Autumn 2008. The financial world is on fire. Barack Obama and John McCain are fighting for the presidency, and nobody in America is paying attention to the earthquake hitting Swiss banking. But Birkenfeld is watching every crack form from his ankle-monitored life in Boston.
Forty-two chapters. Almost a year of posts. Stories spanning from 1637 to 2018, from Amsterdam flower auctions to cryptocurrency exchanges. And here I am, writing the last post in this series.
Forty-two chapters. Almost a year of posts. Stories spanning from 1637 to 2018, from Amsterdam flower auctions to cryptocurrency exchanges. And here I am, writing the last post in this series.
Before the killing fields of Poland, there was Russia. And what happened there in the summer of 1941 set the template for everything that followed.
Birkenfeld was supposed to testify before the Senate. Instead, he watched the whole thing from a couch with a beer.
After 42 chapters of booms, busts, manias, and crashes, Torsten Dennin does something unexpected in the Outlook and Epilogue of “From Tulips to Bitcoins.” He looks forward. And what he sees is a setup for the next big commodity cycle. The numbers he puts on the table are brutal enough to explain why.
After 42 chapters of booms, busts, manias, and crashes, Torsten Dennin does something unexpected in the Outlook and Epilogue of “From Tulips to Bitcoins.” He looks forward. And what he sees is a setup for the next big commodity cycle. The numbers he puts on the table are brutal enough to explain why.
How does a police force built to keep order end up carrying out one of history’s worst crimes? That is the story of Chapter 2.
Birkenfeld is now a free man with an ankle monitor and no passport. The guy who handed the US government the biggest tax fraud case in history is being treated like a flight risk. Welcome to the twilight zone.
We started this whole series with a guy paying a house price for three flower bulbs in 1637. Forty-one chapters later, we end with a guy paying 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas. Chapter 42 of Torsten Dennin’s “From Tulips to Bitcoins” (ISBN: 978-1-63299-227-7) tells the story of the biggest financial bubble in human history. Bigger than tulips. Bigger than gold. Bigger than anything we covered in this book. And it happened in our lifetime.