organizations, including OB1, OpenBazaar, Bloq and Coin Center.
The Business Blockchain is his attempt to explain the technology and its potential to disrupt industries. The book was published in 2016 by global publishing company John Wiley & Sons, Inc. It takes a general overview of the technology and explains it to people especially thinking of using it to innovate.
Since the technology is still in its early days, most writers feel compelled to explain its basics. This means many books about Bitcoin are similar in content. As the technology becomes more mainstream, topics will likely become more sophisticated.