Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts Paperback – July 24, 2017

Ever wondered if you should buy bitcoins? Not sure what it’s good for, or how it works? Online discussions, heated by ideological arguments, are leaving you in doubt? This book, by David Gerard, might be just the help you need. The help to convince you to stay away.The author is giving compelling arguments on why Bitcoin should be considered a failed attempt on creating an alternative, unregulated currency. Replacing trusted central authorities with a hash-cracking consensus algorithm leads to excessive energy consumption, low transactions throughput, unpredictable transaction processing time and high fees. Those factors make Bitcoin unsuitable to process high-volume, low-value payments; it cannot compete with established companies like Visa or Paypal. Merchants are well aware of this and rarely accept payments with bitcoins. The only economic sector which adopted them comprises of sellers of illegal goods available in the darknet.All things considered, the mainstream use of bitcoin is speculation. People are attracted to Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies derived from it) seeing its price, denominated in conventional currencies, going sharply up. David Gerard argues that it is a classic bubble. Individuals who already invested in bitcoins are keen to maintain its public exposure to drive more buyers into purchases. The highest gains are to be made by the ones who got into Bitcoin early - when it was worth mere dollars as opposed to current multi-thousands. It so happens that early adopters (and the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin) were motivated by a desire to make a payment network which would operate outside of public institutions’ jurisdiction. The “anarcho-capitalism” ideology permeated the disputes concerning Bitcoin from the very beginning.Bitcoin is built on a so-called “blockchain”, which is providing the distributed, tamper-proof ledger. Since it can be used to store any data, not only in the cryptocurrency context, various businesses are looking for opportunities to use it to gain competitive advantage. In the last chapters of the book, David depicts how those attempts are futile, stating i.a. that there is no cogent use-case where blockchain should replace traditional, centrally-governed data stores. The “smart contracts”, offered by other blockchain-based platforms (notably, Ethereum) are also proving to be difficult to use in businesses.The book’s overall tone, as you might already guess, is anti-Bitcoin. It is replete with criticisms which are oftentimes sarcastic but always rooted in facts; citations are taking a good chunk of the volume. The descriptions, not being overly technical, provide enough details to get a decent grasp of Bitcoin’s inner workings, the ecosystem, and ideology.I would recommend this book to anyone thinking of making a move into cryptocurrencies; not only does it describe the technical limitations but also the dangers stemming from lack of regulation. Bitcoin tries to rewrite the rules, but, as David remarks, old rules often tend to still apply.

If you're considering buying or mining Bitcoins, or any form of crypto currency, read through this book first. It's a quick read, but strongly highlights the pitfalls and risks of Bitcoin (or whatever your flavor digital crypto-coin). In short: Bitcoins are a terrible investment in it's current state and a terrible currency to use full-stop. This book does a good job of explaining why financial regulations (see: Dodd-Frank Consumer Protection Act and the surrounding history) exist to begin with, explains why they're needed, and gives real-life examples of how Bitcoin's lack of regulations led to multiple blunders that led to irreversible losses. Thus, the insecurity of the currency and difficulty of use will never make it a serious replacement currency for businesses or those financially minded. One reason I docked a star is I felt it could have used more historical examples of why financial regulations are absolutely necessary and how Bitcoin can never meet those regulations by design. But, as it stands now, the book certainly gets the point across, perhaps even to a fault...The other reason I docked a star was just because I felt the author's stance was a bit more snarky than it needed to be, which will likely make the book more polarizing than it could have been. After reading the book, the one question in my head ended up being: who is the book written for? The die-hard Bitcoin fans won't be swayed by this book's arguments and the opponents already know them. For the neutral party, this book is informative but, at times, reads a bit like propaganda (especially the passages taken from the most extreme /r/bitcoin users). That's not to say the author isn't correct and that there isn't, at times, a cult-like fondness for Bitcoin. But, an agenda is clearly present behind these words and it's enough to make the reader suspicious of the author's motives.Still, it's a good, accurate read for anyone considering purchasing Bitcoins (don't). But, because of the way it's written, it may not be enough by itself to sway opinions.

Never in my career have I seen such a backwoods of mysticism and nonsense around a technology as I've seen with Blockchain. Pundits, charlatans, scammers and idealists are around every corner - without any bit of meaning or action behind their words, writings, and products. In this brilliant collection of stories around the blockchain space, readers finally get a grasp of what 'the technology behind bitcoin' is: unchecked, and unbounded Greed.If you've read any of the other blockchain books, and have left with the feeling that they were high on lofty promises and lacking in specifics, this book is for you! This book is neither patronizing or meandering - it gets right at the heart of blockchain with anecdotes, stories and a wonderful comedic narrative in-between. With attack of the 50 foot blockchain, David Gerard has finally brought us a guide to blockchain that sheds light into a dark industry, full of fools pitchmen, and nonsense.David Gerard is a wonderful writer, and Attack of the 50 foot blockchain is a wonderful book. You don't need to investigate any other books on blockchain, start here and end here. And enjoy the fun read!