BitCon: The Naked Truth About Bitcoin Kindle Edition

Excellent resource for understanding the bitcoin hype. Here the writer took the time and expended the energy into pulling back the curtain on bitcoin. He enumerate the very real and practical flaws with the idea. It is the same advice I give to my clients. If it doesn't make any sense ignore it. This book explains all the reasons why.

Not all arguments holds when arguing against BitCoin, but the book is enlightening and well written.
I got some new insights, but the BitCoin congregation would not buy it.

Jeff Robinson pretty much hits the nail on the head and demolishes many myths of Bitcoin. As one who has researched and understands much of the technology and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation, I am in a position to evaluate many of his arguments; they are sound from both a technical and economic point of view. It is refreshing to hear someone give a coherent explanation of how the Bitcoin emperor has no clothes.

The book gets four stars instead of five because it spends too much time ridiculing the libertarian extremists and the Bitcoin "Faithful" and less time describing in more detail the technical issues. At time this can be childish and ad hominen in a way that detracts from the author's credibility and may cause his sound esearch and points to be dismissed.

I would have also liked to have seen a more in depth description of the different kinds of smart contracts and how the blockchain technology could really be put to use effectively. Particularly it is not clear why this clever technology can compete with other combinations of database and electronic signature technologies unless one insists on having no centralized trusted record keepers. It is not clear that such a decentralization of trust has a huge demand outside of a narrow group or offers significant social benefits.

I have never really paid attention to how money works its way through our monetary system, until reading this book! I have heard of Bitcoin but never really understood how it worked or even what it is. Mr. Robinson has really shone the light on it and explained it in laymens terms so that I could understand, firstly, what it is and secondly how I wanted nothing to do with it. He seems very knowledgeable on the subject and is making his contribution here to try to let, the people that may be swayed into thinking that this is the next millionaire making fad, know that all is not what it seems with Bitcoin. Please be aware of the many brainless trolls that haven’t even read this book and yet want to leave their 2 bits worth of lies just pay most attention to the ones that are Verified Reviews these are truly from people that actually read it.

A few months ago I decided it was about time I figured out what all the fuss about bitcoin was. I began reading and listening to all the usual suspects in the bitcoin universe, and I came away with the impression that bitcoin is more than a pipedream for cryptoanarchists and Ron Paul supporters (although certainly it is also that).

For all the lengthy and exhaustive discussions of the merits of bitcoin by its advocates, its many critics only expressed their doubts in brief articles or dismissive one-liners, without addressing in depth the alleged merits that its supporters ascribed to the technology. “Bitcon” seemed to be an exception in this sense, since it was a book-length refutation of the argument that bitcoin can be a solution to anything – let alone to the world’s financial problems – written by a journalist with a proven track record of competence and insight in the world of finance.

Good God, was I wrong. As a book, “Bitcon” has the unique distinction of being a future embarassment to its author regardless of bitcoin’s eventual success or demise. If in ten years from now bitcoin had completely failed and someone were to re-read this book, almost nothing in it will have proven prescient or insightful about the future course of events. Even when the author correctly points out critical elements in the bitcoin system (both the bitcoin economy and its technology), the same problems have already been better and more insightfully discussed (and only occasionally solved) by bitcoin’s own advocates. And if bitcoin were to somehow succeed (even in a shape or form which would ultimately disappoint the ‘faithful’) this book would become a testament to why one should not write about the future with the cocksure sneer of one who thinks he’s already seen it, and a hard lesson on how what has been published cannot be unpublished.

My most fundamental gripe with this book is that I came looking for the best possible refutation of the best possible argument against the most modest success-scenarios for bitcoin. What I found were mediocre refutations against the most adversarial interpretations of the weakest possible arguments made by the most unremarkable bitcoin advocates in support of the most grandiose and deluded visions of bitcoin's future. It is as if the author has put himself to work to find the Billy Madisons of the world of bitcoin and then tried to prove them wrong really really hard. I have plenty of doubts of my own about whether bitcoin can ever amount to anything (I give it a less than 50% chance of succeeding), but none of these doubts were roused by reading this book or by this author.

Robinson sets up the stage in the first chapter by describing a meeting of bitcoin ‘faithful’, whom he snarkily describes as a crowd of post-adolescent nerds who only recently solved their acne problems (I’m not making this up, he really brings it up). Throughout the chapter he quotes the very dumbest of them and he always seems to have a clever comeback for their idiocies, the type of clever comeback that always seems a little too spot-on to have been uttered with perfect timing, as if Robinson was the only person on earth who does not suffer of esprit de l'escalier. Even as a character study this sad vignette would be unacceptable, but the author instead uses the chapter to introduce pretty much the only speaking voice in favour of bitcoin. Throughout the entire book Robinson always summons in bitcoin’s defence an amorphous flock of internet voices and usually nameless bitcoin enthusiasts whose carefully picked, unsourced ramblings never fail to support Robinson's point. When he doesn't use nameless internet ignoramuses to set up his strawmen, Robinson chooses some of the worst crooks to have ever emerged in the bitcoin universe (as if only bitcoin attracted crooks, and not money in general) and tries to make them representative of the technology and the ecosystem by guilt through association. An especially gauche attempt to do so was the description of Mark Karpeles (the guy who either lost or stole – depending on who you ask – a half billion dollars in bitcoins) as a socially incompetent nerd who had girlfriends in “in jpeg form”, attempted to seduce Japanese girls by showing them his iPhone and shared Youtube videos in which he baked apple pies. What does this have to do with bitcoin? What does this prove? Why am I even reading this?

The author doesn’t think twice about naming and quoting respected figures in the world of finance (Paul Krugman, Alan Greenspan, Warren Buffett etc.) who speak very dismissively of bitcoin, but glosses over equally respected figures (Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers and others) who instead argued publicly about its potential in some limited domains. He also forgets to mention the slew of tech investors with a long track record of seeing the future before it’s there and then making it happen, and when he does (he quotes Andreessen a couple of times) they appear to be far more circumspect about the possibilities of Bitcoin than they usually are. Some of the most credentialled figures who show up in the book are Tim Swanson and Johnatan Levin, whom he quotes selectively giving the public the impression that they agree with him that Bitcoin is a complete scam. Nevermind that Levin runs a bitcoin analytics/consulting business and that Swanson – while not a fanatic – is far from a complete BTC sceptic (just do a Google search for some of his many, intelligent articles on the topic).

Most of the book is devoted to setting up claims that almost nobody is making and then knocking them down with disparaging sarcasm. I am not even going to try to discuss any of it in detail since – in the language of internet whipper-snappers – much of what he writes makes me lose "my ability to can", and it is much easier to correct small inaccuracies than prodigious misconceptions.

Whenever I read a 1-star review like the ones for this book, and I see nonsensical comments such as "there's not a single citation to be found" and then I read the book and find citations all over the place, documenting the many substantial interviews that the author has done, I realize that I'm reading a special book. The author, Jeffrey Robinson, who has serious journalistic credentials, not only writes well but knows this subject inside out. No, this is not a book that hypes bitcoin. Quite the opposite. But he's not biased. He presents both sides of the argument. In doing that, he reveals bitcoin for what it is - in Warren Buffett's words - "a mirage." Don't believe the trolls. They are taking part in a concerted effort to discredit this book. Why? Because the author shows them up to be "the greater fools" that the bitcoin world needs to keep the "mirage" alive. It's a terrific read.