000 a
999 _c30342
_d30342
008 210714b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020 _a9780691179490
082 _a332.4
_bBRU
100 _aBrunton, Finn
245 _aDigital cash : the unknown history of the anarchists, utopians, and technologists who built cryptocurrency
260 _bPrinceton University Press,
_c2019
_aPrinceton :
300 _a255 p. ;
_c23 cm
365 _b26.95
_cUSD
_d77.20
490 _aUPCC book collections on Project MUSE. Political Science and Policy Studies.
504 _aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520 _aThe fascinating untold story of digital cash and its creators--from experiments in the 1970s to the mania over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrenciesBitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash without precedent or prehistory. In fact, it is only the best-known recent experiment in a long line of similar efforts going back to the 1970s. But the story behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and its blockchain technology has largely been untold--until now. In Digital Cash, Finn Brunton reveals how technological utopians and political radicals created experimental money to bring about their visions of the future: protecting privacy or bringing down governments, preparing for apocalypse or launching a civilization of innovation and abundance that would make its creators immortal. The incredible story of the pioneers of cryptocurrency takes us from autonomous zones on the high seas to the world's most valuable dump, from bank runs to idea coupons, from time travelers in a San Francisco bar to the pattern securing every twenty-dollar bill, and from marketplaces for dangerous secrets to a tank of frozen heads awaiting revival in the far future. Along the way, Digital Cash explores the hard questions and challenges that these innovators faced: How do we learn to trust and use different kinds of money? What makes digital objects valuable? How does currency prove itself as real to us? What would it take to make a digital equivalent to cash, something that could be created but not forged, exchanged but not copied, and which reveals nothing about its users?Filled with marvelous characters, stories, and ideas, Digital Cash is an engaging and accessible account of the strange origins and remarkable technologies behind today's cryptocurrency explosion.
650 _aBitcoin
650 _aCryptocurrencies
650 _aDigital currency
650 _a Coding
650 _aAmerican Rocket Company
650 _a Pre- cyberspace era
650 _aComputational work
650 _a Geodesic schemes
650 _aScarcity machine
650 _aBlack Net
650 _aCryto anarchy
650 _a Currency
650 _a Extropians
650 _aFinney, Hal
650 _a Posthuman era
650 _aPublic Key encryption
650 _aTechnocracy Inc
650 _aUtopianism
942 _2ddc
_cBK