In 2016, former New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper published Digital Gold, an early account of Bitcoin that holds up as one of the best books on crypto. Since then, there have been a flood of other titles as publishers rushed to cash in on a subject defined by easy riches, outrageous characters, and a mind-boggling array of scams.
This past year brought a new glut of books. Unlike the ones published during crypto boom years, which pulse with a mix of greed and adulation, most of the 2023 titles came wrapped in a thick sheen of scorn—and understandably so given the spectacular frauds, epitomized by Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, that defined the industry’s most recent bust.
