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wittenberg's review
3.0
At last, a book about crypto-currency that isn't written by a fanboy. Buterin wrote both the white paper explaining what became Ethereum and the program itself, which is a great engineering job. But unlike most of the people in the crypto-currency space, he understands that there are hard problems that must be solved, and only some of them admit to technical solutions.
A difficulty is that this is a collection of his essays from various sources, so it doesn't hold together well, and most of the essays were written for the crypto-currency people, so they assume a familiarity most of us don't have. That is alleviated by the footnotes, written by Nathan Schneider. Schneider is another of the few clear thinkers in the space, so he not only tells what obscure references are to, he also makes some very interesting observations. The book would be improved if he did more of both.
There are many points on which I disagree, but it is wonderful to see an intelligent argument for the uses of blockchains. Until I read this book, I was sure that the only uses of blockchains were speculation and money laundering. I still think that, but I'm no longer sure.
A difficulty is that this is a collection of his essays from various sources, so it doesn't hold together well, and most of the essays were written for the crypto-currency people, so they assume a familiarity most of us don't have. That is alleviated by the footnotes, written by Nathan Schneider. Schneider is another of the few clear thinkers in the space, so he not only tells what obscure references are to, he also makes some very interesting observations. The book would be improved if he did more of both.
There are many points on which I disagree, but it is wonderful to see an intelligent argument for the uses of blockchains. Until I read this book, I was sure that the only uses of blockchains were speculation and money laundering. I still think that, but I'm no longer sure.
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