Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

This is not a technical book on Blockchain or Bitcoin, but it is an excellent summary of the current technology supporting cryptocurrencies and an inspiring collection of ideas for how Blockchain could support a multiplicity of applications, in both the short term and the long run. Copiously sourced with an extensive index. Puny appendices on basic crypto, but again that's not the point of this book; for that see Satoshi white papers and relevant RFCs.

I'm happy with my purchase, it's a very interesting and provocative book, well written, extensively documented. It gave a good overview of the potential of Blockchain technology. Too often I think people focus on Bitcoin, but the currency is just one of many potential applications that leverage Blockchain technology. However, while reading this book, I couldn't help but feel there is a huge disconnect between what is theoretically possible with Blockchain technology, and what is more likely. There is a strong Libertarian stream that flows through most discussions of Bitcoin and Blockchain, and that was certainly true with this book, even if the author never uses the word itself. And hence there is a massive underestimation of the political will necessary to make most of this vision happen. There are just too many entrenched, powerful players that have a vested interest in working against this technology, or at least the vision for this technology given here. Worse, for many of the examples given in this book to be implemented, the world would need to look much differently from what it does today. Swan writes, "Blockchain technology...is a new class of thing like the internet,..a revolutionary organizing paradigm for human collaboration,...a liberty and equality enhancement tool..." Ok, fair enough, who doesn't want their liberty enhanced? But we are governed by the likes of Louie Gohmert and Michelle Bachman, the head of the US Senate committee on the environment believes Jesus will save us from global warming (which is a hoax anyway, according to him), and yet somehow Blockchain will rise above all of this inanity to create its own, utopian structures for the good of our citizens? Hardly. And do we even want this type of world if we found the political will to implement it? There is always an assumption from Libertarian types, left unspoken, that the masses are just like them: educated, rational, etc. But America is more Jersey Shore than All Things Considered. If we were a nation of 300 million C++ programmers, perhaps a vision of this type would work. Sadly (or thankfully), that is not the case. Still, this book is incredibly provocative, there is a lot here to digest, the author has done a very good job of giving the reader a glimpse into what could, theoretically, one day, perhaps, possibly happen. That is what I had hoped to find, and that is why I would definitely recommend this book to others.

A decent overview if you are new to the technology. I would rate higher but it feels like it is trying to enumerate everything about blockchain usage but not at any depth. While normally a field study is good, I feel it just need real depth. The lack of depth in my opinion is partly due to the fact we are still figuring out how to use blockchain tech. It is hot, and there are lots of proof of concepts, but in my experience, not real production worthy implementations. I do look forward to a new edition where we finally start to see what really worked (aka more than 6 month long projects between pre-established relationships and not just Bitcoin).

This is a clear and useful introduction to lay readers (non-programmers who yet have a technical way of understanding how things work). There are similarities in the Blockchain with "money," but Swan clarifies how trusted-transfer of digital tokens can be enhanced into many other systems (e.g. clearing of payments, that is exchanging of asset values without resort to government-imposed accounting rules, or "bank secrecy").

I'm sorry, but save your money. Seriously, the first two chapters may be worthwhile, but after that the book completely degenerates and never at any point recovers. It becomes endlessly repetitive, seemingly forgetting it has only just three, four, maybe 10 sentences back written almost the exact same sentence. The effects of caffeine are everywhere: it just gushes orgasmic desire for the blockchain and everything imaginable in the universe it will eventually touch 'transform, effect, change every conceivable dimension of our economic, social, and political lives...'. Really, this is the main problem: its incredibly grating and irritating to read, becomes, really, the perfect representative of what wrong with these 'innovations' and the groups that produce them and why we should be wary. For that, its worth reading I guess, as a case-study in its own right. On the other hand there is the incredibly poor research that the book is based on. Posts in chatrooms and at the bottom of some blog count for the author as substance enough to expound on the great potentials already being worked out in the blockchain community. Fair enough, this kind of research will save you the time of browsing a few websites yourself; the problem, though, is that the author seems to make the subtle leap from the sometimes interesting content of these internet-comments to deducing broad academic significance of them and elaborating them in an academic language that seems to establish their significance as already accepted(Deleuze and Heidegger get mentioned a couple times, strangely). That, unfortunately is far from the truth and what you end-up with is an endlessly recurring confrontation with the naivete of the author and or their ignorance of what should count as real research on a topic and or their attempt to evangelize something in a revolutionary language in order to drum-up interest, all integrity put aside. And that's also the problem I see in this space generally: one 'white-paper' after another, another long 'logical analysis' of the security of a 'coin' decomposing into increasingly complex system of conditional 'proofs' relying on nothing more than basic natural language for their establishment. Too much of it is amateurs simulating professionalism or ignorance masquerading as intelligence.. Anyway, apologies for my rant. I think this stuff is interesting, the blockchain, etc. But this book doesn't amount to much more than a collection of notes that would probably, if properly edited, fit on a single sheet of paper front and maybe back.

Too repetitive, no attempt at providing insight into the technology of the blockchain.

Very good start to read this book for beginners like me. Very comprehensive on many aspects on recent developments in this area. Of course, the examples mentioned basically are in US and Europe. Actually, it shocks me as it really has potential to change the way of a society organized and interaction between people and any organization.

The book offers a great discussion on what blockchain is, what problems it is solving, and what the future may hold. The book is not a how-to on the implementation details of blockchain.

Easy explanation

The best book for getting the big picture of use cases, it’s high-level, so you don’t need to be a developer or IT expert to understand it. Consider that Blockchain is an evolving technology under development, and this book was written in 2015, the basis are the same to understand the foundations of the technology, I totally recommend it.

The taxonomy of blockchain, crypto currencies and few other important technology information words are well described. The fundamental is strong and it is clear the attempt to make this book a “first read it”; issued in 2015. Still, for research purpose, it misses few “top class” papers and relevant magazines which is completely understandable if you think about the lack of literature at that time in the past. I read and I have it as a backbone of my initial research about the topic.

muy bien explicado y muy sencillo de entender aunque ya un poco antiguo

I'm relatively non-technical, but was able to get my head around the Blockchain and Bitcoin concepts with this book. Great read.