Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts

David Gerard

Jul 2017 · David Gerard

About this ebook

An experimental new Internet-based form of money is created that anyone can generate at home; people build frightening firetrap computers full of video cards, putting out so much heat that one operator is hospitalised with heatstroke and brain damage.

A young physics student starts a revolutionary new marketplace immune to State coercion; he ends up ordering hits on people because they might threaten his great experiment, and is jailed for life without parole.

Fully automated contractual systems are proposed to make business and the law work better; the contracts people actually write are unregulated penny stock offerings whose fine print literally states that you are buying nothing of any value.

The biggest crowdfunding in history attracts $150 million on the promise that it will embody “the steadfast iron will of unstoppable code”; upon release it is immediately hacked, and $50 million is stolen.

How did we get here?

David Gerard covers the origins and history of Bitcoin to the present day, the other cryptocurrencies it spawned including Ethereum, the ICO craze and the 2017 crypto bubble, and the attempts to apply blockchains and smart contracts to business. Plus a case study on blockchains in the music industry.

Bitcoin and blockchains are not a technology story, but a psychology story.

Remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

“A sober riposte to all the upbeat forecasts about cryptocurrency” — New York Review of Books

“A very convincing takedown of the whole phenomenon” — BBC News

Ratings and reviews

Gerard gives a comprehensive and well-researched overview of the emergence of cryptocurrency and the myriad flaws, scams, and crimes that surround it. Buy this book for that dude at your office who keeps talking about Bitcoins.

There is a deluge of information, news, etc with accompanying hype and hoopla, surrounding block chain and bitcoin, that is going on for some time now, so that, it is extremely difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, particularly for non technical persons. It is in this backdrop that this book is immensely valuable. This is the ultimate trustworthy book on cryptocurrency which calls a spade a spade, or in this case more befittingly, a snake oil - a snake oil.

The text does not scale. This book is unreadable to me. I requested a refund, but Google denied it. Useless!

About the author

David Gerard is a Unix system administrator by day. His job includes keeping track of exciting new technologies and advising against the bad ones. He was previously an award-winning music journalist, and has blogged about music at Rocknerd.co.uk since 2001. He is a volunteer spokesman for Wikipedia, and is on the board of the RationalMedia Foundation, host of skeptical wiki RationalWiki.org. His website is davidgerard.co.uk. He lives in east London with his spouse Arkady and their daughter. Until he reinstalled the laptop they were on, he was the proud owner of six Dogecoins.