I first encountered bitcoin and Coinbase in 2013. I was a reporter at the tech blog GigaOm, where I reported on collisions between law and technology—including the then-novel phenomenon of cryptocurrency. On a hot July day, I set out to investigate an event called Satoshi Square, which took place in a corner of New York’s Union Square. Believing I would need a bitcoin to participate, I bought one for $70 from Coinbase, intending to expense it. Happily, I forgot to do so and ended up holding on to it—and sold half of it later that year when the price hit what seemed to be an absurd high of $800.
Since then, I have been fascinated with cryptocurrency and the role Coinbase has played in bringing it to the general public. I have written about the company numerous times since 2013 for GigaOm and for Fortune magazine.
In researching this book, I drew on my earlier work and also conducted numerous additional interviews with Coinbase executives and board members. I also interviewed many other influential figures in the cryptocurrency world, including academics, investors, and those close to Coinbase’s competitors. Most of the accounts in this book, including nearly all of the quotes attributed to people at Coinbase, are from those interviews.
I have also drawn extensively on secondary material, including news reports from Wired, the New York Times, Forbes, and Coindesk. The reporting in Kings of Crypto also makes use of the excellent first generation of cryptocurrency histories, including Digital Gold, The Age of Cryptocurrency, and Blockchain Revolution. When I have relied on material directly from these sources for my own narrative, I’ve made every effort to identify them accordingly.
Finally, this work represents a more polished version of the audio version of Kings of Crypto, which came out in May 2020. The book you now hold in your hands includes more recent news surrounding Coinbase and corrects several minor errors.