What is the book?

Would Mao Hold Bitcoin is my ambitious attempt as a writer to simplify two very complex topics: China’s techno-nationalist rise as it embarked on a path of economic reform post-1978, and bitcoin’s intersect in that history.

The larger question that emerges is not just the specifics of that history and the characters and story that come out of it, but rather what the clash between the top-down Chinese state driven model of tech innovation and bottoms-up open source development from bitcoin means for our future.

Who am I?

I’m Roger Huang, a writer that has been thinking and exploring bitcoin since 2013. I’ve been published in TechCrunch, Forbes, VentureBeat, Entrepreneur, the Hong Kong Free Press, the Toronto Star, the Los Angeles Review of Books and cited in AP, Wired, and other outlets related to bitcoin, and thoughts on China. My writing has covered everything from the rise of the digital yuan, to Hong Kong’s protest movement.

What is covered?

There are eight chapters and an introduction currently. Subjects that are covered include:

1- The price history of Bitcoin, and Chinese party-state actions that have led to its rise and fall – why does China want to ban Bitcoin so much? And what does it mean to “ban Bitcoin” – and why that matters for your freedoms and your wallet.

2- The rise of the Digital Yuan and how the Chinese party-state is trying to challenge the US dollar and develop a new standard for Central Bank Digital Currencies that it wants to export around the world.

3- How Chinese entrepreneurs played a major role in the Bitcoin ecosystem and continue to do so, from Bitcoin mining to creating some of the world’s largest exchanges such as FTX and Binance.

4- How the Chinese Internet discusses Bitcoin and what Chinese investors think about Bitcoin.

5- How the battle between state-driven technological development, from “blockchain” to the social credit score will play out against open-source freedomtech like Bitcoin and Nostr.