Cryptoeconomics

Author: Erik Voskuil

Pages: 354

Think you know something about Bitcoin and the Austrian School of Economics? If so, you might be ready to read Cryptoeconomics. This is not a book for the uninitiated. It is not a narrative and it is free of opinions. The content is dense - it does not repeat itself. It will not show you how to create a wallet, predict the future price, or tell you what to do.

Cryptoeconomics applies rational economic principles to Bitcoin, exposing the flaws and unnecessary complexities in those principles and in common interpretations of Bitcoin. The book will improve your understanding of both. Bitcoin requires a rigorous and comprehensive discipline. That is what is offered here.

Bitcoin is a new object, difficult to grasp. To go beyond the media hype, understand Bitcoin's value proposition, its security model and its economic behavior, this book is an ideal source.

Bitcoin is about economics, technology, and security. If you don’t integrate all of these aspects, mistakes will be made. Economists, technologists, security experts, and even numerologists have tried to explain it. Each of them brings a limited perspective and fails to integrate the essential aspects. The author found himself uniquely qualified to do so.

His work on Bitcoin began with a hardware wallet. He spent a year analyzing threats and working with experts. He later devoted himself to the Libbitcoin software library, since Satoshi's prototype was not suitable for development and was largely funded by the Bitcoin Foundation. Few people have comparable experience with such a complete Bitcoin subsystem stack.

As an experienced fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy, the author encountered state threats. He became a highly skilled strike fighter tactics instructor, in which his primary role was tactical analysis and threat presentation. His understanding of the physical nature of security was reinforced by decades of training in Japanese martial arts.

His degree and experience in computer science were combined with extensive business experience, starting several companies. He worked at IBM and Microsoft, two of the largest companies in the world. He eventually became an investor, sharing his experience with other entrepreneurs.

As CTO of his first company, he published three computer security advisories. Later, he earned a seat on the Open Vulnerability Assessment Language advisory board for his work on software patches. In recent years, he discovered significant security vulnerabilities in the “secure element” of a popular hardware wallet.


The ability to integrate these diverse and relevant experiences gave birth to the book Cryptoeconomics.