If you’ve ever seen Jake Adelstein’s prior work, such as The Last Yakuza or watched the HBO drama Tokyo Vice, you might expect his latest book, The Devil Takes Bitcoin, to be a gritty exposé of Bitcoin’s criminal underbelly.
And you’d be mostly right. Adelstein delivers a captivating memoir centered on the fall of the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, Mt. Gox, and the crackdown on the darknet marketplace Silk Road — showing what happens when good intentions, money and a flawed justice system collide.
But it’s the message that sets it apart. Adelstein argues it’s this “tragicomic” series of events that ultimately propelled Bitcoin to where it is today — similar to how the porn industry secretly drove the rise of the internet.
“Weirdly and unfortunately, one of the things that propelled the power of Bitcoin was crime,” Adelstein tells Magazine.
“And what powered Bitcoin was Silk Road and the desire to buy drugs and things you wanted that you’re embarrassed to order with your credit card. Mt. Gox and Bitcoin were that forum and that propelled interest in it,” he argues.
“That’s not relevant to what Bitcoin is anymore, but it is an interesting way that it started. If you didn’t have the Silk Road, you wouldn’t have Bitcoin.”
Great read, but crypto natives could skip a few chapters
While Adelstein delivers an engaging storyline filled with corrupt federal agents, tech millionaires, drugs and money, the book could do with some edits to get into the thick of things more quickly.
The Devil Takes Bitcoin begins with an almost philosophical introduction to Bitcoin, and to a broader extent, the evil that comes from the “love of money.”
Readers then get a first taste of action via the prologue — the Japanese police knocking on the door of Mark Karpeles, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, in 2015, whom they suspected of cooking the books of his bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange.
But two chapters later, Adelstein switches gears again, recounting his journey to uncover the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto — like a mini-version of The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto, written by Benjamin Wallace, which Coinpectra also recently reviewed.
Like many before him, Adelstein sifts through a list of known and likely candidates, poring over emails and Bitcoin discussion posts, which, as always, yield no concrete results and leave the reader wondering what the point was.
Dirty cops, Silk Road, Mt. Gox’s cats
Around chapter four, Adelstein starts to get into his stride, writing in striking detail about the rise of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, an American Eagle Scout and libertarian with noble intentions, who got his “online Amazon” for drugs started by growing magic mushrooms in a Texas cabin and selling them.
The tale, as we know, eventually ends in Ulbricht being given two consecutive life sentences and 40 years in prison. He was famously pardoned this year.
However, what many may not know is how two corrupt US agents were able to line their pockets as it all unfolded, which the US government probably hoped would be swept under the rug. Adelstein airs it all out in true-crime fashion.
We also find out that Adelstein was one of two people in the room with Mt. Gox’s Mark Karpeles on the day he was arrested. He coached Karpeles on what to say and what not to say to Japanese interrogators. We discover that Japan’s justice system is pretty loose with the “innocent until proven guilty” principle, with a conviction rate of around 99%.
Adelstein was even assigned the task of taking care of Karpeles’ two cats, despite being deathly allergic to them.
This leads to the best part of the book as Adelstein and fellow reporter Nathalie Kyoko Stucky sought to uncover the real hacker behind Mt. Gox’s 800,000 missing Bitcoin. Sharing beers with IRS Special Agent Tigran Gambaryan (also known as The Bitcoin Wizard) in a Japanese bar, the three worked out a plan that eventually led them to identify the real villain.
Should you read The Devil Takes Bitcoin?
If you read French and have come across J’ai vendu mon âme en Bitcoin (I sold my soul for Bitcoin), you’ll find many similarities to The Devil Takes Bitcoin.
This is because Adelstein released an earlier version of this book in 2019 in French, around four days before fellow Frenchman Mark Karpeles’ trial.
“The book, originally in French, has a very unsatisfying ending because I have no idea what’s going to happen. And also, I didn’t have permission from Tigran Gambaryan to use his name because he was still in the IRS,” he says.
“So the level of detail that I could put in there was extremely limited.”
For the majority of readers who don’t speak French and aren’t Bitcoin OGs who were actually around when the legendary events occurred, The Devil Takes Bitcoin is a worthwhile dip into some of the wilder early days of Bitcoin.
Perhaps most notably, it has left me more confident about the legitimacy of Bitcoin than ever. That, despite its murky past, the so-called “collapses” and media attacks, Bitcoin is changing the world for the better.
“I think of Mt. Gox now as a tragicomic prelude to what came next, and how it ultimately changed the economy, much like how a bad dinner date can eventually lead to a happy marriage — just not in the way you expected.”
“This is the story with a surprisingly happy ending for some people,” adds Adelstein.
“I mean, Karpeles doesn’t go to jail for the rest of his life. He gets out of prison, and that’s good. Satoshi Nakamoto isn’t identified, and I think that’s a good thing for him.”
Even Adelstein’s wife, who he says took two years to read Adelstein’s Tokyo Noir, seemed to like this one, finishing it in just three to four days.
“She’s like ‘yeah, it wasn’t boring and nobody died,’” recalls Adelstein, laughing.
Felix Ng
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