The countdown is on. And I’m not talking about New Year’s Eve, but one of my goals for 2023. And that is understanding Bitcoin. It’s easy to go through the world with half-knowledge. However, the problem is that you might never really adopt common opinions or not question your concerns. Why not dive deeper into the topic? But tech blogs or financial sites have yet to do the job for me. But Ijoma Mangold did. The journalist and author, known for his work for Die Zeit, wrote a very accessible book. No wonder he’s a literature critic who knows his way around good storytelling. So, his tale takes you on a journey through the history of the most well-known cryptocurrency, the “orange pill.” The author shares his doubts and concerns about the topic but also shares facts and figures, so it is a pretty good education. I listened to the book as an audiobook and realized I must read it a second time to understand and remember fully – that’s how complex the world and terminology around blockchain currency are. So, if you’d like to have a proper conversation about Bitcoin, it would be good to know what asymmetric cryptography is; the term hexadecimal system and what NANS stand for should also be familiar. Oh, and, of course, how critical mnemonic phrases are. If you can’t follow me, then the countdown is also on for you because even if you don’t have time to read the 265-page book before the end of the year, you should know by mid-April 2024. That’s when the next Bitcoin halving will happen. And even if you don’t want to become a miner, mining knowledge has never hurt. And in this case, it only costs a two-digit euro amount. Well invested, I think.
Text: Nina Trippel / Fotos: Becci Schatz
“Die orange Pille. Warum Bitcoin weit mehr als nur ein neues Geld ist” (256 pages) published by DTV.
@IjomaMangold
