BITCOIN BILLIONAIRES A TRUE STORY OF GENIUS, BETRAYAL AND REDEMPTION by Ben Mezrich

Read this fantastic book this bank holiday weekend. Its fantastic. One of the best ways to spend a weekend during lockdown.

Some great quotes:

Page 248:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort with out error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds: who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement. Who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

“Bitcoin is freedom.” Tyler was saying to the assembled. “It’s very American.”

At that moment, Cameron thought that maybe just maybe some of the regulators realized that the world that the twins were fighting for was the same world that they were fighting for too.

Page 35:

Despite what Zuckerberg thought of them-his misreading of them z simple, dumb jocks-at the age of thirteen, they had taught themselves how to code in HTML and had made money over the summer by building web pages for small businesses. At the time, their high school had not offered com puter science, so instead they had loaded up on every advanced placement course possible. They had planned to study computer science at Harvard, but the time commitment of the rowing team had made it impossible, so they’d majored in economics instead. Zuckerberg had gotten lucky-in another world, the twins never would have had to approach him for coding help. In any event, Tyler and Cameron didn’t believe they were on the earth to exist; they were here to create, to build.

Cameron knew from his research that the first documented time bitcol had ever been used to purchase a product happened on May 22, 2010. On that historic day, a Florida programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz was hungry for pizza and had decided he would use some of the bitcoin he had accrued to quash his hunger; there was only one problem no merchants accepted bitcoin as pay and at that time. Undeterred. Hanyect had posted a message titled “Pizza bitcoins?” on Bitcointalk forum, the main congregating point online for Bitcoiners at the time:

I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas, like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day. I like having left over pizza to nibble on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I’m aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don’t have to order or prepare it myself, kind of like ordering a “breakfast platter at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you’re happy!

That day would be forever known and commemorated as Bitcoin Pizza Day.

Since then, numerous Twitter accounts, such as @bitcoin_pizza, had been set up by Bitcoiners to track the current USD value of the two pizzas that Hanyecz had purchased. As of this writing, those two pizzas were worth approximately $36.6 million.

Some critical acclaim for the book:

“Gripping -.. Ben Mezrich is a gifted writer who could make a PTA meeting dramatic and exciting The Times

“The book is written with a slick beauty… As an introduction to the rise of cryptocurrencies and the modern tech world generally, it is as painless and novelistic as could be imagined Guardian

“An easily digested cryptocurrency primer Financial Times

Bitcoin Billionaires takes us right inside the Winklevoss brothers wild chase for redemption through a global maze of big money and backroom deals.

Ben Mezrich delivers a tense, propulsive story of ambition and success Matthew Pearl, New York Times bestselling author of the Dante Club and The Dante Chamber

Mezrich is a talented storyteller .. Bitcoin Billionaire offers memorable glimpses inside the messy word of a start-up currency Neto York Times

“Bitcoin Billionaires redeems the Winklevii, sure, but the story has all the trapping of a classic adventure: winged underdogs, party scenes, partners who flip, and, of course, a few villain’ Vanity Fair

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