At the end of 2017, Bitcoin mania was in full swing. Prices of the digital currency had reached a record high of about $20,000 a pop. Wall Street banks were rushing to get in on the frenzy. Egged on by hyperbolic cheerleaders, small-time investors socked their savings in the so-called cryptocurrency.
And then, just as you would expect of an asset whose value had increased exponentially in the blink of an eye, the bubble burst. The price of Bitcoins fell by about 80 percent (though it has rebounded some lately). Mainstream financial institutions scurried away, jittery about the currency's susceptibility to manipulation and money laundering. Many individuals who put their faith in the digital currency saw their fortunes erased.
In “Bitcoin Billionaires,” Ben Mezrich chronicles the dizzying rise of the digital currency, through the eyes of two of its biggest boosters: the celebrity twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. He doesn't get around to detailing the nausea-inducing fall.
The Winklevoss brothers are best known for their public brawl with the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. They all attended Harvard together, and the twins later claimed in a lawsuit that Zuckerberg stole their idea for his social network. That story is well known thanks in part to Mezrich's previous book, “The Accidental Billionaires.” (It was adapted by Aaron Sorkin into the award-winning film “The Social Network.”)
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