Publisher's Synopsis
Bitcoin is digital cash. It enables peer-to-peer financial transactions without the need for traditional intermediaries such as banks or credit card companies or their attendant transaction costs. Using cryptography and the power of the internet to create a global public ledger of transactions, Bitcoin has revolutionised the secure and immutable transfer of scarce digital tokens.
Although the term may be familiar how exactly does it work? Moreover, what does it mean for the future of financial transactions and for the sector as a whole? How do governments regulate it and who controls it? What does it mean for the future of money?
Like all disruptive technologies, Bitcoin has its champions and its detractors. For those in favour, it has the potential to free individuals from government control and the vicissitudes of an avaricious banking sector; for the detractors, Bitcoin is the tool for those with nefarious ends, seeking to conceal their ill-gotten gains in an anonymous medium.
Jerry Brito demystifies Bitcoin, its genesis and development, its economic potential as well as its shortcomings and shows that with the acceleration of innovation in mobile technologies, internet banking and an increasingly cashless society, the opportunities for Bitcoin as a legitimate currency are huge and the technology that it introduced can be used for applications well beyond money.
