"Cryptocurrency payments moving frictionlessly across borders. Blockchain-based supply chains delivering products faster, with greater transparency. NFTs generating real value for creators and consumers. Smart contracts executing automatically. Real applications of crypto and other decentralized technology are multiplying exponentially in organizations of all kinds. What do you and your company need to know and do today to create new opportunities like these and avoid disruption?

"When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world's youngest billionaire and crypto's Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?

"Brian Armstrong stepped onto the stage with quiet confidence. He turned to the audience and shared his idea with the simple slogan: "Coinbase, the easiest way to get started with Bitcoin." For a moment late in 2018, one Bitcoin, which physically amounts to a few electrons blipping on a tiny bit of silicon, was worth $20,000-the same as a pound of gold. Libertarian technologists who believed Bitcoin would be the foundation of a new world order saw the moment as an apotheosis.

"Bitcoin became a buzzword overnight. A cyber-enigma with an enthusiastic following, it pops up in headlines and fuels endless media debate. You can apparently use it to buy anything from coffee to cars, yet few people seem to truly understand what it is. This raises the question: Why should anyone care about Bitcoin? In The Age of Cryptocurrency, Wall Street journalists Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey deliver the definitive answer to this question.

"A New York Times investigative reporter wades into the murky, pixelated waters of the multibillion-dollar NFT market, a virtual casino of speculation and volatility that tests the nature of value itself. In 2021, when the gavel fell at Christie's on the sale of Mike Winkelmann's Everydays series-a compilation of 5,000 digital artworks-it made a thunderous announcement: Non-fungible tokens had arrived. The ludicrous world of CryptoKitties and Bored Apes had just produced a piece of art worth $69.3 million (at least according to the highest bidder).

"A propulsive story of a new breed of investigators who have cracked the Bitcoin blockchain, taking once-anonymous realms of money, drugs, and violence and holding them up to the light. Black markets have always thrived in the shadows of society. Increasingly, these enterprises-drug dealing, money laundering, human trafficking, terrorist funding-have found their shadows online. Digital crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of.