Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an economics professor, but I also have a column in Australia’s leading financial newspaper so I really appreciate authors who can tackle complex topics in an accessible manner. I’m also both extremely interested in and do academic research on topics to do with technologies like two-sided platforms, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. All these books made me think harder about the big issues in these areas, and how to combine rigorous research with what is actually happening—often at breakneck speed—in the real-world digital economy.


I wrote

Money in the Twenty-First Century: Cheap, Mobile, and Digital

By Richard Holden,

Book cover of Money in the Twenty-First Century: Cheap, Mobile, and Digital

What is my book about?

In my new book, I put money in historical context to explain why it matters and what is changing. We’ve…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform the Way We Buy, Sell, and Create

Richard Holden Why did I love this book?

Well, the author is a friend of mine but it’s also on a topic close to my own academic research interests. So it was kind of compulsory reading for me, but it might be the most enjoyable compulsory reading I’ve ever done.

I thought NFTs were just a gimmick to do with internet pictures. But the authors explain, with great examples, that NFTs are best thought of as a new technology for creating digital assets. And better still, providing the true owner with irrefutable proof of ownership of these digital assets.

What I took away was that NFTs are a new technology for tracking property rights. And since property rights have been fundamental to economic development for millennia, this is a topic one can’t afford not to understand.

By Steve Kaczynski, Scott Duke Kominers,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Everything Token as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NFTs cause excitement and skepticism. How much value can a token hold? What drives this value?

To properly appreciate NFTs we must first understand what they actually are, how they work and in what contexts they are used.

The Everything Token is an essential primer on NFTs (non-fungible tokens), explaining their use, purpose, and how businesses can create and exploit them to develop new product lines, building customer loyalty and increased revenues at the same time.

Together the authors have spent much of the past few years embedded in NFT communities and helping launch NFT products. As self-described beta testers…


Book cover of Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet

Richard Holden Why did I love this book?

I first heard about this book on one of my favorite podcasts: Hard Fork. The author is a famous crypto investor at perhaps the world’s leading technology venture capital firm: a16z. The author got a hard time from the hosts, who are both pretty skeptical of crypto. But he handled it so well I knew I had to read the book.

Read Write Own is persuasive in cautioning against dismissing the entire crypto sector due to early failures. The examples used are great: like the Helium project—a kind of crowdsourced “people’s 5G network” that uses cryptocurrency payments as incentives. If you want to hear the “glass is half full” case for crypto, this is a must read.

By Chris Dixon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Read Write Own as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'A compelling vision of where the internet should go and how to get there.' Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI

_

A potent exploration of the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the internet - and how that affects us all - from technology entrepreneur and startup investor Chris Dixon.

The internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a decentralized, democratic network of innovation, connection and freedom. In the past decade, it has fallen almost entirely under the control of a very small group of companies like Apple, Google,…


Book cover of Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence

Richard Holden Why did I love this book?

This book helped me understand why advances in artificial intelligence are going to have a big impact on productivity and economic growth. I loved the analogies to old technologies like electrification of factories, and newer examples like how Team New Zealand used simulations to change racing tactics and boat design.

The book has an important, big idea at its heart. That idea is that AI helps organizations make better predications, and those better predictions allow organizations to be fundamentally redesigned to take advantage of this. This is where the AI productivity revolution comes from.

By Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Prediction Machines as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"What does AI mean for your business? Read this book to find out." -- Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google Artificial intelligence does the seemingly impossible, magically bringing machines to life--driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In the face of such uncertainty, many analysts either cower in fear or predict an impossibly sunny future.

But in Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI…


Book cover of The Economics of Blockchain Consensus: Exploring the Key Tradeoffs in Blockchain Design

Richard Holden Why did I love this book?

Many people have heard of Bitcoin’s “proof of work” (POW) consensus protocol which involves using huge amounts of energy to solve cryptographic problems. Some of us have also heard of “proof of stake”, an alternative to POW now used by the second largest cryptocurrency, Ether. What Joshua’s book taught me was the similarities and linkages between these two different ways of running a blockchain.

By focusing on the economics, not just the technology, of different consensus protocols, we learn about fundamental issues like the “cost of computational trust”, the future of consensus protocols, and indeed the future of cryptocurrencies.

By Joshua Gans,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Economics of Blockchain Consensus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Blockchain technologies have been rapidly adopted for the creation of cryptocurrencies and have been explored for a myriad of applications. While this is of important economic interest, the computer science behind how blockchains operate to provide security and provenance has been largely inaccessible to economists. This book is a bridge between the computer science and the economics of blockchains.

The focus is on the value and the achievement of blockchain consensus; that is, how distributed and independent nodes are able to reach an agreement on what the current state of digital ledgers, that are the product of blockchains, are. The…


Book cover of Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

Richard Holden Why did I love this book?

First of all, I love everything Michael Lewis writes. But this might be his most engaging book yet. Told through the lens of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, this is an incredible story.

It’s a story that combines genius, brilliance, folly, technology, and crime that left me wondering whether SBF really did something terrible, or just got desperately unlucky. It guided me through Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial, its aftermath, and the bankruptcy of FTX with a part harsh judgment and part huge empathy.

By Michael Lewis,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Going Infinite as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world's youngest billionaire and crypto's Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?

In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system.…


Explore my book 😀

Money in the Twenty-First Century: Cheap, Mobile, and Digital

By Richard Holden,

Book cover of Money in the Twenty-First Century: Cheap, Mobile, and Digital

What is my book about?

In my new book, I put money in historical context to explain why it matters and what is changing. We’ve known for centuries that money as a medium of exchange is essential for economic growth and prosperity. And for a long time, money didn’t fundamentally change. Then, in 2008, everything changed.

I explain that three seemingly-unrelated events that all occurred in 2008—the launch of the iPhone, the birth of Bitcoin, and the financial crisis—laid the groundwork for the first fundamental change to money in two millennia. I explore what these changes mean for us as individuals, and for the relationship between central banks and big companies, and between superpowers like the United States and China. 

You might also like...

What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs

By Sharman Apt Russell,

Book cover of What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs

Sharman Apt Russell Author Of What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Explorer Runner Mother

Sharman's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks left by browsing deer, predatory weasels, and inquisitive bears, skunks, and raccoons. Master tracker Kim A Cabrera provides photos and illustrations.

Winner of the prestigious John Burroughs Medal, Russell also writes about community, a sense of place, and a renewed connection with the nonhuman world. She explores the health of…

What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs

By Sharman Apt Russell,

What is this book about?

Did a red fox pass this way? Could that be a bobcat print there in the dirt? Do those tracks belong to a domestic dog or a coyote? Combining lyrical memoir with an introduction to wildlife tracking, What Walks This Way explores the joys of learning to recognize the traces of the creatures with whom we share our world.

The nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife-mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice-near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. With wit and compassion, she guides readers through…


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