New York Times journalist Nathaniel Popper's account of Bitcoin's first five years is the definitive narrative history of the cryptocurrency's emergence from a nine-page academic paper into a global financial phenomenon, told through the personalities, conflicts, and accidents that shaped its development. The cast of characters includes the early cypherpunks and libertarian technologists who recognized Bitcoin's potential immediately, the developers who built the first exchanges and applications while the currency had almost no monetary value, and the entrepreneurs, criminals, idealists, and speculators who arrived as the price began its extraordinary ascent. Popper documents the Silk Road and its eventual takedown, the catastrophic collapse of Mt. Gox — then the world's dominant Bitcoin exchange — through a combination of incompetence and fraud, the early block size debates that revealed Bitcoin's challenging governance structure, and the venture capital wave that brought institutional legitimacy and significant capital to the ecosystem. Popper is careful to present multiple perspectives on Bitcoin's social and economic implications, giving fair representation to both the libertarian values that motivated the community's early adopters and the legitimate concerns of regulators and economists about a financial system with no central backstop or consumer protections. Compulsively readable and meticulously researched, this is the book to read for anyone who wants to understand where Bitcoin came from and why it matters.