Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The most subversive, anti-authoritarian idea in finance is a ledger. Bitcoin, released in 2009 by a person or persons using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, was designed to be an end-around to the banks and governments that have for centuries been the guardians of our financial systems. #2 Ledgers are record-keeping devices that help deal with the problems of complexity and trust. They help us keep track of all the multiple exchanges that make up society. Without them, the giant, teeming cities of twenty-first-century society would not exist. #3 The blockchain is a digital ledger that is decentralized, and it is this feature that allows peer-to-peer transactions to take place. The distributed nature of the blockchain ledger makes it virtually impossible for anyone to change the historical record once it has been accepted. #4 The breakdown of trust in the banking sector, and the subsequent financial crisis, was a result of a vast manipulation of ledgers. The recorded value of the assets those ledgers were supposed to track turned out to be largely vapor.