A History of Digital Currency in the United States: New Technology in an Unregulated Market

by P Carl Mullan

This book presents detailed case studies of the first commercial internet digital currency systems developed between 1996 and 2004. Transactions completed with the new technology circumvented all US financial regulations, an opening that transnational criminals exploited. Mullan explains how an entire industry of companies, agents, and participants turned a blind eye to crimes being committed in this unsupervised environment. He then tracks the subsequent changes made to US regulations that now prevent such unlicensed activity, illustrating the importance of supervising products and industries that arise from new disruptive technology. This book distills hundreds of hours of interviews with the creators and operators of early digital currency businesses to create detailed case studies of their practices.

285 pages, Hardcover

Published November 17, 2016

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

The content has potential, and a sustained account of the topic is sorely needed, so I was excited to read this... but it's clear that no editor ever so much as read a chapter of this. The text is riddled with punctuation and grammatical errors, it's disorganized (e.g., repeating the same information over and over again, referencing material not yet introduced), etc. I can't help but feel that, by publishing the text in this state, Palgrave has done a considerable disservice to Mr. Mullan. And again, this is quite a shame, because the material underlying this project--especially the correspondence with the various currency founders--is fascinating, and its documentation is a necessary prerequisite to understanding the history and development of digital currencies more broadly.