Digital Cash

Ever wondered why anyone would build cryptocurrency? Finn Brunton dances across the fantasies that inspired its development. From the demise of governments, to spontaneous market order, to immortality, he shows us that cryptocurrency runs on techno-utopias both familiar and strange and reveals how these far-out visions are shaping our daily realities. -Caitlin Zaloom, New York University A very important book. -Lana Swartz, coeditor of Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff Digital Cash is the history of the internet in inverted color. It's a story full of passionate, misguided, utopian, and paranoid characters at the center of a fevered money-dream. From company scrip to Bitcoin, from anticounterfeit technology to missed cryptographic connections, Brunton's book is bedazzling cultural history. -Christopher M. Kelty, University of California, Los Angeles Brunton's wildly inventive history reveals the dystopian visions that drove the creation of digital cash. Both a lucid unfolding of the technologies inside of money and a thrilling page-turner that takes us from secret WWII-era codebooks to cryopreservation sci-fi, Digital Cash is the rarest of books: engaging, philosophical, and urgent. -Tung-Hui Hu, author of A Prehistory of the Cloud A fascinating and important book that addresses big questions about cryptocurrency: What is money? How can virtual things have lasting value? And what does the explosion of cryptocurrency mean for the global economy? I can't think of another book on the subject that accomplishes so much in such a concise and readable way. -Nathan Ensmenger, author of The Computer Boys Take Over On rare occasions a book comes along whose contents are too extraordinary to be believed. It may be the characters, the narrative or perhaps its evocative prose. . . . Digital Cash will raise as many questions as it answers. You may feel elated, amused and even depressed in turn. But like any good book it will lead you to further reading, to new ideas and eventually, perhaps, to enlightenment. ---Gregory Dobbs, Good Reading