I have absolutely no understanding of either bitcoin or blockchain technology, and was hoping that this book would give me a starting point for further research. This book began by confusing me, followed by providing some illumination, followed by more confusion.
I think that one of my problems is that I don’t really understand what bitcoin actually is. All I know is that it’s very volatile and I can’t decide if it’s an investment or a currency. In the media, I seem to be hearing more stories about how people are winning and losing a lot of money, and less about how it is legitimately used for the purchase of goods and services. I also find it a bit creepy that there’s so much mystery around the inventor(s) of bitcoin, and that it’s often mentioned hand-in-hand with the dark web economy. I used to teach an Intro to Business course at the secondary school level, many years ago, and I recall the lesson I used to teach about money. One of the characteristics of money, I seem to recall, is that it’s a medium of exchange that’s based on trust. Bitcoin makes my spidey senses tingle, I suppose. Let’s just say I’ll be a late adapter to this innovation.
And so, my confusion and skepticism about bitcoin possibly doesn’t help when I’m trying to grasp the idea of blockchains. An advantage of blockchain technology is that it’s unmediated, but on the other hand it sounds to me like miners have a lot of power in the process. And, even though it’s secure from a hackability standpoint, I get the impression that modifications could be made based on consensus of the majority of the network participants and my spidey senses get tingly about that, too.
So, I listened to this audiobook and by the end of it I didn’t feel that my understanding of this technology increased appreciably. When I teach a new and tricky concept to my students at college, I always try to start by building on something they already know, or give a few examples, or describe some analogies. Pedagogically speaking, this would be considered scaffolding. The author of this audiobook didn’t really do this, so as a beginner to the concept, I was over my head within the first three minutes of the book. That doesn’t make this a badly written book! It just means that I need a more basic primer than this, given my specific lack of foundation on this topic. I wouldn’t be surprised if I decided to do some searching around on the internet to read a few more introductions to bitcoin and blockchain technology, and then revisited this audiobook and discovered that it made more sense to me the second time around.
The author did a good job. I could easily tell that he was trying his best to explain and teach, placing emphasis on specific phrases and concepts. I would listen to this narrator again, for this style of audiobook.
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.