000			02287 a2200205 4500
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008			190820b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9780691179490
082			_a332.4 BRU
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			_a255p. _bhb; _c23 cm
365			_aUSD _b26.95
520			_aBitcoin 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 exchanged but not copied, created but not forged, 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			_aElectronic Funds Transfers.
650			_aCryptocurrencies -- History.
650			_aCryptocurrencies.
650			_aDigital Currency -- History.
942			_2ddc _cTD