In 2008, while the world was busy panicking about the global financial crisis, a computer programmer going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto posted a message on an out-of-the-way mailing list. 'I've been working on a new electronic cash system,' he said. Nobody seemed to care. ‘It might make sense to get some just in case it catches on,’ he suggested.

How right he was. What he had programmed would become the world’s most famous alternative currency – Bitcoin. It would catch the zeitgeist in a way only two people foresaw. A cult of devotees was inspired – economists, anarchists, speculators, computer coders, libertarians, criminals, entrepreneurs. Early adopters would become multi-millionaires.

Now the suggestion is that Bitcoin will do to banking and finance what email did to the postal service and what the internet did to publishing: destroy old monopolies, creating new opportunities for the masses. Some even suggest that the technology behind Bitcoin – known as the block chain – will reform our Western systems of democracy, giving us the revolution so many are clamouring for.

In this gripping book, Dominic Frisby tells the amazing story of Bitcoin. He solves the mystery surrounding the identity of Bitcoin’s secretive creator. He shows how Bitcoin is going to change the world. And, perhaps most of all, he does something nobody else has hitherto been able to do: he explains in layman’s language how the bally thing works.