The year 2017 has definitely put a dent in cryptocurrencies. Every day we see more people than ever before showing interest in the bitcoin and altcoins, and these people tend to come from completely random social and age groups. While some five years ago the bitcoin has been mostly popular within the IT specialists, today you can see even see BTC-related discussions in the young moms groups on facebook.
We are not going to discuss whether the bitcoin is a bubble or not. Neither we are going to make you invest into cryptocurrencies or discourage you from doing it. Our rule of thumb is quite simply – do not invest into something you do not understand. Hence, today we are going to take a look at the most useful books about the cryptocurrencies for you, read them to get a better sense of what the bitcoin is and see if this is something suitable for your investment portfolio.
Wildcat Currency by Edward Castronova
The bitcoin is a digital currency that is based on the blockchain technology. As a result of this innovation, people get to use a completely decentralised type of money and benefit from the full anonymity. Hence, the bitcoin and altcoins can power up various industries, starting from depositing your account at one of the online bitcoin casinos (lately even UK regulated) and going as far as paying for the assassination. There are many other practical use cases of the bitcoin outside of the gambling and illegal transactions, yet the main idea is to actually understand why a decentralised currency can (or should) exist in our world.
This book will not uncover the answers to all of your bitcoin-related questions. It will, however, be a great read to kick the things off, as it explores the nature of virtual currencies and the mechanics around them, starting from the pre-bitcoin era.
Blockchain Revolution by Don and Alex Tapscott
The bitcoin is based on the blockchain technology. While in the current times the term “blockchain” is very widely used, this book will help you uncover all of the theory behind this technology and it is certainly a great read for those who want to understand the technical aspect behind the bitcoin.
The Bitcoin Bible by Benjamin Guttmann
Once you are more familiar with the technical side of the bitcoin and the general theory behind the virtual currencies, The Bitcoin Bible is a great follow-up book. The main benefit of this book is that it is not authored by a single person. Rather than that, it features articles from the top contributing members of the bitcoin community. You get to find out the vision of the people that were buying BTCs below $5, first founders of the online bitcoin casino services, leading blockchain VC investors, the regulators, and simply people that were the first to hop on the bitcoin train.
Side note
There are (so far) no books dedicated to cryptocurrency trading. Having said that, many bitcoin traders agree that the best bitcoin books for trading are actually regular trading books as the whole idea of financial trading is pretty much present in all types of assets. As long as you understand the mechanics about the bitcoin (and those are much simpler than the ones behind the stocks), you should be quite ok with learning about the general trading aspects. However, the hype around the cryptocurrencies is huge and you can easily find lots of content related to “becoming a millionaire by following these 20 easy steps with the bitcoin”. Stay away from those. First, get a solid understanding of the blockchain technology. Secondly, see if the volatility of cryptocurrencies is something you can actually live with. Finally, check your strategy against the historic data and only then decide if cryptocurrency trading is something you want to try.