Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption Hardcover – May 21, 2019

Reading Bitcoin Billionaires feels a bit like being shot back to the early days of crypto. Days where getting hold of Bitcoin was only possible through semi-sketchy intermediaries or direct mining, where the blockchain space was dominated by libertarians and custody of one`s Bitcoin was a technically complex endeavor. Self-custody with air gapped cold computers was the only way to protect one’s digital assets. It was not a user-friendly experience to get involved with Bitcoin, quite the contrary.After getting through the first three chapters, the author Den Mezrich starts guiding the reader through a journey of the two young entrepreneurs starting with the early Wild West days of crypto towards the more recent days where the world seems to start recognizing Bitcoin to be real.Today, people seem to like Bitcoin because it is a phenomenal invention: it is the first time that a unique digital asset has ever been created, it has finite supply, is being stored and governed in a decentralized manner, and it is not dependent on any federal banking system, government or country. Bitcoin is slowly emerging into a digital version of gold that is accessible from any country globally – it is a borderless asset and could become a hedge against a declining global economy. That Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss had the foresight to understand this transformational potential back in 2012 and had the courage to get involved not only through passive investing but also on the building side to help shape the industry deserves credit.The early days of crypto must have been instrumental for the twins in understanding the shortcomings of this nascent industry. As it reads, they have not only identified those shortcomings, but put in the hours of work to build something tangible to make a change. Examples in the book are their early days of having to self-custody through air gapped computers in a technically complex process (I have experienced those complexities first hand back in the days and must admit it’s not a trivial process) must have been a key driver for the Winklevoss brothers to launch their Gemini custody service, a user friendly solution for investors to professionally custody their assets with all digital assets fully covered by insurance – that is an accomplishment miles ahead from those early topsy-turvy days of crypto as vividly described in the book. Their experiences with the crypto exchanges BitInstant and Mt. Gox must have triggered their desire to create a more reliable solution, as they did with Gemeni, the first regulated crypto exchange in the US. Bottom line, it is a fascinating read through the journey of two young entrepreneurs that discovered a game changing technology for themselves and decided to pioneer into it.The story goes well beyond the Facebook narrative that everybody has heard before. It is a story about two young entrepreneurs who had the drive to fully pioneer into an opportunity that they discovered to be of transformational impact for society. An impressive journey and an interesting read.

After reaching a multimillion dollar settlement with Mark Zuckerberg (for allegedly stealing their idea for an Internet social network), the Winklevoss twins start a venture capital firm, hoping to make their mark in the business world. Surprised to learn that their money is unwelcome in Silicon Valley (entrepreneurs are afraid of antagonizing Zuckerberg), they discover Bitcoin. Convinced that cryptocurrency will be the "Next Great Thing," they invest in a Bitcoin exchange start-up run by an unstable but brilliant young man, and they also buy directly large amounts of Bitcoin. The resulting wild and crazy ride (for both the volatile value of Bitcoin, and the fortunes of the main characters) becomes the central story of this well-written and fascinating book. On the plus side, the author does an excellent job of explaining the basics of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. As someone who did not know what a "Blockchain" was, I learned a lot. Whether or not cryptocurrencies represent the future of finance remains to be seen, but the author gives the reader a good basis to come to one's own conclusions. On the negative side, the author tried too hard to make the Winklevoss twins likable (and failed to do so). I found their family's history and background to be a distraction from the main story. Frankly, NONE of the characters were likable, at least for me. However, the birth of a new type of money and way of doing financial transaction is an important story. I gave this book 4 stars because I couldn't put it down once I started.

It arrived in good condition, and is a great read!

Hey, I started this book in a snit of resentment at Hollywood Ben Mezrich for the offense of explosively displacing my "Life After Google" at the top of the Amazon bestseller list for "Digital Currencies." I was pulled painfully through pedestrian early chapters reliving his Facebook "Social Networking" saga and playing to prurient envy of the Winkelvoss twins Tyler and Cameron at Harvard and Olympics rowing races, and frottaging the "models" in flesh-fraught Ibiza.I did not change my mind that the twins behaved like entitled brats in their legal case against the agile coder and entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg as the author strongly implied in his earlier bestseller. Mezrich now seems to miss the irony of the twins extorting their $60 million settlement with an attempt to trash Zuckerberg's privacy by ripping rash or lecherous Zuckerberg emails out of context.But Mezrich changed his mind, and now anyone who carps at the twins, such as Larry Summers, comes in for heavy breathing condemnation ("so unfair, so disgraceful for an educator"). Summers failed to punish Zuck for a "direct violation" no less of the freaking "ethical rules" in the Harvard Student Handbook! And Summers was insensitive toward the genetic vanities of female mathematicians! "Me-too," string us up!So I was a hard sell from the beginning, altogether ready to make fun of Hollywood Ben and his bums rush into my world.But soon enough, I was impaled like a pig on a barbecue and couldn't get away from this sizzling blockbuster of a book/putative film about what it is like to launch a new thing into the litigious and bureaucratic U.S. financial scene.We get the sore pathos of the saga of Charlie Shrem of BitInstant, the twins' first bitcoin investment, who ends up in jail for two years for email foibles and clerical oversights that linked his customers to the Silk Road dark web drug fiasco. Money laundering, what ever that may be. We get vivid vignettes of Roger Ver, "Bitcoin Jesus," also a money blaspheming felon, and Ross Ulbricht, off to jail forever for Silk Road. Cryptocurrency venturers take warning: Momma don 'low no Maytag messing with the sacerdotal dollar and the mazes of rules surrounding it.But Mezrich really hits his incandescent stride in Chapter 21, introducing much of the seedy and sage bitcoin elite. You meet them all in their habitat, from Jeb McCaleb, founder of the Mount Gox exchange/debauch, the epigrammatic Naval Ravikant of Angel List, Balaji Srinivasan of Coinbase, chessman Gary Kasparov, Paypal's Max Levchin, and Bram Cohen of BitTorrent. These all showed up at this recherche' "Genesis Block" preparty. You also meet ex-Facebooker Chamath Palihapitiya who pointedly shunned this event, the twins coming out party as bitcoin billionaires, before Cameron's great speech on innovation at the San Jose Convention Center: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight with you. Then you win."Mezrich climaxes his tale with an entirely convincing saga of the redemption of the Winkelvosses. He even had me agreeing that the shakedown against Zuck for supposedly "stealing" the moldy idea of a social network has been amply vindicated by the twins' bold and contrarian use of the funds to become the most audacious bitcoin financiers and pioneering investors in the next generation of technology.And a real test of futuristic journalism is how a book's thesis fares after publication. With Mark Zuckerberg now coming around to reconcile with the twins and launch a blockchain currency himself with them, you can read post-publication chapters every day in the Wall Street Journal.I ended up learning a lot from Hollywood Ben, and so will you, while taking a rapturous ride through the shoals of the US regulatory garotte and the origins of a new technological and economic era.However, I would propose that you still read "Life After Google" to learn of the Bitcoin flaw and of the efflorescence of likely more important blockchain related companies.It's admittedly not a movie, but you can come to grasp that blockchains beyond bitcoin offer a chance to remedy the two most serious ailments of the world economy--the billion-breach Internet security breakdown and the scandal of a $5.1 trillion a day of currency trading, some 25 times global GDP. All this currency shuffling doesn't even prevent minus-sum-trade war trumpery and hedging of almost all international transactions. Maybe a real bitcoin mimicking gold as Satoshi sought could restore global money as a measuring stick rather than a magic wand for central banks.Like Ben and the twins, I am still not too old to change my mind. This book changed it for the better, about bitcoin and about the twins. And it should make a greater more portentous movie than Social Networking.

Blazed through this book in a weekend. The writing is captivating and the story is just fascinating.

O livro é excepcionalmente bem escrito, tornando a experiência de conhecer a história recente do Bitcoin divertida e empolgante. Super legal conhecer os personagens que acompanhamos diariamente no Twitter!

Great book! Lots of interesting information. I also recommend these other authors and their books as Nathaniel Popper, Digital Gold The Untold Story of Bitcoin, BBCDSatoshi, Buy Bitcoin You’ll Thank Yourself In The Future and Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon. Overall this was a great book.

Phew…this whole book was quiet a wild ride. Im looking for more books to read on cryptocurrency now. A very well written book indeed.

Et pourtant c'est une histoire vraie !Les 2 jumeaux trompés par Facebook se réinventent en milliardaires dans la blockchain.Ici de nombreux personnages sont hauts en couleurs, certains rêveurs, d'autres avides de pouvoir et d'argent, l'histoire est incroyable et pourtant vraie, et surtout elle n'est pas finie.Le style est journalistique, c'est rapide et très facile à lire.