Blockchain Bubble or Revolution: The Future of Bitcoin, Blockchains, and Cryptocurrencies

As someone who works in finance, I was getting sick of feeling out of the loop on crypto conversations. The attitudes of my friends range from "crypto is a scam" to "Bitcoin is going to hit $100,000." So the title of this book definitely got my attention. Digging a bit deeper, I also found none of the authors of this book have direct financial interest in blockchain or cryptocurrency nor work directly in the space. I hate books which are really just advertising and that definitely wasn't the case here so I decided to pull the trigger and buy Bubble or Revolution. The book begins by thoroughly explaining how blockchain technology works with no assumed technical knowledge. The authors did an amazing job providing just the right amount of detail on this. They then go into the history of bitcoin and the social/economic context behind its creation. Then they describe the shortcoming of traditional payments infrastructure and how blockchain/cryptocurrency can add value. They also describe in detail the shortcoming of blockchain technology and the challenges it will face in garnering mainstream adoption. My favorite part of the book was all the case studies which help thoroughly break down how and when blockchain can be a gamechanger and when its being used purely for unwarranted hype. The book also offers really insightful analysis on the blockchain plays of top companies like Microsoft and Facebook and makes bold predictions on how blockchain technology will be adopted. I finished the entire book in a single two and half hour sitting. The authors did an amazing job making an educational read fun! Could not recommend this book enough and I believe everyone should check out this book!

Looking for a way to understand Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains? Look no further than; “Bubble or Revolution.” They nail it in an easy to read and enjoyable book. I’ve read a lot on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains but never felt comfortable that I grasped the full picture. This book provided the foundation to understand the various aspects, and complexities, without getting lost in a rabbit hole. The strengths, weaknesses and potential implications of both Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains are presented in an unbiased manner for you to develop a perspective uniquely yours. The authors, Neel Mehta, Adi Agashe, Parth Detroja are product managers with major technology companies. They demonstrate their ability to communicate technical matters with easy to understand examples and analogies throughout the book. The core concepts and issues of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains are covered with the use of real world cases, views of industry experts, and explanations. The authors accomplish a perfect balance between overview to explain concepts, specifics to gel understanding, resulting in a grasp of the topics. It gave me a much better understanding. I hope your experience is similar. The book is well written, enjoyable, and highly recommended.

The famous venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen, once said that blockchain was “the most important invention since the internet.” Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies are being developed throughout the world, and you can expect them to play a much larger role in near future. This book shares some of the basics and the challenges that arise when talking about this new technology. I gave this book 4 stars, and I’ll share some of the highlights that caught my attention. A humanitarian benefit: The UN or United Nations is using this new technology to help us with the refugee displacement, people who have lost personal documents they need just to survive. They will be able to store and track refugees’ identities, along with other critical paperwork that will help them find jobs, get loans, and if their passports or educational records were destroyed, they will use blockchain to store this information as well. Walmart created a private Blockchain after not being able to identify their suppliers that sent them that contaminated Romain Lettuce a couple of years ago. Now with this new blockchain technology, which was built with IBM, Walmart is able to spot any disruption or contaminated food suppliers within 2 seconds anywhere in the world and that gives them much more control. Facebook is building its own private centralized cryptocurrencies or tokens. Cryptocurrencies are supposed to be all about decentralization and going around powerful institutions, but Facebook’s cryptocurrency is the exact opposite. It will be controlled by Facebook and all payments and data will flow through Facebook. Challenges: One of the weaknesses of Blockchain technology is that if anyone miner controls 51% of the mining function, they could manipulate that blockchain and steal currencies. This has always been considered extremely difficult or almost impossible and has never occurred at Bitcoin’s blockchain, but considering that China has currently the majority of miners in the world, it is feasibly possible that multiple pools of miners could get together and manipulate this market. Again, while this has never happened to Bitcoin, the spinoff cryptocurrency Bitcoin Gold (which has a similar design to Bitcoin but uses its own blockchain) suffered a devastating 51% attack in 2018. Tokenizing a currency: China is aggressively preparing for a major move to tokenize a currency and leads the way in this new technology. China is testing a prototype tokenized yuan and testing it in Africa. China is Africa’s largest economic partner and has been investing heavily in infrastructure throughout the continent. Given how volatile African currencies are large parts of the continent may welcome the relative transparency and stability of a tokenized yuan. Once the kinks are worked out in Africa, China could then launch its tokenized yuan in China and then take it around the world. This would set the stage for China’s cryptocurrency to become the dominant currency for digital payments and thus, eventually, the world’s leading reserve currency. Brazil and Singapore are also exploring tokenizing a currency. But a tokenized fiat currency is still, economically speaking, a fiat currency. The government controls the currency, and the money’s value is based only on the faith of that country’s ability to manage it correctly. Scalability of blockchain: Bitcoin can only process about 3 transactions per second and Ethereum can do about 15. Each transaction costs money — at most a dollar or two per transaction, but that gets incredibly expensive if you start making millions of transactions an hour. If you use a private blockchain, you can get around the mining costs, but the limited transaction volume would remain a bottleneck; however, there are ways or tools that will address this problem. Volatility within the price of cryptocurrencies can be a challenge, but by using stable coins, or cryptocurrencies like Tether (USDT) that problem is solved. With Tether anyone can swap 1 USDT for $1 at any time. This forces the price of a USDT to $1. If the market price ever rose to $1.01, people would buy tons of USDT from Tether and sell it on the market for a profit until the market price fell back to $1, and if the market price ever fell to $0.99, people would buy tons of USDT from the market and sell it to Tether for a profit until the market price rose to $1 In summary, I thought this book did a good job of introducing us to aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies that are not readily available in other resources. Naturally, this technology is so new it’s hard to get a thorough picture of this market in any one book.

Bitcoin became a buzzword overnight. Pitched as the currency of the future, the sensational hype around the cryptocurrency and its blockchain base revolutionized the fintech sector. However, a lot of the commotion around bitcoin was exactly that, commotion. People did not truly seem to understand bitcoin and blockchain, a gap of knowledge preventing progress and innovation. In Bubble or Revolution, Neel Mehta, Adi Agashe, and Parth Detroja aim to bridge the gap between the everyday individual and cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies. Mehta, Agashe, and Detroja demystify cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies – their origins, their functions, and the necessary knowledge needed to successfully navigate a cyber-economy. They offer insightful case studies worded in the vernacular, which make it easy for the reader to understand complex technological concepts and envision what a future with these technologies would come to look like. With case studies ranging from global warming to online voting to Venezuela promoting its own cryptocurrency, Bubble or Revolution offers it all. Mehta, Agashe, and Detroja also delve into Bitcoin and its alternatives, providing a high-level look at the cryptocurrency market with even contemporary events factored in, such as Facebook’s recent plunge into cryptocurrency. They not only explain to the reader what these technologies are, but also how they apply to the economic, political, and legal spheres in our lives today. And they go above and beyond by incorporating insights from tech industry leaders regarding cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies to give the reader an unparalleled vault of knowledge regarding these contemporary technologies. The future economy will look very different with the advent of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies; Bubble or Revolution will prepare you for that new age.

As an MBB consultant for the tech industry, I have spent a lot of time trying to get a good understanding of blockchain and its future. Bubble or Revolution is the only book I have read that does exactly this. It does a fantastic job of explaining how blockchain technology works (about one fourth of the book). I really like how the authors use creative metaphors to explain what is happening behind the scenes - I feel like I can now explain how tech works to a 5th grader. The remaining three fourths of the book focuses on the use cases for blockchains and cryptocurrencies in the form of case studies and research (other books like Blockchain Basics spend 60% of the book explaining the tech in micro details that are irrelevant). There is a lot of thoughtful analysis when dissecting these case studies that helped me understand some of the shortcomings and weaknesses of blockchain technology. I have read a lot of overly bullish books (like Blockchain Revolution), but Bubble or Revolution differs in that it offers frameworks for helping you understand in what use cases the pros of blockchain technology outweigh the cons. The authors do a fantastic job of making predictions on how major countries (e.g. China) and major companies (e.g. Facebook and Microsoft) will adopt blockchain and the reasons behind it. If you are looking for an easy to understand overview of how blockchain works, why it matters, AND where the technology is headed from an unbiased perspective, I'd highly recommend checking out Bubble or Revolution!

I came into Cornell thinking I wanted to go into public service and, just like 80% of other incoming college students, I ended up changing my major several times until ultimately deciding on Information Science. Although I loved learning about tech and its societal application, I had difficulty understanding some of the big-picture topics such as the science behind cryptocurrency and how blockchain relates to it without any prior technical background. As I began to fall behind in several of my classes, I took matters into my own hands and sought out resources that simplified the technology into layman terms, but also kept the integrity of the strength and complexity of the emerging technology in mind. That’s when I came across Bubble or Revolution which not only met my standards but furthermore included several conclusions on the broad future of technology and its societal applications. Bubble or Revolution breaks down blockchain into simple pro-con charts, private business use-cases, and relatable examples such that people who lack a heavy technical background can easily understand the concepts. Most importantly, I feel that I can hold an intelligent conversation about blockchain as well as its future in the broader scope of technology with professors and job recruiters. Having broad interests in finance, law, and tech, the newfound ability to speak intelligently about hotly emerging technologies such as blockchain has definitely given me a leg up against some of my classmates when it comes to job recruiting!

The world of blockchain technology is becoming increasingly more exciting with every new advancement. Yet among the abundance of books available on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology,, only a handful stand out, and this is one of them. Bubble or Revolution provides an unbiased look at the cryptocurrency industry without getting washed away in all the hype. The authors provide a brief overview of how blockchain technology works, followed by a comprehensive overview of the history of the cryptocurrency industry that includes explanations on how many currencies evolved. They continue with a discussion on the blockchain economics, and finally conclude with an in-depth discussion about the future of cryptocurrencies, possible ramifications, and potential upcoming cases. The authors go a step further and provide some outstanding appendices that cover numbering systems (binary, hexadecimal) as well as a brief summary of some basic economic concepts that every investor should know. This book will be especially rewarding to those that find difficulty traversing through bland technical books, as the writing style does not dwell on mathematics. Bubble or Revolution has a wide scope of information combined with an enjoyable writing style making it difficult to put down for anyone interested in this industry. For those seeking guidance on how to enter the cryptocurrency market, manage their current holdings, or perhaps just get a better understanding of what all the hype is about, this book should be at the top of your list.

As a tax preparer, I have spent a lot of time trying to get a good understanding of cryptocurrency, blockchain and its future. Bubble or Revolution is the best book I've read that does exactly this. It does a great job of explaining how blockchain technology works. The authors use creative metaphors to explain what is happening behind the scenes - I feel like I can now explain how this technology works to my tax clients. There is a lot of detailed analysis provided through case studies that helped me understand some of the benefits and weaknesses of blockchain technology. I have read a lot of overly technical books, but Bubble or Revolution is the first one that offers frameworks for helping you understand in what use cases the pros of blockchain technology outweigh the cons. The authors do a good job of making predictions on how major countries (e.g. China) and major companies (e.g. Facebook and Microsoft) will adopt blockchain and the reasons behind it. I'd highly recommend checking out Bubble or Revolution!

Livro muito interessante de ler, aborda os conceitos técnicos de uma maneira clara de entender como funciona a tecnologia blockchain, e o possível futuro das criptomoedas.

Bubble or Revolution is an educational book about blockchains and cryptocurrencies. It serves the purpose of enlightenment and explanation of this new speculative world. It’s rather easy, thus you need to be a mathematician or a computer engineer to understand it. It gives you a broad understanding of how blockchains work and how they could be helpful to society. I extremely recommend it as it help shed a bit of light of this huge misconception there is around cryptocurrencies. Great book!

De loin le meilleur ouvrage que j'ai lu sur les crypto-monnaies. Les auteurs font le tour d'un certain nombre de concepts généraux liés aux crypto-monnaies et à l'économie de manière très concise et compréhensible, même à un niveau débutant. Pour étayer leurs explications, ils abordent des cas pratiques avec des exemples d'application concrets qui sont passionnants, et présentent plusieurs projets de crypto-monnaies en détails. Ils offrent également de brèves explications techniques du fonctionnement des crypto-monnaies qui sont utiles et restent très accessibles. Je recommande fortement à tous ceux qui veulent se former sur le sujet.

This was my first book about blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and I was pleasantly surprised by how interestingly this book was structured. It contains a good amount of facts, supported by fitting sources, some great real-life examples, and also some interesting speculations from the authors' point of view. This book is a great introduction to the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency. It helped me understand more about this topic, enabling me to judge for myself whether it has a promising future or not.

This book is an outstanding book that I highly recommend. Here are some of the reasons why I enjoyed it so much: - Comprehensive Introduction: The book provides a thorough introduction to blockchain technology, detailing its advantages as well as the challenges it faces. - Simple Explanations: It explains in simple terms how cryptocurrencies utilize blockchain technology, making it easy for anyone to understand. - Understanding the Financial System: This book helps readers understand how blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies fit into the current financial system and their potential future impact. - Private Blockchain Networks: It also explores private blockchain networks and how they offer innovative solutions for various business functions, such as making the supply chain more efficient. In conclusion, if you want to better understand this technology, its history, and the main challenges it presents, this is an excellent book to read.