Crypto Titans: How trillions were made and billions lost in the cryptocurrency markets


Book Description

This book explains how the crypto industry started and evolved, and how everything in crypto is ultimately connected. It shows the players behind the $3trn industry (at its peak) and how billions of dollars were lost. "If you want to understand how everything in crypto is related, and why and when crypto prices move up or down, this book is for you." Praise for CRYPTO TITANS “Fortunes are won and lost when transformations happen. Bitcoin is transforming the entire economy, and there will be many fortunes won and lost. But the drumbeat continues. Technology always shines in the end. Read this book. Great lessons learned.” ― Tim Draper, Founder, Draper Associates “This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the history of crypto. Markus has done an excellent job covering all the important names and stories that have shaped the crypto industry, consistently hitting the nail on the head with accurate analysis to help readers understand the motivations and personal characteristics. I highly recommend this book to anyone.” ― Jihan Wu, Founder, Bitdeer and Matrixport In this book you'll learn: How each of the four crypto bull markets of 2011, 2013, 2017, and 2021 unfolded, the drivers behind them, and what caused prices to correct violently during bear markets How crypto markets naturally progressed, and how everything is therefore related The players involved, and how they have made money—while others have lost large sums. Understanding these points may help the reader to identify the next crypto bull market. The last 3yrs have been the most instrumental in the development of the market, with the adoption level reaching not only individuals but also asset managers and corporate executives—only for the development to be cataclysmically overshadowed by bankruptcies of multi-billion-dollar crypto lending firms and crypto trading desks. Overview: The 1st of the book describes how Bitcoin started as a peer-to-peer payment system, and how the first crypto bubble was facilitated by onramp payment companies in 2011, which mainly funneled money into the notorious Mt. Gox exchange, eventually leading to investors’ funds being stolen. The 2nd analyzes how China embraced Bitcoin and hailed it as a new form of money, which set off a massive speculative bubble in 2013. The 3rd describes how Ethereum got really started and set off the period of initial coin offerings (ICOs) that would lead to the third bull market in 2017. It also identifies the decisions that caused Tether to become the most important stablecoin. The 4th of the book shows how decentralized finance (DeFi) started, and how the speculative mania that was set off by the COVID stimulus checks would reach its peak. Binance became the largest crypto exchange despite its controversies, and effectively dethroned BitMEX as the most important crypto exchange. The crypto trading firms Alameda Research and Three Arrows Capital also became multi-billion-dollar players in the crypto bull market. The 5th of the book takes a deep dive into the 2022 bear market, exploring how crypto spectacularly crashed from a multi-trillion-dollar valuation and why the implosion of the Terra stablecoin caused $60bn to vanish within a few days. The 6th contemplates the events that led to the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX, once valued at $32bn, after a meteoric 4yr rise.




Blockchain Revolution


Book Description

Blockchain technology is powering our future. As the technology behind cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and Facebook's Libra, open software platforms like Ethereum, and disruptive companies like Ripple, it’s too important to ignore. In this revelatory book, Don Tapscott, the bestselling author of Wikinomics, and his son, blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, bring us a brilliantly researched, highly readable, and essential book about the technology driving the future of the economy. Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolution­ary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though it’s best known as the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital cur­rencies, it also has the potential to go far beyond currency, to record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certifi­cates to insurance claims, land titles, and even votes. Blockchain is also essential to understand if you’re an artist who wants to make a living off your art, a consumer who wants to know where that hamburger meat really came from, an immigrant who’s tired of paying big fees to send money home to your loved ones, or an entrepreneur looking for a new platform to build a business. And those examples are barely the tip of the iceberg. As with major paradigm shifts that preceded it, blockchain technology will create winners and losers. This book shines a light on where it can lead us in the next decade and beyond.




CryptoDad


Book Description

An insider's account of the rise of digital money and cryptocurrencies Dubbed "CryptoDad" for his impassioned plea to Congress to acknowledge and respect cryptocurrencies as the inevitable product of a fast-growing technological wave and a free marketplace, Chris Giancarlo is considered one of "the most influential individuals in financial regulation." CryptoDad: The Fight for the Future of Money describes Giancarlo’s own reckoning with the future of the global economy—at the intersection of markets, technology, and public policy—and lays out the fight for a Digital Dollar. CryptoDad is Giancarlo's own personal story, detailing his forays into the world of Wall Street to his tenure as the 13th Chairman of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where he pushed for the agency to recognize the digitization of markets. His growing fame as a Twitter presence in this essential debate has given Giancarlo a platform to makes a case for the future of cryptocurrencies as the natural successor to America’s current failing financial market infrastructure. CryptoDad provides readers with: A thorough exploration of digital change and how it affects the lives of everyone in a global economy A revolutionary consideration of regulatory responses to the rapid pace of technological innovation A call to update our aging financial organizations, particularly the infrastructure of money itself, and focus on renewed faith and confidence in free market innovation A foreword by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, two of the biggest names in cryptocurrencies CryptoDad argues that the next digital wave will be the coming Internet of Value, where cryptocurrencies will do the Internet of Information did to immaterial things: make them accessible, distributable, and movable instantly across the globe. This book is an ideal introduction to the importance of technology in the marketplace.




Tcl/Tk in a Nutshell


Book Description

The Tcl language and Tk graphical toolkit are simple and powerful building blocks for custom applications. The Tcl/Tk combination is increasingly popular because it lets you produce sophisticated graphical interfaces with a few easy commands, develop and change scripts quickly, and conveniently tie together existing utilities or programming libraries.One of the attractive features of Tcl/Tk is the wide variety of commands, many offering a wealth of options. Most of the things you'd like to do have been anticipated by the language's creator, John Ousterhout, or one of the developers of Tcl/Tk's many powerful extensions. Thus, you'll find that a command or option probably exists to provide just what you need.And that's why it's valuable to have a quick reference that briefly describes every command and option in the core Tcl/Tk distribution as well as the most popular extensions. Keep this book on your desk as you write scripts, and you'll be able to find almost instantly the particular option you need.Most chapters consist of alphabetical listings. Since Tk and mega-widget packages break down commands by widget, the chapters on these topics are organized by widget along with a section of core commands where appropriate. Contents include: Core Tcl and Tk commands and Tk widgets C interface (prototypes) Expect [incr Tcl] and [incr Tk] Tix TclX BLT Oratcl, SybTcl, and Tclodbc




Blockchain and Crypto Currency


Book Description

This open access book contributes to the creation of a cyber ecosystem supported by blockchain technology in which technology and people can coexist in harmony. Blockchains have shown that trusted records, or ledgers, of permanent data can be stored on the Internet in a decentralized manner. The decentralization of the recording process is expected to significantly economize the cost of transactions. Creating a ledger on data, a blockchain makes it possible to designate the owner of each piece of data, to trade data pieces, and to market them. This book examines the formation of markets for various types of data from the theory of market quality proposed and developed by M. Yano. Blockchains are expected to give data itself the status of a new production factor. Bringing ownership of data to the hands of data producers, blockchains can reduce the possibility of information leakage, enhance the sharing and use of IoT data, and prevent data monopoly and misuse. The industry will have a bright future as soon as better technology is developed and when a healthy infrastructure is created to support the blockchain market.




A Fire Upon The Deep


Book Description

Now with a new introduction for the Tor Essentials line, A Fire Upon the Deep is sure to bring a new generation of SF fans to Vinge's award-winning works. A Hugo Award-winning Novel! “Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.”-David Brin Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Fleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. Tor books by Vernor Vinge Zones of Thought Series A Fire Upon The Deep A Deepness In The Sky The Children of The Sky Realtime/Bobble Series The Peace War Marooned in Realtime Other Novels The Witling Tatja Grimm's World Rainbows End Collections Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge True Names At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




The Great Beanie Baby Bubble


Book Description

"There has never been a craze like Beanie Babies. The $5 beanbag animals with names like Seaweed the Otter and Gigi the Poodle drove a large swath of America into a greed-fueled frenzy as they chased the rarest Beanie Babies, whose values escalated weekly in the late 1990s. Just as strange as the mass hysteria was the man behind it. Sometimes called the "Steve Jobs of plush" by his employees, he obsessed over every detail of every animal his company ever released. He had no marketing budget and no connections, but he had something more valuable - an intuitive grasp of human psychology that would make him the richest man in the history of toys. The Great Beanie Baby Bubble is a classic American story of people winning and losing vast fortunes chasing what one dealer remembers as "the most spectacular dream ever sold.""--Back cover.




What the Dormouse Said


Book Description

“This makes entertaining reading. Many accounts of the birth of personal computing have been written, but this is the first close look at the drug habits of the earliest pioneers.” —New York Times Most histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff’s landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCs—the culture being counter– and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It’s a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and ’70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap’n Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.




Working Effectively with Legacy Code


Book Description

Get more out of your legacy systems: more performance, functionality, reliability, and manageability Is your code easy to change? Can you get nearly instantaneous feedback when you do change it? Do you understand it? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you have legacy code, and it is draining time and money away from your development efforts. In this book, Michael Feathers offers start-to-finish strategies for working more effectively with large, untested legacy code bases. This book draws on material Michael created for his renowned Object Mentor seminars: techniques Michael has used in mentoring to help hundreds of developers, technical managers, and testers bring their legacy systems under control. The topics covered include Understanding the mechanics of software change: adding features, fixing bugs, improving design, optimizing performance Getting legacy code into a test harness Writing tests that protect you against introducing new problems Techniques that can be used with any language or platform—with examples in Java, C++, C, and C# Accurately identifying where code changes need to be made Coping with legacy systems that aren't object-oriented Handling applications that don't seem to have any structure This book also includes a catalog of twenty-four dependency-breaking techniques that help you work with program elements in isolation and make safer changes.




Holub on Patterns


Book Description

* Allen Holub is a highly regarded instructor for the University of California, Berkeley, Extension. He has taught since 1982 on various topics, including Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, Java, C++, C. Holub will use this book in his Berkeley Extension classes. * Holub is a regular presenter at the Software Development conferences and is Contributing Editor for the online magazine JavaWorld, for whom he writes the Java Toolbox. He also wrote the OO Design Process column for IBM DeveloperWorks. * This book is not time-sensitive. It is an extremely well-thought out approach to learning design patterns, with Java as the example platform, but the concepts presented are not limited to just Java programmers. This is a complement to the Addison-Wesley seminal "Design Patterns" book by the "Gang of Four".