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The story of the idealists, technologists, and opportunists fighting to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. In their short history, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone through booms, busts, and internecine wars, recently reaching a market valuation of more than $2 trillion. The central promise of crypto endures—vast fortunes made from decentralized networks not controlled by any single entity and not yet regulated by many governments. The recent growth of crypto would have been all but impossible if not for a brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and his creation: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the founding of this novel cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, thus creating a new crypto fever. She introduces readers to larger-than-life characters like Buterin, the Web3 wunderkind; his short-lived CEO, Charles Hoskinson; and Joe Lubin, a former Goldman Sachs VP who became one of crypto’s most well-known billionaires. Sparks fly as these outsized personalities fight for their piece of a seemingly limitless new business opportunity. This fascinating book shows the crypto market for what it really is: a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.

Un monde engagé dans le difficile passage de la féodalité à la Renaissance, de la théocratie à la science. Un monde ravagé par des guerres et par des ambitions. Mais qui n'est pas notre Terre. Cette planète connaît une autre histoire. Tout aussi barbare. Et sur ce monde étranger, éloigné dans le temps et dans l'espace, qui ne sait rien d'autres civilisations essaimées dans l'espace, deux étrangers se croisent, s'effleurent à peine. Un médecin, Vossll, qui est aussi une femme, et un guerrier, Dewar. Ils n'ont apparemment rien en commun, sauf de surprenants savoirs. Au jeu de la compassion et de la cruauté, ils vont échanger leurs rôles. Avant peut-être de retourner vers leur véritable univers. Inversions est le cinquième volet du cycle de la Culture. Les quatre précédents, Une forme de guerre, L'Homme des jeux, L'Usage des armes et Excession ont été publiés dans la même collection.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” ―Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance…Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.

Unlike what usually passes for economics in many classrooms, government, the media and elsewhere, Choice is an engaging and intriguing book that provides something quite unique: a genuine treatise on economics that instructs and entertains both economists and general readers. Drawing on the seminal volume by the “Austrian School” economist Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, and comparing classical and neoclassical approaches, Choice is a creative, comprehensive, and unusually lucid book on economic science and market processes. The book illuminates free economies as underpinning civilization, the folly of government central planning, the primacy of entrepreneurship and innovation, the nature of money and banking, the causes of the business cycle, the failures of government intervention, and more. As a result, Choice teaches economic principles and exposes economic fallacies, and any reader will learn both the important truths about economics and the crucial value of individual choice, entrepreneurship, and free markets.

This little book was written to accomplish something big: economic literacy. It is intentionally kept very short to be inviting rather than intimidating. You will gain life-changing understanding of how the economy works in practically no time. Per Bylund will make you excited about what economics has to offer. Because economic literacy is mind-opening. Sound economic reasoning is an enormously powerful tool for understanding both the economy and society. Economic literacy uncovers what is going on under the surface and why things work out as they do. There is no magic to it. In fact, economic literacy is necessary to properly understand the world. Short, direct, axiomatically unassailable, and devastating to the mythology of modern economics. This book not only promote Mises' views, but refutes and attacks the tragicomic orthodoxy of today’s economics mainstream.

Høsten 2008 holdt deler av det internasjonale finansmarkedet på å kollapse etter en enorm gjeldsboble forårsaket av det tradisjonelle bank- og finanssystemet. Omtrent på samme tidspunkt som det tradisjonelle systemet brukte skattebetalernes penger på å kjøpe finansforetakene fri fra deres egen hensynsløshet – holder en mystisk skikkelse under pseudonymet Satoshi Nakamoto på å utvikle et pengesystem som skal revolusjonere måten penger fungerer på. Den 3. januar, 2009 skrus Bitcoin-nettverket på – og over ti år senere fortsetter nettverket å operere sømløst tross gjentatte erklæringer om at Bitcoin-boblen har sprukket. På tross av alle medieoppslag, er det stadig flere som fatter interesse for Bitcoin som fenomen - og nettverket er sterkere enn noen gang før. Hvorfor eksisterer Bitcoin fremdeles? Og hvorfor kommer Bitcoin tilbake hver gang «boblen» sprekker? Et nødvendig utgangspunkt for å forstå Bitcoin - er å forstå det som penger, og skal vi forstå Bitcoin som penger - må vi forstå hva penger er for noe. I denne boken gir forfatteren en grunnleggende introduksjon til hva penger er, hvilke funksjoner penger har, og et kort innblikk i pengenes evolusjon. Ved å kategorisere Bitcoin som penger vil mange av diskusjonene rundt Bitcoin også bli tydeligere for deg som leser. Du vil få et innblikk i hva Bitcoin er - og hvilke problemer det kan bidra til å løse. «Bitcoin er harde penger» er en introduksjonsbok til deg som har fattet interesse for Bitcoin, og som er klar for en videre reise ned i kaninhullet. Utover å forklare hva Bitcoin er, vil du som leser få et innblikk i de ideologiske idéene som Bitcoin bygger på. I en verden som preges av rekordhøy inflasjon og innskrenking av personlig frihet – har behovet for et frivillig alternativ aldri vært tydeligere. Vi ønsker deg en god reise.

'it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well developed human beings' Mill's four essays, 'On Liberty', 'Utilitarianism', 'Considerations on Representative Government', and 'The Subjection of Women' examine the most central issues that face liberal democratic regimes - whether in the nineteenth century or the twenty-first. They have formed the basis for many of the political institutions of the West since the late nineteenth century, tackling as they do the appropriate grounds for protecting individual liberty, the basic principles of ethics, the benefits and the costs of representative institutions, and the central importance of gender equality in society. These essays are central to the liberal tradition, but their interpretation and how we should understand their connection with each other are both contentious. In their introduction Mark Philp and Frederick Rosen set the essays in the context of Mill's other works, and argue that his conviction in the importance of the development of human character in its full diversity provides the core to his liberalism and to any defensible account of the value of liberalism to the modern world. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority is a composition of three essays, all written in 1867: No. 1, No. 2: The Constitution", and No. 6: "The Constitution of no Authority". No essays between No. 2 and No. 6 were ever published under the authorship of Lysander Spooner.

There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, or homelessness. Cupcake Brown survived all these things before she’d even turned twenty. And that’s when things got interesting…. You have in your hands the strange, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating tale of a woman named Cupcake. It begins as the story of a girl orphaned twice over, once by the death of her mother and then again by a child welfare system that separated her from her stepfather and put her into the hands of an epically sadistic foster parent. But there comes a point in her preteen years—maybe it’s the night she first tries to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once—when Cupcake’s story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark comic blues opera. As Cupcake’s troubles grow, so do her voice and spirit. Her gut-punch sense of humor and eye for the absurd, along with her outsized will, carry her through a fateful series of events that could easily have left her dead. Young Cupcake learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor, partying like a rock star, and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. She stumbled into gangbanging, drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, theft, and, eventually, the best scam of all: a series of 9-to-5 jobs. But Cupcake’s unlikely tour through the cubicle world was paralleled by a quickening descent into the nightmare of crack cocaine use, till she eventually found herself living behind a Dumpster. Astonishingly, she turned it around. With the help of a cobbled together family of eccentric fellow addicts and “angels”—a series of friends and strangers who came to her aid at pivotalmoments—she slowly transformed her life from the inside out. A Piece of Cake is unlike any memoir you’ll ever read. Moving and almost transgressive in its frankness, it is a relentlessly gripping tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contem-porary urban life and survived it with a furious wit and unyielding determination. Cupcake Brown is a dynamic and utterly original storyteller who will guide you on the most satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you’ll ever take. When it came time for me to talk, I wasn’t sure which parts of my past to tell, which to keep secret, and which to pretend never happened. Uncle Jr. had already seen the welts on my back, so he wasn’t too surprised when I told them about some of the physical abuse I endured at Diane’s. Everyone else hit the roof, except Daddy. He got really quiet and started balling and unballing his fists. I continued my update. Experience had taught me that adults have trouble accepting the idea of children having sex. I decided that from then on, that part of my life never happened. I picked up the story by telling them about Fly, the Gangstas, and getting shot. I was dying for a cigarette. So it seemed a good time to announce that I smoked cigarettes—and weed. After a moment Sam looked at me, smiled, and handed me one of her Marlboros. I preferred menthols, but beggars can’t be choosers. I kicked back, took a long drag, and closed my eyes. Daddy and Jr. were silent. They seemed a bit shocked and unsure about how to respond. “Well, Cup,” Jr. said, “it’s a little too late to be trying to raise you now. But those cigarettes will kill you. And weed will only lead you to stronger drugs.” He didn’t know how right he was. But for me, it was too late to be worrying about stronger drugs—the only worrying I did was whether I could find a connection to get some. So I just smiled, nodded, and took another hit off my cigarette. The eerie quiet returned. —from A Piece of Cake Also available as a Random House AudioBook and eBook.

The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times is René Guénon's most prophetic work. Having seen his telling analysis of Western culture, The Crisis of the Modern World, swiftly overtaken by events, he based this his final and most profound critique squarely on changeless metaphysical principles. He exposes with his fabled clarity the precise nature of the modern deviation, devoting special attention to the part played by modern philosophy and science (with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution) in the formation of the industrial and democratic society that we now regard as "normal." He sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity). But following after the Reign of Quantity (modern materialism and the "rise of the masses"), Guénon predicts a reign of "inverted quality" just before the end of the age: the triumph of the "counter-initiation" the kingdom of Antichrist. Although Guénon bases his critique on "abstract" principles, his examples are satisfyingly concrete: his remarks on "the degeneration of coinage" could easily be updated to include the transformation of money into electronically-stored digital information; his treatment of "the significance of metallurgy" as regards its occult dangers points directly to our own well-founded fear of such man-made elements as plutonium; and his chapter on the "cracks in the Great Wall" gives solid metaphysical grounding to our twenty-first century demonology, including the UFO phenomenon. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's works of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the 'ancient wisdom', formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as 'normal'. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the 'rise of the masses'-Guénon predicts a reign of 'inverted quality' just before the end of the age: the triumph of the 'counter-initiation', the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works.

Of the books published regarding hyperinflation, this may be the only one that provides effective strategies for operating a business under conditions of a rapidly depreciating currency. "The Hyperinflation Survival Guide: Strategies for American Businesses" was written by Dr. Gerald Swanson (an associate professor of economics at the University of Arizona). Harry E. Figgie, Jr. sponsored the research and production of this book. As it was originally printed in 1989, it was way ahead of its time. However, this doesn't change the fact that this book will prove to be an excellent resource for businessmen and individuals once the Federal Reserve's destruction of the U.S. dollar enters its terminal stage.

Murray Rothbard was known as the state's greatest living enemy, and this book is his most powerful statement on the topic. He explains what a state is and what it is not. He shows how it is an institution that violates all that we hold as honest and moral, and how it operates under a false cover. He shows how the state wrecks freedom, destroys civilization, and threatens all lives and property and social well being, all under the veneer of "good intentions."