Bitcoin Books for Beginners

Bitcoin Books for Beginners explained by professional forex trading experts the “ForexSQ” FX trading team.

Bitcoin Books for Beginners

Bitcoin has taken the world by storm, and as you might expect, books have been trickling onto the market exploring the technology from various angles. Here are five books that will enlighten you about this exciting new phenomenon in various ways.

Bitcoin: The Future of Money?

Joe Frisby, Unbound

Comedians and economics don’t always mix, but one of them wrote a book about bitcoin. Dominic Frisby looks at the cryptocurrency’s history, from its foundation in 2009 through to its heightened popularity from 2013 onwards.

He interviews several key bitcoin luminaries and considers whether we will all be using bitcoin instead of cash in the future.

Frisby previously wrote ‘Life After the State’, a book about how western states operate, and is making a name for himself as an author. The book was crowdfunded on Unbound, a self-publishing crowdfunding platform for authors, and is getting high-star reviews all round.

Mastering Bitcoin

Andreas M. Antonopoulos, O’Reilly

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a well-respected figure in the bitcoin world. He has worked as chief security officer for wallet company Blockchain.info, and has also been heavily involved with the Bitcoin Foundation, which helps to marshal support for bitcoin. He has also conducted several financial audits of bitcoin exchanges and has testified on bitcoin before the Canadian Senate.

This book is published via O’Reilly, which specializes in practical technology books.

It covers subjects including in-depth descriptions of how bitcoin works, how transactions are structured, and how the network functions. This is a technical deep dive, and readers with a technological focus will appreciate this comprehensive, detailed book.

Secret Money

Kashmir Hill, Forbes Media

What would happen if you tried to live on bitcoin for a week? That’s exactly what author Kashmir Hill finds out when he spends seven days in San Francisco trying to survive on the cryptocurrency. To be fair, San Francisco is probably the best place to try and survive on bitcoin. It might not work so well in rural Kansas, say. Still, it’s an interesting experiment.

This book was published by Forbes and is a shorter book than many of the others, at just 72 pages. It is available in e-book form only but presents an interesting alternative to the technical guides and economic analyses found in other books.

Cryptocurrency

Paul Vigna and Michael J Casey, Random House

Paul Vigna is a market reporter for the Wall Street Journal, writing for MoneyBeat, and has a deep knowledge of bitcoin. This book, published by Random House, was written along with his colleague Michael Casey, who also wrote a book about shortcomings in the financial system.

The strapline for the book is “how bitcoin and digital money are challenging the global economic order,” which tells you something about its focus. The authors explore how cryptocurrency represents an alternative to the current financial system, particularly for those people who are currently ‘unbanked’, unable to access traditional financial services.

If you are looking for a book that explains how bitcoin promises to revolutionize traditional financial models, this might fit the bill.

Bitcoin: And the Future of Money

Joe Pagliery, Triumph Books

Don’t confuse Frisby’s book with this similarly-titled tome by Jose Pagliery. Pagliery, an author for CNNMoney, explores the origins of bitcoin and also provides a basic grounding in how the system works. It looks at the potential economic impact of the cryptocurrency, and folds in views from libertarian free-market advocates, such as Ron Paul.

Pagliery also looks at some of the shadier aspects of bitcoin, including some of the criminal initiatives that have been built on top of the currency.