2024Advanced4.4
Resistance Money
Three academic philosophers' systematic, peer-reviewed argument that Bitcoin is, on balance, ethically defensible — and where it isn't.
BitcoinPhilosophyAcademic
The Catalog · 35 entries
Blockchain Books
The best books on blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader crypto economy — reviewed.
2024Intermediate4.6
The Genesis Book
Aaron van Wirdum's intellectual prehistory of Bitcoin, from Hayek and Chaum through the cypherpunks to Satoshi.
BitcoinHistoryCypherpunks
2023Intermediate4.7
Broken Money
Lyn Alden's wide-screen history of money, the technology behind it, and why she thinks the current global monetary system is structurally unwell.
Monetary HistoryBitcoinEconomics
2023Beginner4.0
Easy Money
Actor-turned-economist Ben McKenzie and reporter Jacob Silverman's polemical tour of crypto fraud, from SBF to celebrity shills.
CryptoCriticismFraud
2023Beginner4.3
Number Go Up
Zeke Faux's Bloomberg-grade investigation of Tether, FTX, and the people who made crypto's biggest bubble.
CryptoJournalismCriticism
2022Beginner4.5
Check Your Financial Privilege
Alex Gladstein's reported case that Bitcoin is, first and foremost, a tool for the 89% of the world born outside reserve-currency systems.
BitcoinHuman RightsFinance
2022Intermediate4.6
The Cryptopians
Laura Shin's deeply reported history of Ethereum's first years and the people who built and broke it.
EthereumHistoryJournalism
2021Beginner3.7
How to DeFi: Beginner
CoinGecko's hands-on intro to lending, AMMs, yield farming and the basic plumbing of DeFi.
DeFiEthereumEducation
2021Intermediate4.3
Layered Money
Nik Bhatia's short, careful argument that money has always been organized in layers — and that Bitcoin is now part of the bottom one.
Monetary HistoryBitcoinEconomics
2021Advanced4.4
Mastering the Lightning Network
Antonopoulos, Osuntokun, and Pickhardt's deep technical book on how Lightning actually works.
BitcoinLightningTechnical
2021Intermediate4.4
The Blocksize War
Jonathan Bier's blow-by-blow history of Bitcoin's 2015–2017 civil war over block size and protocol governance.
BitcoinHistoryGovernance
2021Beginner4.2
The Bullish Case for Bitcoin
Vijay Boyapati's expanded book version of the canonical 2018 essay arguing Bitcoin is monetizing in real time.
BitcoinInvestmentMonetary History
2020Beginner4.2
21 Lessons
Gigi's compact, surprisingly literary set of essays on what Bitcoin does to your view of money, time, and the world.
BitcoinPhilosophyCypherpunks
2020Beginner3.5
Kings of Crypto
Jeff John Roberts on Coinbase — the rise of the company that more than any other made crypto buyable for ordinary Americans.
HistoryJournalismBitcoin
2020Intermediate3.7
Out of the Ether
Matthew Leising's reconstruction of the DAO hack and the political crisis it created inside early Ethereum.
EthereumHistoryJournalism
2020Beginner4.3
The Infinite Machine
Camila Russo's narrative history of Ethereum, from Vitalik's whitepaper to the DAO and beyond.
EthereumHistoryCulture
2020Intermediate4.3
The Price of Tomorrow
Jeff Booth's contrarian macro argument that technology is inherently deflationary and that fighting it with inflation is catastrophic.
MacroeconomicsDeflationBitcoin
2020Intermediate3.9
Token Economy
Shermin Voshmgir's broad survey of tokens, DAOs, and the post-Bitcoin Web3 design space.
Web3TokensGovernance
2019Beginner3.2
Bitcoin Billionaires
Ben Mezrich's breezy Hollywood-ready account of the Winklevoss twins' second act, in Bitcoin.
BitcoinHistoryJournalism
2019Beginner4.2
Inventing Bitcoin
Yan Pritzker's short, layered explainer that walks you up to Bitcoin one problem at a time.
BitcoinEducationCryptography
2019Advanced4.6
Programming Bitcoin
Jimmy Song's hands-on engineering text — build Bitcoin from first principles in Python.
BitcoinProgrammingCryptography
2019Beginner3.8
The Little Bitcoin Book
A short collaborative primer written for people who've never heard of Bitcoin and don't yet care.
BitcoinEconomics
2019Beginner3.8
Why Buy Bitcoin
Andy Edstrom's CFA-flavored investment case for Bitcoin as a portfolio asset.
BitcoinFinanceMacro
2018Advanced4.4
Mastering Ethereum
Antonopoulos and Wood's technical reference for the Ethereum protocol and smart contract development.
EthereumSmart ContractsSolidity
2018Beginner4.0
The Bitcoin Standard
Saifedean Ammous makes the Austrian-economics case for Bitcoin as sound money.
BitcoinEconomicsMonetary History
2018Intermediate3.4
The Truth Machine
Vigna and Casey's 2018 follow-up to The Age of Cryptocurrency, this time pitched at the brief moment when 'blockchain not Bitcoin' looked like a real movement.
BlockchainWeb3Journalism
2017Intermediate3.6
Cryptoassets
Burniske and Tatar try to bring a serious investment framework to crypto, just before the 2017 ICO mania made it look ridiculous.
InvestmentBitcoinEthereum
2017Intermediate4.7
Mastering Bitcoin
The canonical engineering reference for Bitcoin — protocol, scripting, wallets, mining.
BitcoinProtocolWallets
2017Beginner4.4
The Internet of Money, Vol 2
The second collection of Andreas Antonopoulos's edited keynote talks on Bitcoin, money, and the social implications of programmable currency.
BitcoinTalksPhilosophy
2016Beginner4.0
The Internet of Money, Vol 1
Andreas Antonopoulos's polished conference talks turned into a short, accessible Bitcoin manifesto.
BitcoinCulturePhilosophy
2015Beginner4.5
Digital Gold
Nathaniel Popper's NYT-style narrative history of Bitcoin's first scrappy decade.
BitcoinHistoryJournalism
2015Beginner3.8
The Age of Cryptocurrency
Two Wall Street Journal reporters explain Bitcoin to a financial audience that didn't yet take it seriously.
BitcoinHistoryEconomics
2012Intermediate3.7
Cypherpunks
Julian Assange and three collaborators argue, in 2012, that cryptography is the last real defense against surveillance — and accidentally describe the world Bitcoin was about to inherit.
CypherpunksPrivacyHistory
2008Intermediate4.9
The Bitcoin Whitepaper
Satoshi Nakamoto's nine-page 2008 PDF that set the entire cryptocurrency industry in motion.
BitcoinCryptographyFoundational
1997Advanced3.2
The Sovereign Individual
A 1997 prediction that information technology will dissolve the nation-state — quoted constantly in crypto, read carefully much less often.
HistoryEconomicsCypherpunks