This book came up in one of the recent episodes of Tech Won’t Save Us and I couldn’t let it pass after seeing someone I knew going deeper in the far right fringes of the net while at the same time being more and more proselyte regarding his bitcoin investments and trading activities.

The first chapters were a bit dry for me. Mostly going through definitions of right-wing politics then bitcoin but in quite an academic way. English is still a second/third/fourth language to me and this felt a bien more like name-dropping than a comprehensive definition. On the other hand, this also added a few books to my want-to-read list. Which I did not need. But still accept.

Once over the first two chapters, the book becomes much more easy to read. The author goes through the different right-wing / liberal theories on which bitcoin whole concept is based upon. Then on the people spreading the bitcoin / crypto gospel and their adjacent anti-democracy / anti-republican ideas. I was surprised to see one of Wikipedia co-founder as well as one of the Pirate Party founder in this list.

Over all, as the Pragmatic programmer states that code is crystallised knowledge, it is interesting to see that right-wing extremism can be crystallised in a technology.

I also agree that the “tech is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything” trope is getting old, especially with an extremely narrow definition of what constitue tech.

Overall, I would recommend reading the book. Not mind-blowing but a very interesting read all the same.