Top 7 Books On Cryptocurrency and Blockchain

Whether you are a crypto newbie or an experienced owner of digital assets, you may be seeking ways to enrich your knowledge on cryptocurrency. Great ways to do this are the public internet resources: on Twitter and Facebook, you can follow top professionals and executives to learn first-hand opinion on the market situation; on YouTube, you can find comprehensive market reviews as well as thorough guides on specific coins and different aspects of the blockchain technology.

However, there is another source of knowledge on crypto that is often undervalued — good old books. By offering a deep dive into the topic, they won’t help you learn on the most recent trends and coins in crypto — rather, you can use them to gain fundamental understanding of how digital assets work, the philosophy behind cryptocurrency, and the ways blockchain technology emerged and evolved.

ChangeNOW presents a list of 7 books that we find most valuable for understanding crypto.

The Internet of Money

The Internet of Money is a series of 3 books written by one of the most respected Bitcoin advocates Andreas Antonopoulos. The pieces were issued in 2016, 2017, and 2019. Although the industry has considerably evolved since then, Antonopoulos describes the basics of Bitcoin that have remained the same.

The questions that the author answers in this book are as follows: Why has Bitcoin become so popular? Why is crypto not “fancy digital money” but a tool that helps millions of people gain financial independence?

In “The Internet of Money”, Antonopoulos explains why the blockchain technology is revolutionary and what helped it withstand numerous attacks, accusations, and sanctions. The author describes social, political, and economic premises for the emergence of digital money.

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

The Bitcoin Standard by Dr. Saifedean Ammous features the evolution of money and shows how it brought us to the creation of cryptocurrency. The piece is considered a best-seller among crypto and Bitcoin books and has been translated into 21 languages.

“The Bitcoin Standard” is a review of the history of money starting from the time when metals were used as a primary means of exchange. Dr. Ammous shows how people started to use metal coins, gold, and paper money. Finally, the author describes why the modern monetary systems failed to create a fair and transparent economy.

“The Bitcoin Standard” will help you understand how transparent transaction records and trustless payments made cryptocurrency a major economic trend of today. Among the key factors, Dr. Ammous mentions fast settlement and easy cross-border transfers. He also explains why Bitcoin consumes so much energy and how it operates without control from a single entity.

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

The Age of Cryptocurrency is a perfect introduction to the world of crypto. On its pages, two Wallet Street journalists explain why the financial crisis of 2008 happened and how it motivated Satoshi Nakamoto to create Bitcoin.

Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey describe the flaws of the traditional financial system and the reasons why it lost people’s trust. They explain how the emergence of blockchain was welcomed by millions of people and helped unbanked citizens worldwide get access to financial services.

With great freedom comes great responsibility — the authors describe how to properly store cryptocurrency and avoid the loss of access to your funds.

Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond

Cryptoassets was written in 2017 by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar, venture investors focusing on distributed ledger technology and digital assets. Their book is not solely on Bitcoin — it features altcoins such as Ethereum, Monero, and many others. While the first pieces on our list were focused on history, “Cryptoassets” is a guide to investing and managing your crypto portfolio.

Read this book to learn how to maximize your profits, do quality research, and recognize bubbles. You will find recommendations on how to store crypto and what types of exchanges and wallets you should use. The authors provide a classification of crypto investment opportunities, helping you learn how to trade and invest.

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire is not a textbook or a guide — rather, it is an exciting memoir of Dan Conway, a story of a man who got disappointed by his job in a giant American corporation, had to fight depression and addiction, and finally, found his solution in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Conway got captivated by the allure of digital assets as he understood his career led him nowhere and the corporate bureaucracy was becoming increasingly frustrating. The author put all his savings into Ethereum believing that crypto is his chance to improve his life. From this moment, Conway’s path turned into a tough adventure where he was breaking corporate chains while trying to keep his family together and not to lose all their wealth.

“Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire” is not a shiny life story of a poor man who got rich with crypto overnight and has never faced any problems since. On the contrary, Dan Conway uses his example to tell us what a rollercoaster crypto investing may be and why we shouldn’t invest more than we can afford to lose.

Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain

Mastering Bitcoin is another book by the famous Bitcoin advocate Andreas Antonopoulos on our list. The second edition of this piece was released in 2017 and has a purpose to explain how Bitcoin works and why we should grasp the basics of the underlying technology before investing in any crypto asset.

Whether you are a newbie or an experienced developer, this book will help you enrich your knowledge on Bitcoin and blockchain. Antonopoulos starts with a very simple explanation and then gradually delves into technical details of blockchain and cryptography. He explains how Bitcoin transactions work and what security standards there are.

The 2017 edition of “Mastering Bitcoin” features the Lightning Network and the SegWit update that improved Bitcoin and enabled fast and cheap transactions in the network. Antonopoulos explains how to create payment channels and what types of blockchain applications exist. In the technical part, the author describes different parts of the Bitcoin code.

Cryptocurrency: The ultimate go-to guide for the Bitcoin curious

Cryptocurrency was written by Wall Street journalists Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey who also created “The Age of Cryptocurrency” reviewed above. This piece was published in 2016 but is still relevant for a wide range of crypto enthusiasts. Without too many tech details, it explains why trust is an essential part of the traditional financial system and, in the meantime, its main point of failure. “Cryptocurrency” describes how trustless digital assets managed to get rid of middlemen and maintain a high level of security and performance.

The book explains the conditions in which cryptocurrency was created in 2009 and why such a large community was built around it. Vigna and Casey suggest their own prediction on how digital assets will evolve and in what way they will affect Wall Street.

Final Words

Crypto books offer you a totally different way to learn about digital assets. The ones featured in our list were written by experienced professionals with broad outlook, and they managed to describe the history and the nature of cryptocurrency in an exciting and comprehensive way. As these books were not sponsored by specific institutions, they offer an unbiased look at the crypto market with a wide context and a large number of details and examples.

These books can complement the information that you receive in social media. Once you get to know the fundamentals of cryptocurrency, you will better understand the news, reviews, and opinions that you find on YouTube or Twitter. Crypto books will help you build your own understanding of the crypto market and its possible future.