Reality-based writing on cryptocurrency

December 28, 2021 8:53 PM

I'm looking for writing about cryptocurrency that is based in reality, where the author understands the technical and economic aspects of the things that they're talking about.

I expect that this writing will generally be negative about cryptocurrency, but not uniformly, and I expect the critiques that it has to be well reasoned and backed up with sources. I'm also happy to see articles that are positive about specific pieces of cryptocurrency/blockchain technology, as long as that writing doesn't lie about what that technology does or how it works.

Some examples of this sort of thing:

• Betting Against Bitcoin
• “Play-to-earn” and Bullshit Jobs
• The Token Disconnect
• In defense of verification
• Arweave
• 10 years of... whatever this has been / 100 years of whatever this will be
• Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
• Bitcoin and Gold (this is my own writing — mods, feel free to remove this if that's a problem)

posted by wesleyac to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

Amy Castor and David Gerard (who's written two entire books about crypto stuff and is often the person media articles are citing for the negative crypto commentary portion of both sides) come to mind.

I think Sarah Jamie Lewis is the only person in a vaguely positive crypto adjacent space that interests me (because I don't think she's a grifter but she's smarter than me so it's hard for me to be able to evaluate her), and I mostly consume her through Twitter and am not familiar with longer form work she may have done.
posted by foxfirefey at 9:26 PM on December 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

Nathaniel Popper has produced some very clear articles for various news organizations and also published a book. I believe he is focusing NFTs at this point.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:33 PM on December 28, 2021

Sebastian Smee had an informative article in the WaPo exploring the impact of non-fungible tokens on the art world through the lens of this year’s Art Basel in Miami.
posted by migurski at 10:34 PM on December 28, 2021

Stephen Diehl is generally very negative, but does deeply understand the technology and landscape and is read and respected by some folks who actually build this stuff.
posted by congen at 7:28 AM on December 29, 2021 [4 favorites]

Digital Cash by Finn Brunton puts it in historical perspective
posted by Morpeth at 9:55 AM on December 29, 2021

I am a software engineer in the security and privacy field (read: I deal in part with cryptography, the mathematics of which broadly underpin cryptocurrencies) and 3blue1brown’s video is one of the few good technical explanations that I’ve found.

Likewise the original bitcoin paper is relatively approachable as primary sources go, if scarce on details. I’m betraying my hand here too; I read it early on and was unimpressed. I shan’t link to it out of irreverence; it is easy to find on search-engine-of-choice.

An additional snide remark on the topic, if you’ll indulge it: any literature on gold rushes ought to hold up as well…
posted by =d.b= at 1:15 PM on December 29, 2021

I just found out Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a paper earlier this year: Bitcoin, Currencies, and Fragility. He knows more about his field (finance, etc etc) than I do and there's assertions in there that I feel like fighting about and am pretty sure I don't agree with (funnily because he's being critical and I am also very critical so that's not the disconnect) but I think it still qualifies under your rubric.

I also forgot earlier to mention Matt Levine, who is also a finance sort, who often talks about crypto in his freely available newsletter from Bloomberg "Money Stuff". He likes crypto more than I do, but I think part of that is it's often ridiculous and he seems to get a lot of weird joy out of ridiculousness. An example of the kind of writing he'll do about crypto could be found in this edition under the section "Fat Ape Finger".
posted by foxfirefey at 10:15 PM on December 29, 2021 [3 favorites]