Are you looking for some quality reading material to better understand bitcoin? With so much information out there, it can be challenging to separate the good info from the bad. Not to worry. Here’s a list of the best Bitcoin books so that you don’t have to sort through all of the noise.
Best Bitcoin Books For Children
Reading to your toddler hodlers and young bitcoiners is one of the finest methods to teach them about good money at a young age. Here is our selection of Bitcoin books for children, which will continue to expand as the Bitcoin ecosystem grows and flourishes with your children.
Bitcoin Money
Bitcoin Money: A Tale Of Bitville Discovering Good Money (by Michael Caras) is a children’s book about discovering the value of money in a little village named Bitville. All of the children in Bitville need a tool to help them trade their skills with one another so they invent something called money. What begins as a fantastic little economy based on paper money rapidly descends into a money printing disaster, resulting in an excess of money in circulation. The story takes a turn when a strange boy named Satoshi arrives in town to propose a new form of money called bitcoin and everything changes.
This is a fantastic place to start your toddler hodlers and young bitcoiners on their path to financial independence in 28 beautifully illustrated pages.
Best Beginner Bitcoin Books
It’s easy to get confused with all of the different levels of Bitcoin educational content out there but if you’re just getting started, these Bitcoin books are the best place to start.
The Bitcoin Dictionary
The Bitcoin Dictionary (by Ansel Linderer) is a great resource for bitcoiners at every step of the journey. This 84-page book is packed with clear and concise definitions of the many new words that you will surely come across as you stack your first sats, store your private keys with a multisig hardware wallet, or even integrate bitcoin into your own business.
If you want to better understand some of the 180+ most used bitcoin terms, The Bitcoin Dictionary should be on your bookshelf.
The Little Bitcoin Book
The Little Bitcoin Book (by Jimmy Song and 9 other writers) is appropriately named with just 99 pages of easy reading content. Rather than explain bitcoin from a technical or economic perspective, Jimmy and his team of writers from all around the world decided to put together this collection of real-world problems that bitcoin solves; from privacy for protestors in Hong Kong to remittance payments for people living under oppressive monetary regimes to opt-in financial sovereignty.
Part of what makes this book such a great read is that financial executives or CEOs didn’t write it. Everyday people like you and I wrote it, and they tell the story of how bitcoin is making a difference in their lives and communities.
If you are looking for some of the most emotionally compelling stories about how bitcoin is being used to change people’s lives for the better, The Little Bitcoin Book is a must-read.
The Simplest Bitcoin Book Ever Written
The Simplest Bitcoin Book Ever Written (by Keysa Luna) is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to learn more about the world of bitcoin. It covers all the basics effectively in a concise, straightforward way and explains complex topics in simple language. The book features helpful diagrams and images to help readers visualize key concepts and provides clear information about fiat money, bitcoin, the origin of digital money, and a whole lot more. In just 160 pages, the book includes numerous bullet points for easy reference and quick comprehension of important topics. If you’re new to the ever-evolving Bitcoin space or just need a refresher, this is the perfect book for you!
The Simplest Bitcoin Book Ever Written is available for ~$15 (bitcoin and lightning only) + shipping or for free as a pdf download.
Inventing Bitcoin
Inventing Bitcoin (by Yan Pritzker) is the best book to learn about bitcoin in simple terms.
Yan doesn’t bog the user down with technical jargon or complex economic principles. Instead, he takes the reader on a simple journey. He uses clear analogies and examples to explain how the current system works and what needs to be done in order to make a new system work. From understanding how Bitcoin mining works all the way to receiving a transaction, Inventing Bitcoin is a great way to understand all of the overwhelming ideas with just a 96-page book.
If you were only going to read one single book about bitcoin to learn both how and why bitcoin works, Inventing Bitcoin should be that one book.
Yan also mentions both The Bitcoin Standard and Mastering Bitcoin (both discussed below) as great books for learning more about bitcoin economically and technologically.
If you want to get a free copy of Inventing Bitcoin, click here.
This Book Will Save you Time
This Book Will Save You Time (by Misir Mahmudov) is possibly the most practical book about bitcoin. Instead of explaining what bitcoin is, how it works, or the economics of hard money, Misir spends most of the book helping the reader to better understand the most important thing in the world.
TIME.
Keeping things simple, Misir uses incredibly practical examples to help you understand what time is.
Don’t waste your time. Don’t let others waste your time. Work on things that free up your time. Passive income will give you more free time. True wealth is an abundance of time. Your time spent working is ultimately being devalued by your money. You need to save money that is just as scarce as your time. These are just some of the key points that can be found in this 87-page book that will ultimately help you do one thing. Save you time.
21 Lessons
21 Lessons: What I’ve Learned From Falling Down The Bitcoin Rabbit Hole (by Gigi) is exactly what it sounds like. It’s 21 lessons that Gigi learned while falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.
Following an Alice In Wonderland theme, Gigi takes his readers through 21 simple life lessons about many different aspects of what bitcoin is, how it’s being used, and its implications for the future.
The book is divided into 3 sections; Philosophy, Economics, and Technology. Each section has several lessons learned and some very relatable insight on bitcoin as a social contract, sound money, and how mathematical strength in numbers is an incredibly powerful force.
If you are eager to learn some Bitcoin lessons of your own, you might find some valuable insight within this 119-page book.
Thank God For Bitcoin
Thank God For Bitcoin (by Jimmy Song and seven other authors) is a theistic approach to comprehending and interpreting bitcoin as an honest monetary system. In only 121 pages, Thank God For Bitcoin provides a biblical perspective on bitcoin and how honest money realigns our incentives to create value for our communities and brings an end to the theft of our lives through inflation and currency debasement.
If you are a theist or simply seeking a God-centered perspective on bitcoin and how it can restore truth and honesty to our money, Thank God for Bitcoin is an excellent addition to your Bitcoin library.
Best Intermediate Bitcoin Books
Learning the basics is the foundation of understanding what bitcoin is important but there are still a lot of questions that you will have as soon as you have read all of the beginner books. To get a better understanding of how bitcoin works and some of the more in-depth theory behind it, these books are the next logical step for intermediate bitcoiners.
Bitcoin Clarity
Bitcoin Clarity (by Kiara Bickers) is an amazing compilation of metaphors, analogies, examples, and visual illustrations coupled with some of the most clear and concise writing in the Bitcoin space.
In an industry crowded with influencers, angel investors, tech bros, and cypherpunk utopians, there can be a lot of noise and unclear explanations. Kiara cuts through that noise by providing the reader with a clear understanding of some of the more complex Bitcoin concepts without all of the buzzwords, price hype, or jargon.
This book is the perfect transition from being a Bitcoin beginner to finding your way down to the intermediate level of the Bitcoin rabbit hole and even preparing you for more advanced concepts.
If you are struggling to cut through the noise, this is one of the best Bitcoin books to clarify the signal.
Bitcoin Q&A
Bitcoin Q&A (by David Coen) is a wonderful 190-page book that asks and answers 33 important questions regarding bitcoin in two parts: “Why Bitcoin?” and “How Bitcoin?”. Furthermore, David does a fantastic job of leading the user through some of the inevitable follow-up questions that each question will provoke.
If you have questions about bitcoin and want clear, detailed, and practical answers about the Bitcoin Protocol (BP) or the Lightning Network Protocol (LNP), be sure to pick up a copy of Bitcoin Q&A.
Orange Coin Good: The Value Of Bitcoin
Orange Coin Good (by Jimbo) is 139 pages (divided into 3 parts), which provides some clear explanations as to why we need bitcoin, how bitcoin works, and what bitcoin achieves at both the global level and in our own lives.
Part 1 is focused on bad money (current monetary policy), good money, beginning your journey down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, and the types of bitcoiners you will encounter along your journey.
Part 2 is dedicated to setting up your first wallet, receiving your first bitcoin, miners adding transactions to the blockchain, and securing your bitcoin.
Part 3 is about the economics of money, understanding value, and why orange coin (bitcoin) is good.
If you are looking for a good overall understanding of good money vs. bad money, how/why bitcoin works, and what bitcoin achieves for the world, then Orange Coin Good is an excellent addition to your Bitcoin library.
Magic Internet Money
Magic Internet Money (by Jesse Berger) is an excellent book for anyone venturing further down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Instead of focusing on a single niche element of bitcoin, Jesse takes a comprehensive approach in just 127 pages.
Jesse does an excellent job of explaining bitcoin from 12 different perspectives in 12 chapters. Each chapter is broken down into smaller sections of just 1-2 pages that are easy to read in just a few minutes. The simplicity of the format makes each section easy to reach a good stopping point every time you pick up the book. This is a great reading choice before bed, while you’re riding the subway, or waiting for the next block to be confirmed.
If you are in the process of expanding your understanding of the many different elements of bitcoin, Magic Internet Money is a must-read.
Bitcoin: Sovereignty Through Mathematics
Bitcoin: Sovereignty Through Mathematics (by Knut Svanholm) is yet another short read with just 103 pages.
Knut does a great job of explaining some things about bitcoin with some simple mathematical ideas surrounding bitcoin. He has some very unique perspectives on the mathematical principles of bitcoin, referring to it as a mathematical battery that allows anyone to put energy in and get a scarce token out. This model allows humans to achieve sovereignty through mathematics.
Bitcoin: Independence Reimagined
Bitcoin: Independence Reimagined is Knut’s second and follow up book weighing in at just 101 pages.
If there is one key takeaway from this book it is that absolute mathematical scarcity was a discovery rather than an invention and any attempts to try to duplicate it will fail since the very thing discovered was resistance to duplication.
There are bound to be many more math-focused Bitcoin books but Knut’s are some of the very first and easy to read in a single day. Math lovers will not be disappointed with either of Knut’s books.
Bitcoin: Everything Divided By 21 Million
Bitcoin: Everything Divided By 21 Million (by Knut Svanholm) is a book based on a simple premise. Bitcoin will take over the world just like a self-duplicating virus or meme. He postulates that since that only 21 million bitcoin will ever exist, the value of everything — from retail purchases to vast investments — will be divided by 21 million.
If you are craving a novel perspective and want to dive deeper into this Bitcoin framework, Knut’s third Bitcoin book might be for you.
The Bitcoin Shortcut
The Bitcoin Shortcut (by Craig Anthony) is a well-balanced book for anyone looking for a well-balanced understanding of bitcoin from start to finish.
The book is divided into 4 parts: Preliminaries, Bitcoin Basics, Technical Details Of Bitcoin, and Investing In Bitcoin.
The book begins with the basics of money, its functions, characteristics, and a brief history of how money evolved. Second, it covers the basics of bitcoin like how it works at the most basic level. Part 3 really sets this book apart because it provides quality explanations of the more technical details of bitcoin, such as cryptographic hash functions, digital signatures, private keys, and more.
While it takes years to fully understand bitcoin, this book will show you some shortcuts to understanding more about money, bitcoin, cryptography, and finance.
Why Buy Bitcoin
Why Buy Bitcoin (by Andy Edstrom) does an excellent job of making some complex economic thought much easier to understand in just 175 pages. While many economists argue that for something to be money, it needs to have some sort of “intrinsic value.” Andy challenges that notion with a very simple yet eloquent statement.
“The best money is something that is useless as anything other than money.”
While this may contradict everything we have ever been told about money, this rings particularly true with bitcoin. Some may think that bitcoin’s purely digital nature is why it doesn’t have value, but it’s actually one of the many reasons why it is the best money in history.
If you are looking for more reasons to buy bitcoin, this book is full of them.
Digital Cash
Digital Cash (by Finn Brunton) is 205 pages focused on the history of the anarchists, cypherpunks, and technologists who laid the foundation for bitcoin. From the early days of encryption to the “failed” attempts of making a reliable form of digital cash, this book highlights some of the problems that the early innovators were up against while they were working to make digital data valuable.
The work of making digital cash means creating an object that is trivial to transact over networked computers and easy to verify – to prove that something is what it appears to be – but impossible to forge or duplicate, and that can carry the information about what it is and what it is worth without generating information about how it is used or by whom.
If you are less interested in understanding the economics and technical aspects of bitcoin, and more interested in learning about the individuals who paved the way, this is the book for you.
The Story Of Money
The Story of Money: From Shells and Shekels to Bills and Bitcoin (by Sean Cover) is unquestionably the best Bitcoin book available for anyone interested in learning about the past, present, and future of money in simple terms. Sean does an excellent job of not over complicating things with financial jargon or complex economic terms so there’s no need for the reader to have a degree in finance or economics.
From small nomadic tribes that operated entirely as gifting economies to the contemporary internationally networked economies of today, money has always found its way into the heart of commerce as a tool for humans to store, exchange, and measure value.
If you want to learn more about money and its rich history in just 161 pages, The Story Of Money is a must-read. It is also a perfect complement to both Layered Money and The Bitcoin Standard (both listed below).
The Internet Of Money Vols. 1, 2, & 3
The Internet Of Money (also by Andreas Antonoupolos) began as just a single book but a Vol. 2 & 3 have since been published. Andreas is one of the most influential Bitcoin speakers in the world and continues to travel the world to speak at Bitcoin conferences and meetups. In these books, Andreas talks about bitcoin and how it relates to the internet in its early days. Instead of bitcoin being an inter-net (international network) of media and information, he highlights how bitcoin is an internet of money and how it will disrupt banking monopolies the same way that the internet disrupted media monopolies.
Instead of writing about bitcoin directly, Andreas quotes and reiterates key points from his lectures around the world. Part of what makes Andreas such a Bitcoin influencer is his history in bitcoin and his passionate way of communicating. Some of his speeches can be found on YouTube (which he links to in the book) and if you would like to learn more about bitcoin from one of the world’s most prominent Bitcoin speakers, you will probably enjoy reading all three volumes of The Internet Of Money.
Layered Money
Layered Money (by Nik Bhatia) is an excellent history of money and how it has grown in “layers” through the centuries. Gold, coins, paper money, bitcoin, and central bank digital currencies are just a few of the many things Nik covers in his in-depth history of money. Nik covers money’s origin as various commodities to its rise as the dominating method of payment, to its collapse as governments and banks destroyed it by printing money from thin air.
This 153-page book is a wonderful predecessor to the Bitcoin Standard if you’re searching for a thorough dive into the history of money and all of its layers.
Best Advanced Bitcoin Books
Once you understand how bitcoin and the blockchain work, you will almost certainly come across some economics terms and a whole bunch of technical terms. These are the best Bitcoin books for advanced bitcoiners; packed with info that will help you to really solidify the true workings of bitcoin and why it is the greatest innovation in money in all of history.
The Bitcoin Standard
The Bitcoin Standard (by Saifedean Ammous) is for a more advanced understanding of the economics of bitcoin. Saifedean is clearly an advocate of sound money which he coins “hard money”. Without hard money, society can never flourish and something called stock-to-flow decides just how hard a money supply actually is.
Even if you’re not an economics major, The Bitcoin Standard is a great way to get a basic understanding of how and why bitcoin is the most important and influential innovation in money in all of history.
The Blocksize War
The Blocksize War: The Battle For Control Over Bitcoin’s Protocol Rules (by Jonathan Bier) is a comprehensive account of the blocksize debates that raged for more than a half-decade on how to scale bitcoin and who should govern the protocol rules. Following the two factions; the big blockers and the small blockers, Jonathan delves into the early stages of what brought the subject to the forefront of public discourse, as well as the important actors on both sides. Bier does an excellent job of outlining a lot of the key terms, ideas, and concepts that have been proposed to scale bitcoin while preserving the distributed ethos that is so important to the global Bitcoin community.
The Blocksize War is a must-read for anybody interested in a detailed study of both the large and small blockers’ claims on how big or small Bitcoin blocks should be and who should control the protocol rules.
Cryptoeconomics
Cryptoeconomics: Fundamental Principles of Bitcoin (by Erik Voskuil) is a book that applies rational economic principles to bitcoin, highlighting flaws and unnecessary complexities in them, as well as common understandings of the cryptocurrency. The book is deep, dense, conceptual, rigorous, systematic, and uncompromising. It is an essential read for anyone who thinks bitcoin is fascinating and wants to understand it better.
Mastering Bitcoin
Mastering Bitcoin (by Andreas Antonoupolos) is the go-to guide for learning more about the technicals of bitcoin. If you already understand some of the above concepts and aren’t interested in reading about the basics, you can skip right to this book and get some of the most in-depth explanations with incredibly easy to understand writing and diagrams.
This book is considered by many to be one of the best technical Bitcoin books ever written.
Mastering Lightning
Mastering Lightning (by René Pickhardt) is a comprehensive guide that provides an in-depth understanding of the Lightning Network, a layer-two scalability solution for bitcoin. Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Olaoluwa Osuntokun also co-authored the book, covering topics such as payment channels, routing, privacy, security, and more. It also includes real-world examples and practical use cases of the Lightning Network, making it accessible to both beginners and advanced users. With its clear explanations and insights into the future of Bitcoin scaling solutions, Mastering Lightning is an essential read for anyone interested in the lightning network.
Grokking Bitcoin
Grokking Bitcoin (by Kalle Rosenbaum) takes a different approach to help new users to better understand bitcoin. Instead of explaining bitcoin as simply bitcoin, Kalle uses concepts that people already have an understanding of and slowly moves away from those concepts until he is only talking about Bitcoin.
Kalle uses the example of a spreadsheet in an office environment to explain how a company might want to issue their own currency called “Cookie Tokens” to buy cookies from the office cafe. In order to get around all of the centralized trust issues, the office employees slowly find a way to eliminate the need for any trusted parties to manage this cookie token system by using digital signatures and computers that compete to be able to add transactions to the cookie token ledger. The end result is a completely decentralized and trustless system that doesn’t rely on any third parties. Sound familiar?
Kalle does a great job of explaining the math behind bitcoin and delivering a solid understanding of some concepts that I was not quite clear on. While I would put this book off until you have read the ones listed above, it is a valuable book that I continue to use as reference material.
Submit Your Best Bitcoin Books
Do you know of a good Bitcoin book that you would like to see added to this list? If so, send me a tweet or DM and I will see what I can do to read it. If I find that it adds value to the Bitcoin space, I will consider adding it to this list of great titles.
If you feel that you want to do more than just read, perhaps you should consider writing a Bitcoin book of your own. The world needs all of the quality Bitcoin content that it can get.