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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Expert financial guide to understand the technology, potential, and disruptive effects of crypto
In The Little Book of Bitcoin, founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital Anthony Scaramucci delivers a comprehensive guide to understand disruption in the financial industry as a result of the emergence and increasing prominence of digital asset technology. Drawing on his involvement in the SkyBridge Bitcoin Fund which has $310 million in assets under management, this book runs the gambit from basic concepts all the way to implications of decentralized finance on the financial industry and society as a whole.
In this book, readers will learn about:
- Hashes, blockchains, and mining, and how these three processes sync up like an orchestra to make global participation in crypto possible
- Bitcoin as digital gold, and its similarities and differences to other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum
- Trading different cryptocurrencies, both popular and lesser known, through centralized platforms like Binance and decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms like Uniswap
- Promising technology to facilitate anonymized legitimacy called “zero knowledge proof” and how it works
The Little Book of Bitcoin is an essential up-to-date guide to digital assets and associated technologies for all individuals, from hedge fund managers to newcomer retail investors, seeking to understand and prepare for a new world of finance.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 222
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
About the Foreword Author
Preface
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Time to Go Exploring
Chapter Three: The World’s Most Profitable Paddleboard Lesson
Chapter Four: Why Bitcoin?
Chapter Five: The Coin Itself
Chapter Six: Money, Money, Money
Chapter Seven: The Pivot
Chapter Eight: The Paul Tudor Jones Effect
Chapter Nine: The Musk Man Giveth and Taketh
Chapter Ten: A Little Bit of Salt
Chapter Eleven: The Start of the Crypto Winter
Chapter Twelve: Wall Street Comes Calling
Chapter Thirteen: From Butter to Bitcoin
Chapter Fourteen: Mr. Wonderful Has a Change of Heart
Chapter Fifteen: The ETFs Are Coming
Chapter Sixteen: Getting Started
Start Small: No Rush
Target Reached – Now What?
Exchange-Traded Funds, Futures, or Bitcoin?
Up, Down, Sideways
The Cost of Producing Bitcoin
Costs Basis/Charts
Chapter Seventeen: Your Journey
Acknowledgments
About the Author
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
About the Foreword Author
Preface
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
End User License Agreement
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Little Book Big Profits Series
In the Little Book series, the brightest icons in the financial world write on topics that range from tried-and-true investment strategies to tomorrow’s new trends. Each book offers a unique perspective on investing, allowing the reader to pick and choose from the very best in investment advice today.
Books in the Little Book series include:
The Little Book of Investing Like the Pros by Pearl and Rosenbaum
The Little Book That Still Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt
The Little Book That Saves Your Assets by David M. Darst
The Little Book That Builds Wealth by Pat Dorsey
The Little Book That Makes You Rich by Louis Navellier
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle
The Little Book of Value Investing by Christopher Browne
The Little Book of Big Dividends by Charles B. Carlson
The Little Book of Main Street Money by Jonathan Clements
The Little Book of Trading by Michael W. Covel
The Little Book of Valuation by Aswath Damodaran
The Little Book of Economics by Greg Ip
The Little Book of Sideways Markets by Vitaliy N. Katsenelson
The Little Book of Big Profits from Small Stocks by Hilary Kramer
The Little Book of Currency Trading by Kathy Lien
The Little Book of Bull’s Eye Investing by John Mauldin
The Little Book of Emerging Markets by Mark Mobius
The Little Book of Behavioral Investing by James Montier
The Little Book of Hedge Funds by Anthony Scaramucci
The Little Book of Bull Moves by Peter D. Schiff
The Little Book of Alternative Investments by Stein and DeMuth
The Little Book of Bulletproof Investing by Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth
The Little Book of Commodity Investing by John R. Stephenson
The Little Book of the Shrinking Dollar by Addison Wiggin
The Little Book of Stock Market Profits by Mitch Zacks
The Little Book of Safe Money by Jason Zweig
The Little Book of Zen Money by The Seven Dollar Millionaire
The Little Book of Picking Top Stocks by Martin S. Fridson
The Little Book of Robo Investing by Elizabeth MacBride and Quian Liu
The Little Book of Trading Options Like the Pros by David Berns and Michael Green
The Little Book of Impact Investing by Priya Parrish
The Litte Book of Market Myths by Ken Fisher, Lara W. Hoffmans and Chris Ciarmiello
The Litte Book of Hedge Funds, Second Edition by Anthony Scaramucci
THE LITTLE BOOK OF BITCOIN
What You Need to Know that Wall Street Has Already Figured Out
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI
Copyright © 2025 by Anthony Scaramucci. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
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ISBN 9781394286645 (Cloth)ISBN 9781394286652 (ePDF)ISBN 9781394286669 (ePub)
COVER DESIGN: PAUL MCCARTHY
Foreword
IN THE 20TH CENTURY, the global financial system was built on familiar assets—real estate, stocks, and bonds—all functioning within legacy systems designed for a world that moved at the pace of telephone wires and trading floors. Wealth was managed through a network of trusted intermediaries: governments, banks, and corporations that assured the safe custody and growth of capital. Yet, the twenty-first century brings with it new expectations—a world where speed, intelligence, and resilience are paramount, and where the younger generation seeks a financial system as dynamic as the technology that defines their lives.
Capital is the lifeblood of this economic engine—a force that drives innovation, growth, and prosperity. In its quest for optimal allocation, capital must flow seamlessly among investors, corporations, money managers, and entrepreneurs. While many assets can store capital, only a select few possess the qualities—liquidity, durability, divisibility, portability, and fungibility—that elevate them to the status of money.
In the nineteenth century, gold was the cornerstone of this system. It was the ultimate store of value, revered for its scarcity and stability. However, as the twentieth century unfolded, it became clear that gold, despite its merits, could not keep pace with an increasingly interconnected and fast-moving global economy. The world needed a more agile and responsive form of money, leading to the adoption of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, backed by U.S. Treasury Bills rather than gold.
Gold, while stable, is inherently inflationary—its supply increases by approximately 2% per year. This gradual dilution of value forces holders to seek productive investments that yield returns sufficient to outpace inflation. For decades, the dollar, linked to gold and later free-floating, promised a similar stability with greater utility in a growing global economy. But with the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, the world entered an era of fiat currency, where the dollar’s value was no longer tethered to a physical asset.
Central banks and economists aimed to manage this new system by controlling inflation, targeting an annual rate of 2%—a synthetic attempt to mimic the slow and steady inflation of gold. However, this approach proved far more complex in practice. Inflation is difficult to measure accurately and even harder to control. The metrics used—CPI, PPI, PCE—are imperfect and frequently revised, making comparisons across time unreliable. In reality, since the abandonment of the gold standard, the U.S. dollar has experienced inflation rates ranging from 7–10% annually, with weaker currencies suffering even more.
For families, corporations, and governments capitalized in these currencies, the long-term erosion of value is staggering. A currency with 7% inflation loses nearly all its purchasing power over a century. In economies with higher inflation, this loss occurs within a single generation. Investors understand that holding cash or government debt is a losing strategy, yet many corporations and institutions are constrained by regulations and traditions that limit their options, resulting in a consistent erosion of real returns.
For those in the developing world, the challenges are even greater. Entrepreneurs and institutions must navigate unstable currencies, unreliable banking systems, and political risks that can wipe out savings overnight. The traditional financial system, with its cumbersome processes and limited accessibility, is ill-suited to meet the needs of a world that operates at the speed of the internet.
This is where Bitcoin enters the scene—a technology born from the recognition that the twenty-first century demands a new form of money, one that is not just faster and smarter but fundamentally stronger. When Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin, he did more than create a digital currency; he reimagined the very concept of money. By enabling the transfer and custody of assets without the need for trusted intermediaries, Bitcoin established itself as the first true digital commodity—an asset that exists purely in cyberspace, untethered from the physical and political constraints of the traditional financial system.
Bitcoin’s breakthrough lies in its deflationary nature—a fixed supply of 21 million coins ensures that it is immune to the inflationary pressures that plague fiat currencies and even gold. This design elevates Bitcoin from a mere digital asset to a revolutionary form of money, one that conserves economic energy across both space and time. Unlike any other asset in history, Bitcoin offers the possibility of perpetual value preservation.
Imagine moving vast sums of money across the globe in seconds, or storing wealth that can last not just for decades but for centuries. Bitcoin’s decentralized network operates continuously, enabling seamless, instant transactions between any two entities, anywhere in the world. It is not just a new form of money; it is a new financial infrastructure—one that is open to all, resilient against censorship, and capable of powering an economy that operates at the speed of light.
But perhaps the most profound impact of Bitcoin is its ability to preserve value over time. Traditional assets degrade; their economic life is limited by inflation, depreciation, and mismanagement. In contrast, Bitcoin’s maintenance costs are minuscule, making it the first asset with the potential for economic immortality. As a primary treasury reserve asset, Bitcoin can extend the life span of corporations, institutions, and even governments, ensuring that wealth is preserved and protected for future generations.
With Bitcoin, humanity has taken a monumental step forward—from slow, sound metallic money to fast, weak financial money, to the dawn of a stronger, faster, and smarter digital money. We are entering the era of sound money once again, but this time, it is built for the digital age.
The future is not just bright—it is transformative.
—Michael Saylor, CEO MicroStrategy
About the Foreword Author
WHEN MICHAEL SAYLOR WASN’T seeing into the future, he was dreaming of it.
The son of a career Air Force officer, Saylor moved around a lot as he grew up on various military bases. He was always fascinated by aeronautics and the promise of what the future held. Like many children of that era, Saylor wanted to be an astronaut or fighter pilot, or perhaps even a rock star. When not directly pursuing those goals, he’d spend hours exploring the worlds created by science-fiction greats Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov. The stories may have been fantastical, but there was a real message in all of them: technology can make tomorrow possible.
A standout student, Saylor scored 1,540 out of a possible 1,600 on his SAT and enrolled at MIT, where he double majored in aeronautics and science. To pay for college, Saylor joined the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps. It was a dream come true. After all, this was during the time of Top Gun when nothing was more glamorous than flying an F-16. One could argue that is still the case. A mistaken medical diagnosis prevented him from fulfilling that dream, and when budget cuts sent him into the reserves, Saylor found himself jobless. But the setback sent him on a new trajectory, one that would take him to even greater heights: entrepreneur.
Through a friend, Saylor found a job in software working for DuPont. He immediately impressed, and before long, at the age of 24, the company gave him office space and funds to start his new business: MicroStrategy. It would be the last place he would ever work. It would also go on to make him a billionaire many times over. Saylor recognized early just how powerful software could be in helping companies become leaner and more efficient at using information and data to make business decisions.
I first met Saylor over Zoom during the pandemic, well after he had established himself as a voice of authority in the Bitcoin community. The fabulous Peter Briger, a Fortress partner and a Bitcoin OG, introduced us. In advance of our meeting, I read his 2012 book, The Mobile Wave, and immediately proceeded to flog myself for not reading it earlier. I would’ve made a fortune. In it, Saylor laid out why Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google were going to decimate the world. You see, Saylor understood what differentiated a Palm Pilot from an Apple iPhone, why Facebook was different from Myspace. In his view, those companies allowed software to jump from a computer to a handset, or as he described it, from a solid state to a vapor one. Software would no longer exist on a computer; it would follow us, sleep with and always surround us. In his view, these tech giants weren’t even companies – they were networks. Networks for retail (Amazon), networks for social outlets (Facebook, now Meta), networks for information (Google, now Alphabet). They were vehicles that dematerialized products and services. Instead of a physical map, you could have a virtual one that could not only offer you directions but also give you the latest traffic info. Goodbye Thomas Guide, goodbye shadow traffic reporter on the radio. Now, with an iPhone, you could snap photos of yourself and instantly send it to a friend, with comments! Goodbye cameras. Goodbye film. Goodbye postcards.
These companies were going to destroy or change every industry they touched. And they were going to make a fortune doing so. With Apple, Facebook, and Google trading at all-year highs in the early 2010s and every investor screaming “bubble,” Saylor ignored the prices of these behemoths and instead focused on the factors that were driving them. He proceeded to buy $50 million worth of those stocks. He turned it into $500 million.
The move netted him a small fortune, but it did something else, it awakened a simple investment principle that would guide him, and it was this: if you want to make money, find a dominant digital network and invest in it, and then invest in it some more. Eventually, all the doubters, all the haters, all the people who mocked it and didn’t understand the technology, who applied traditional metrics to a never-before-seen asset, those same people would have to come around, because not owning those networks would be tantamount to shorting the market.
But Saylor’s success was not without regrets, albeit high-quality ones. He regretted not buying more, and he regretted ever selling. Most investors would be thrilled with making 10 times their money. And to be fair, Saylor was. But what bothered him most was that in his gut he knew these companies were more than just stocks. They were change agents. They represented physical shares in progress, in the future he always held dear. So, to Saylor, selling, or not buying more, didn’t represent a prudent financial decision. In some ways it was the opposite. He let price, not promise, determine his actions.
He had another regret as well.
While the investment was a personal success, his company didn’t participate, and that missed opportunity left a lasting impression on him. He made a promise to himself. If ever there were a transformative technology to come around again, he wouldn’t simply buy a position and write a book about it. No, he would never make that mistake again. Instead, he would buy it personally and corporately and then tweet about it religiously.
Bitcoin would be that second chance.
He initially wasn’t a big supporter of Bitcoin; in fact, he was very skeptical of it in the early days. But once he did come around, he realized the future of value was staring him right in the face, something that even his science-fiction heroes could never have imagined, and he would go all in, more so than he had with Apple and Amazon a decade ago. Bitcoin displayed many of the same traits as those companies. It was disruptive. It dematerialized entrenched industries. It was universally doubted and mocked by many. And it was going higher. But this time, he wouldn’t just buy it personally; he would extend MicroStrategy’s treasury and add Bitcoin to the company’s balance sheet and, in doing so, make the boldest statement yet about where he thought this new asset class was going.
And again, he was right.
I’ve had the privilege to get to know Michael both professionally and personally. I’m proud to call him a colleague, but I’m prouder to call him a friend. Michael has a gifted mind. It doesn’t work like ours. My brain is a Mercedes. His is a Bugatti. He sees things that others don’t and can explain them in simple terms that others can’t. He’s been a terrific ambassador to the Coin. He’s been a trusted source of wisdom for me. He’s a genius, and I don’t use that term lightly. I cannot thank him enough for guiding me through this new and exciting world. And I could not be happier to include him in this book.
Preface
GREAT INVESTMENTS DON’T COME around too often. But when they do, it’s like magic. They can create generational wealth. They can also make up for the many bad investments you’ve made or likely will make over your lifetime. I know they have for me. Think Nike in the 1980s. Microsoft in the 1990s. Apple in the 2000s. Tesla in the 2010s. You get the picture here. Transformational companies that create new industries while disrupting old ones. The story was staring you right in the face. You could see the price action, but for whatever reason, you didn’t invest, or more accurately, you didn’t invest enough. The train left the station without you and the untold millions you would’ve made.
If only.
I know this feeling. I know it well, and if we’re being honest, you probably know it, too. I was lucky that I didn’t make the same mistake with Bitcoin, although after reading this book you’ll learn just how close I came to missing out on that one as well. I first learned about Bitcoin in 2012. It was just the beginning of the mobile Internet. Technology was just beginning to shape the lives we now know. Facebook. Amazon. Google. These companies were just starting to assert their dominance in ways investors had never imagined even 5 or 10 years earlier. Some called them overvalued. Many credited their surging stock prices to ultra-low interest rates. They were considered tech stocks, but as the world would later find out, those companies would impact every aspect of our lives. Now everything is tech, or tech adjacent. Name one major company whose business you don’t interact with using a smartphone. In short, these handful of companies changed the world, and investors in them were handsomely rewarded. But by the time everyone realized the full impact, the majority of the gains had been made.
I’d like to think when I first learned about Bitcoin that I was smart enough to realize its potential. I did not, at least initially. I took the same jaundiced eye that many traditional Wall Streeters took. Digital Internet money? Yeah, right! You have to remember, I’m the son of Italian immigrants who grew up on Long Island in the 1960s and 1970s. I’m hard-wired to detect a scam or anything that could separate me or my customers from our hard-earned cash. I’m also a 30-year veteran of Wall Street who worked at places like Goldman Sachs and Neuberger Berman. Even when I struck out to start my own asset management firm, I was still very much part of the traditional financial system. I knew stocks, bonds, derivatives, FX, and all the traditional investments, and I knew them well. What I did not know in 2012 was that I was staring at possibly the greatest investment of all time. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Better even than Apple or Amazon circa 2000. The investment equivalent of fire or the wheel. Unfortunately, it took me eight years until I realized that, but when I did, I fully jumped into the world of the Coin.
Of course, few journeys are taken alone. And I was blessed to be guided by some of the best investors in the world. Some were friends. Some became friends. But they are all legends. In this book, you’ll hear their stories, too. People like Michael Saylor. Peter Briger. Michael Novogratz. Wences Casares. The Bitcoin OGs. These people are all investors and entrepreneurs who saw the power of this new technology and moved before anyone else. You’ll learn how they were able to see the future and have the courage to go not just against conventional wisdom but also against some of the biggest names in finance, the Bitcoin haters. The Jamie Dimons of the world. Warren Buffett. Charlie Munger. In a business where reputation is everything, the Bitcoin OGs were willing to risk it all. Their conviction inspired me to do the same. So, in 2020, when I transitioned SkyBridge from a traditional Wall Street, fund-of-funds business into a Bitcoin firm, I knew I was risking more than just my money. I was risking my reputation. But after learning about this new asset class, I knew the risks of not jumping in were far greater than playing it safe. Trust me when I say it wasn’t easy. I took more than my fair share of hits, snide comments, and invective from the establishment financial community. I ignored them. True wealth is created not by seeking the approval of others. True wealth is found when you make your own path.
And that’s one of the reasons I wrote this book. Beyond a simple understanding of how Bitcoin works, or why it should be a part of anyone’s portfolio, what I hope this book also teaches you is how to see beyond the clutter and distractions that too often impede our financial decisions. Letting outside opinions determine your own can lead to dire consequences, both personally and professionally. There may be safety in crowds, but a herd mentality can be dangerous to your money. The brilliant investors who thumbed their nose at Bitcoin weren’t stupid or incapable of understanding how it worked. I suspect in most cases their aversion to Bitcoin had more to do with how they perceived their involvement may tarnish their reputations. Could a billionaire many times over admit to possibly being wrong about maybe
