Piecing Together The Pre-History Of Bitcoin With Aaron van Wirdum's 'The Genesis Book'

“Contrary to popular belief, Bitcoin did not appear out of nothing. For decades prior to Satoshi Nakamoto introducing his invention, a diverse group of computer scientists, privacy activists, and heterodox economists tried to create a digital form of money that could operate independently of government control. The Genesis Book 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 Sypnosis

Aaron van Wirdum’s long awaited book goes through the pre-history of everything that led up 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 glued them together into the Bitcoin protocol we know today.

The Genesis Book gives the readers a long walk through the history of both the people and cultural movements spawned out of the early rise of the hacker community, and how these cultural movements and their respective ethoses shaped the technologies themselves that were produced. The ethos and mentality of the members of early counter-culture groups like the cypherpunks and extropians laid the ideological foundation of the cultures we see thriving in Bitcoin today.

These same people also laid the technical foundations Bitcoin itself was built upon, through 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 began the slow road towards Bitcoin’s proof of work consensus system.

For anyone who wants to truly understand the pre-history of Bitcoin, and the people and technological inventions that laid the groundwork for Satoshi’s gift to us, this book is a must read.

The book is available for pre-order here, with shipments expected to go out starting on January 3rd, 2024.