Tesco
Virtual Billions
Book

Virtual Billions

The Genius, the Drug Lord, and the Ivy League Twins behind the Rise of Bitcoin

Eric Geissinger
Prometheus Books, 2016

Read or listen offline

  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Overview
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Bitcoin is an online payment system that records transactions in bitcoins, not in dollars or any other currency. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and transactions using it function similarly to encrypted email messages, which no one except the receiver can decipher. Bitcoins act like cash: They can be bought, saved, spent or lost. In this engaging overview, author Eric Geissinger argues that bitcoins, despite negative publicity over their role with the illegal drug site Silk Road, could become a permanent fixture on the financial landscape if bitcoin exchanges, the only sellers, embrace regulation. getAbstract recommends Geissinger’s work – with its entertaining detours into a short history of pensions and attempts to form communal monetary systems – to investors, bankers, entrepreneurs and anyone seeking an in-depth primer on cryptocurrency.

Take-Aways

  • Bitcoin is an online payment system that records transactions in bitcoins – a cryptocurrency – not in dollars or other currencies.
  • Bitcoins are like cash: You can spend them, hold them, receive them or lose them.
  • Bitcoin transactions are “transfers of ownership rights” within the bitcoin system.

About the Author

Eric Geissinger is a technical writer for software companies.

Comment on this summary or Начать обсуждение

  • Avatar
    Sign in to share your opinion
  • Avatar
    E. G. 8 years ago
    Hi Julian, Eric Geissinger here. Because Bitcoin is a dynamically scaling system, if a quantum computer suddenly appears which is able to solve the "block mining" computational problem very quickly, the entire system would automatically adjust the difficulty of the posed problem so that blocks will be "mined" at the same (slow) and expected rate. Sure, the person running the quantum computer would make a lot of money in the short term because only their computer would be able to mine bitcoins, but it's far more likely that quantum computers would be made available gradually and their effect would be modest. This has happened before: dedicated bitcoin mining machines were 10,000 faster than those which were around 2 years prior, and the result? Bitcoin scaled up, and soon everyone used those computer to mining - meaning that, essentially, nothing much changed. I'm not worried about quantum computation in the long term. Faster computers are easily defeated by harder problems.
  • Avatar
    C. Q. 8 years ago
    Impressive what the Winklevoss twins have achieved and could´ve. Their impact on society for the following years will be written in history.
  • Avatar
    J. P. 8 years ago
    Eric, if you're there? What impact will quantum computing have on the crypto currency?