First, let me begin by recognizing Roger’s disgusting, repulsive behavior in the two or three debate/Q&A sessions that I have seen him in. I guess he believes that his churlish behavior will help or be productive in some way. IMHO, he does better in one-on-one interviews. And he does WAY better in this book. Now that I have trashed Roger for the behavior I have seen out of him let’s focus on the book.
I gave the book 8 out of 9 among the many thousands of books that I’ve read in my life. Technically, the writing is very competent, is grammatically correct and smooth, and the book had only a few Kindle formatting errors. My compliments to the writers. I’ve done enough writing to think that Steve did most of the writing.
I found the (many) short descriptions of technical Bitcoin, blockchain, repository, and proposed software modifications to be outstandingly good. None of the other 12-15 Bitcoin books that I have read described the block size war as clearly and concisely as this one did. I’ve written thousands of pages of technical doc and books myself, and I don’t think I could have done any better.
The overall story of how Satoshi’s code has been modified over the years is very interesting - especially the story of the temporary 1MB block limit. As a pro developer myself, I am amazed at the acrimonious and juvenile behavior (DDoS attacks, social media censorship, etc.) from the small-block team around every attempt to increase the temp 1MB block limit. 1MB? WTF? In today’s world, it’s nothing to send a 15MB email across the world in seconds (re bandwidth) or to calculate the hash of a big file in milliseconds.
This book provides a much more understandable story than The Blocksize War book. (I will reread it again now that this Hijacking book has given me a higher-level understanding of what was going on).
Overall, I found the book to be compelling.
The worst parts (only individual sentences, really) were the (dozen?) or more places where the author attributed malicious, planned intent to various actions of the small blockers. They obviously were willing to play dirty (DDoS attacks, funded videos, social media attacks, censorship), but I felt the sporadic injected sentences distracted me from the solid facts, citations, and overall storyline of the book. No big deal, but I felt distracted here and there. (The problem with making such claims in a book is that readers expect each claim sentence to be followed by a reason or support for the claim. And the supporting sentences were often missing.)
I felt the best parts were 1) the overall book, 2) the writing quality, 3) the simple and convincing calculations around network throughput, max user onboarding limits with the Bitcoin and Lightning networks, etc. - these were all superbly done, IMHO, 4) using citations and the words of other players to illustrate major points, 5) references to Mike Hearn’s online essays (I read a dozen of them-Wow, Mike is an excellent writer!), 6) clear explanations of timelines and major events and conferences and outcomes, and 7) especially the closing chapter that identifies lessons for future open source crypto projects and the overall goals of Roger to help develop an effective crypto payment system for the world. As you can see, there are MANY reasons why this is an excellent book.
I easily recommend this well-written book to anyone interested in the (focused) history of the Bitcoin network. Other books: The Genesis Book is a wonderful story of how Bitcoin came to be. Digital Gold is another excellent book but is more broadly focused on the early crypto industry players. The Blocksize War is also an excellent book that digs into the gory process and technical details, but it's easy to get lost if you don't already know a lot about the arguments on either side of the dispute. (Read the Hijacking book to find out the overall first, IMHO).
Did I say how well-written and clear this book was? Great job and cogent arguments, Roger and Steve!
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Betraying Satoshi's Vision
Today the average transaction fee is over $100!!!! this is stupid!!!! This does not represent Satoshi Nakamoto's Vision at all. Thanks to Roger Ver for spreading this averenes. Anyone who wants to learn the history of BTC should read this book. I highly recommend it. By the way I feel really sad and bad about what happened to BTC. leaving this quote: “If Bitcoin can’t be used for cash, most of the world won’t use it at all”
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2024
- Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2024
Top reviews from other countries
- osama nadeem haiderReviewed in India on April 11, 2024
Thriller Page turner!
Completed this book in just two days. I was not willing to read this book as I thought it would be a propaganda against Bitcoin in order to promote Bitcoin cash or other cryptos. After reading the whole book, I must say that my whole perspective on Bitcoin has changed. Despite, being an avid supporter of Bitcoin since 2015, I couldn't have expected that there is so much backstage drama involved. Everything mentioned in this book is public data, nothing incredible. The only thing is, the general public is amidst to this information and is only focused on earning profits.osama nadeem haiderThriller Page turner!
Reviewed in India on April 11, 2024
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- G TuckReviewed in Japan on May 7, 2024
Much more accurate than The Bitcoin Standard
- Kindle CustomerReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 27, 2024
Bitcoin, the Truth.
