As some of you know, I'm publishing a book this fall about a country that runs on cryptocurrency. It's titled "Consensusland." Publisher targets October as launch, though we may not start publicity early November.

I recently got my final edits and wanted to share my introduction, "Why I Wrote This Book." Enjoy! And, if you spot typos or have critique or suggestion, please tell me -- I have to deliver the final manuscript ASAP.

Why I Wrote This Book

I wrote Consensusland because almost everything published today about cryptocurrency is either financial advice or a technical manual. This book is not.

This book explores the social and cultural side of cryptocurrency. It examines the ways in which the world will change when cryptocurrency becomes a normal way to do business. It probes the pros and cons. It offers point and counterpoint. It looks at the consequences of cryptocurrency on how people think and act.

Why is that important?

To understand that, you need to understand bitcoin. It's the most well-known cryptocurrency, a digital token that you can use as an alternative to cash. With bitcoin, you can accept money from anybody, anywhere, in any amount, anytime, instantly and with certainty that you will receive exactly what you ask for without giving out sensitive personal information. There is no other way to send and receive money that accomplishes all those things.

Bitcoin can do all that because it uses a technology called “blockchain,” an anonymous, secure, public digital record of every bitcoin transaction ever. Like the internet, this record exists virtually. Nobody owns it, but everybody can use it. You can’t see it, but you know it’s there. Some people even call blockchain “the new internet” for that reason. Bitcoin’s blockchain confirms that your money actually exists and you’re the only one who owns it. That’s all you need to know when you send and receive money.

Bitcoin’s blockchain records financial transactions, but you can create a blockchain for artwork, music, insurance documents, land titles, votes, meal orders, and anything else you can think of.

That may not sound very exciting, until you realize that globally, people spend trillions of dollars to verify these things. If you’ve ever applied for college, bought or sold a car, taken out a mortgage, filed for a passport, or tried to send money overseas, you know how expensive and time-consuming these things can be. Many of these costs can be eliminated with blockchain technology, with far less effort and expense than conventional databases or paper records.

Because people can save trillions of dollars and a lot of time, you can expect more and more people to use blockchain as the technology matures. How will they use it? With cryptocurrency.

Once you store “things” on the blockchain, you need to use cryptocurrency to exchange them. Bitcoin is one example of cryptocurrency, but there are already at least a thousand other cryptocurrencies, with more emerging each day, each specializing in different types of transactions. For example, we already have cryptocurrencies designed to exchange digital gifts, manage international shipping, operate global lotteries, protect copyrights, distribute electricity, and speed up international money transfers. We even have cryptocurrencies that exist solely to create other cryptocurrencies!

Eventually, we’ll have trillions of dollars worth of “things” recorded on a blockchain, and the only way you can buy and sell those things is by using a cryptocurrency. Not dollars or pesos or any government-issued money.

What does that mean to you? How does your life change when you can buy or sell anything—books, artwork, houses, businesses, medicine—without “real” money? What does it mean when anybody can create a programmable currency to simplify and streamline any transaction? No credit card fees to pay. No receipts to organize. No invoices to prepare. No copyrights to worry about. Everything you need to complete the transaction is handled by the blockchain with 100 percent accuracy and transparency, with a guarantee that you’ve followed all laws and almost zero chance anybody’s defrauding you?

This book will you see what that means. In Consensusland, every use of blockchain is based on a cryptocurrency that already exists, a cryptocurrency that’s being developed, or a cryptocurrency concept that blockchain engineers are working on. While Consensusland is fiction, the technology is not. It’s real and it will change the way people think, act, and interact with each other. In this book, you’ll see how people react to this technology and you’ll understand the social, economic, and behavioral challenges—huge challenges—that come with using cryptocurrencies instead of dollars, pounds, euros, yen, or whatever currency your country uses. You’ll also the potential benefits.

My intent is not to persuade you one side or the other is right. Time will tell. Once you finish reading this book, you will see which side I believe will win. That’s not the point. I want to get away from the hype and bluster and vitriol around cryptocurrency. There are a lot of conflicting messages, some pro-crypto and some anti-crypto, some from true believers, some from harsh skeptics. Everybody has a valid point, and you’ll see some of that in this book. Only you can decide what to believe. Cryptocurrency is simply a technology. Like all technologies, it’s just a means to an end. Ultimately, it’s people who decide which technologies succeed and which do not.

In one sense, Consensusland is a story of a biomedical entrepreneur who has a once-in-a-lifetime offer: a country offering to build him a new, state-of-the-art headquarters and fund the relocation of his business. The offer comes with a catch: if he accepts, he will have to give up everything he knows about business, finance, privacy, and money on a leap of faith in the power of the blockchain. Will he take that leap?

In another sense, it’s an allegory that poses some interesting questions about the role of money, wealth, government, and technology.

Those questions are more important now than ever. Some of the brightest minds are going to work on blockchain technology. Since January 2017, demand for blockchain experts has increased between 700 to 35,000 percent, depending on whose data you believe (for example, in May 2018, Upwork reported 6,000 percent increase in job listings compared to May 2017). Demand for investment has followed. In 2018 alone, U.S.-based venture capital firms announced investments in hundreds of blockchain projects.

Some of these projects will fail. Some of these projects will find a niche solving small but important problems. Some of these projects will end up bigger than Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. All of these projects will change the world as we know it. If this book makes any impact, at least you’ll know what you’re getting into. You’ll see the future before everybody else does, and you’ll have a chance to prepare.

In the next few years, you’ll see two types of headlines: “Cryptocurrency will make you a millionaire!” and “Cryptocurrency is a worthless scam!”

After reading this book, you’ll know enough to decide for yourself.

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