The Truth About Crypto: A Practical, Easy-to-Understand Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain, NFTs, and Other Digital AssetsPaperback (2024)

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A SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS FINALIST

A straightforward, practical guide to the newest frontier in investment strategy—crypto—from #1 New York Times bestselling author and personal finance expert Ric Edelman.

Blockchain and bitcoin are here to stay—and as the Bank of England stated, this new technology could “transform the global financial system.” No wonder PWC says blockchain technology will add $2 trillion to the world’s $80 trillion economy by 2030. Indeed, blockchain technology and the digital assets it makes possible are revolutionary, the most profound innovation for commerce since the invention of the internet.

And yet, the average investor—and the investment advisors who manage two-thirds of all their money—aren’t aware of all this, or of the incredible investment opportunities now available. Fortunately, Ric Edelman, one of the most influential experts in the financial field, shows investors how they can engage and thrive in today’s new investment marketplace.

Featuring the prophetic insights you’d expect from one of most acclaimed financial advisors, The Truth About Crypto is fun to read and easy to understand—and most importantly gives readers the sound, practical advice we all need to succeed with this new asset class. Best of all, Edelman shows how blockchain works, the difference between digital currency and digital assets, and a comprehensive look at every aspect of the field. This book is a must-read guide if you want to achieve investment success today.

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About the Author

Ric Edelman is among the financial profession’s most influential people according to Investment Advisor, RIABiz and InvestmentNews. Barron’s ranked him three times as the nation’s #1 Independent Financial Advisor and he’s in Research magazine’s Financial Advisor Hall of Fame. Ric is founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals and Funding Our Future Coalition and holds two patents for financial product innovation. Ric is the industry’s top financial educator, for thirty years the award-winning host of his national personal finance radio show. He’s also produced award-winning specials for Public Television, and is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of ten books on personal finance. He taught personal finance for nine years at Georgetown University and is now Distinguished Lecturer at Rowan University, which named its communications school the Ric Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts in 2020. Ric and his wife Jean live in Northern Virginia. They are benefactors of the Edelman Center for Nursing at Inova Hospital Foundation, the Edelman Indoor Arena at Northern Virginia Therapeutic Riding Program, and Rowan University’s Edelman Planetarium and Edelman Fossil Park.

Read an Excerpt

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Four Most Transformative Innovations in the History of Commerce All human advances are due to innovation—from new ways of thinking to the invention of new tools. In the world of commerce, it’s been suggested that the four most impactful innovations are:

• Fire
• The wheel
• The internet
• The blockchain

“You shouldn’t have asked me to show you how it works.”

Yeah, blockchain. Think of it as Internet 3.0. The first internet connected people on a mass scale—think Facebook and social media. You know how impactful that was (and still is). That led to Internet 2.0 (more commonly called IoT, the Internet of Things). This internet connects things to each other—my dog wears a collar that tells my phone if she leaves the yard. And at the grocer, a QR code tells the automated checkout kiosk that I’m buying a banana.

Internet 3.0 is the Internet of Money, aka blockchain. Connecting money via the internet is as transformative to commerce and society as the Internet of People and the Internet of Things have been, and because “money makes the world go ’round,” Internet 3.0 will prove to be even more impactful than its predecessors. The wealth-creation opportunities on a global scale are truly unprecedented.

Indeed, Nasdaq says blockchain technology “holds great promise in allowing capital markets to operate more efficiently with greater transparency and security.” The Bank of England (Great Britain’s central bank, comparable to our Federal Reserve) goes even further, saying blockchain technology could transform the world’s financial system. More than 90% of the world’s banks are developing blockchain technology; in 2021, Bank of America alone filed more than 160 patent applications involving digital payment technologies. JPMorgan Chase says banks will save $120 billion a year. Banks and other companies spent $6.6 billion on blockchain R&D in 2021 and will spend $19 billion annually by 2024, according to market intelligence firm IDC. Already, almost all the nation’s top colleges and universities offer courses in blockchain and digital assets, and blockchain engineers are now the highest-paid programmers in the country, earning $175,000+ a year. (According to LinkedIn, US job postings for “crypto” and “blockchain” positions skyrocketed 1,000% in 2021. Major financial services firms, including JPMorgan Chase, BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Capital One, UBS, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, and Barclays, hired 40% more crypto employees in 2021 than in the prior year. Jobs include sales professionals, workers designing crypto offerings for consumers, and engineers building blockchain platforms for banks.)

Excitement isn’t limited to the financial sector. MarketsandMarkets reports that the blockchain market will grow 53% per year, reaching $3.2 billion by 2026. For example, Billboard magazine says blockchain “offers solutions to intractable problems, such as song rights monitoring and reliable distribution of royalties and event tickets.”

All this helps explain why PricewaterhouseCoopers says blockchain technology will add nearly $2 trillion to the $80 trillion global economy by 2030. Transformative, indeed.