Andreas M. Antonopoulos

Context: Continuation of Volume One. Storytelling pitch via the formula of everyday metaphor, extrapolated to Bitcoin, to convey a key message, per chapter.

Liked: Liken this to Bitcoin 302, using my previous analogy. Expanding beyond basic BTC to ETH and highly simplified explanations of complicated developments in the crypto space. As with the previous volume, Mr. Antonpoloulos is brilliant at projecting what the future may look like with mass implementation of blockchain show more technologies.

Disliked: Implied anti-bank, and almost anti-government stance. There is truth to his words, but unbalanced. It is as likely that centralized blockchain may be the solution. Successfulness of adopting a centralized vs decentralized solution is highly dependent on the values of the peoples adopting it. Not just these people are the die-hard bitcoin advocates, or investment bankers, or the common folk in between - but the whether these are western "speak up for myself and my rights folks" vs eastern "for the good of our society" like Japan, just as western best practices may not work entirely in the East because of culture. Highly look forward to research in this area, as bitcoin will be as much of a cultural movement as it is a technological movement.

Conclusion: Like a complicated novel condensed to Netflix for mass consumption. Not entirely as bad as it sounds, as it gets the salient points across. Looking forward to the next one. show less

This "book" collects slightly-edited versions of Antonopoulos' talks, which are also available on YouTube. As such, there is a great deal of repetition from chapter to chapter. However, I found that the narrator of the Audiobook (Stephanie Murphy) was easier to follow, and the audiobook was well-organized, so this is actually a much more efficient way to consume these talks. The content itself is relatively shallow and non-technical, with a lot of rah-rah and broad analogies. But there's show more some good stuff in here, too, like Antonopoulos' phrase "money as a content type", so I still found it worth listening to. [2020-11-29] show less

I would recommend this book to anyone new to the concept of Bitcoin, however since it's a collection of talks it gets very repetitive very quickly. If you stripped the repetitive points from these talks into a cohesive and flowing narrative, the book would probably be half as long.

Internet of Money book series has been my go-to book series to understand on a general level what is happening around the blockchain technology and the movement.

As a series I highly recommend in the same way: best source I've found to learn about precisely about this technology and what is going around it.

After reading few years back the volumes 1,2, I've been following more closely the technology and writing in online sources as well.

What I learned about this book was about the differences show more in interest for the technology in for example countries such as Argentina, Venezuela, where the fiat currency has had trouble in comparison to western powers such as U.S. and EU countries. Banking is not accessible to all of the world's population and will not be in the current centralized form. Therefore blockchain is indeed peoples' technology.

Leafcutter ant metaphor in the end of the book was very interesting and it seems exciting possibility. show less