BitGlobal

In the last part of the story I had programmed to insert a money-laundering subplot, and when the moment came I started to research on the net to check whether new money-laundering techniques had been invented, that may be no one had ever described in a novel. It was so that I bumped into bitcoin.

At that point in time, bitcoin was almost unknown in Italy. The only documents available on the net came essentially from the USA, and focused on one hand on the risks related to its possible criminal misuse (bitcoin’s use as currency was still almost nil, and also its market value and trades were extremely low), and on the other hand on its technical aspects.

These latter, indeed, were what hit my attention in the first place. The idea of a currency whose functioning was based on the solution of a mathematical problem seemed to me so fascinating that I decided not to waste it for a mere digression of a story (that of L’Ultimo Cliente) that was already solid enough in itself – instead, I would have dedicated an entire new novel to it. It was so that, after only two months of finishing the script of L’Ultimo Cliente, I started to work on BitGlobal.

Right from the start, though, I realized that the subject was much wider than I had figured: in order to understand bitcoin, one has to study the history of money, and when I put myself to that (a thing that I would have never imagined), an unconceivable window opened before me. On the past, but also and most importantly on the future.

For those that might be interested, below are main bibliographic sources as well as an excerpt of my searches, filed in separate folders by their subject matter.

Ludwig Von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, Pacific Publishing Studio, 2010

Glynn Davies, A History of Money, University of Wales Press, 2002

Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, Penguin Books, 2009

Jack Weatherford, The History of Money, Three Rivers Press, 1997

Roberto Petrini, Controstoria della moneta, Imprimatur Editore, 2014

Luca Fantacci, La moneta. Storia di un’istituzione mancata, Marsilio, 2005

Massimo Amato, L’enigma della moneta, et al. edizioni, 2012

AA.VV., La teoria della moneta dai classici a Keynes, Liguori, 1981

Giorgio Ruffolo, Testa o croce. Una breve storia della moneta, Einaudi, 2011

Greg Steinmetz, Il creatore di re. Storia vera di Jacob Fugger, Baldini&Castoldi, 2016

Charles Munger-Warren Buffet, La parabola di Basicland e Perché le azioni battono l’oro, Nextam Partners, 2012

Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed, Fourth Estate, 2002

Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance, Windmill Books, 2010

Satyajit Das, Traders, Guns & Money, Financial Times Publishing, 2012

Michael Lewis, The Big Short, Rizzoli, 2011

Benjamin Guttmann, Bitcoin - Guida completa, LSWR, 2014

James Cox, Bitcoin and Digital Currencies, Laissez Faire Books, 2013

Paul Vigna- Michael J. Casey, The Age of Cryptocurrency, St. Martin’s Press, 2015