“Contrary to popular belief, bitcoin did not come out of nowhere. For decades before Satoshi Nakamoto introduced his invention, a diverse group of computer scientists, privacy activists, and heterodox economists attempted to create a digital form of money that could operate independently of government control. “The Book of Genesis tells the story of the people and projects that inspired the invention of the world’s first successful peer-to-peer electronic cash system.”
-Cover synopsis
Aaron van Wirdum’s long-awaited book traces the prehistory of everything that led to the creation of bitcoin. So many individual ideas and concepts went into the creation of bitcoin that people tend to forget the history of those pieces before Satoshi put them together into the bitcoin protocol we know today.
The Book of Genesis offers readers a long tour of the history of the people and cultural movements that emerged from the early rise of the hacker community, and how these cultural movements and their respective values shaped the very technologies that were produced. The spirit and mindset of members of early countercultural groups, such as cypherpunks and extropians, laid the ideological foundation for the cultures we see thriving in bitcoin today.
These same people also laid the technical foundations on which bitcoin was built, from early attempts at digital cash systems like David Chaum’s ecash to Wei Dai’s b-money. Concepts like Adam Back’s Hashcash and Hal Finney’s Reusable Proof-of-Work (RPOW) also started the slow path toward bitcoin‘s proof-of-work consensus system.
For anyone who wants to truly understand the prehistory of bitcoin and the people and technological inventions that laid the foundation for Satoshi’s gift to us, this book is a must-read.
The book is available for pre-order here and shipping is expected to begin on January 3, 2024.
