Anyway, Red Team Blues describes a modern day whodunit investigation by the protagonist Martin Hench. In the story, a cryptographic backdoor is programmed into a fictional cryptocurrency called Trustcoin. This backdoor seems to fall into the wrong hands and Martin's job is to recover the cryptographic keys. Furthermore in the story, Trustcoin is explained to be better than Bitcoin because one can interact on this blockchain privately. This sounds a lot like the real-world usage of Cashu e-cash, Fedimint, Liquid, Monero or Beam just to name a few projects that either build on Bitcoin, or roll their own Blockchain.
Without giving away any spoilers, about 2/5 into the story Martin and his client both think he's solved the mystery. He is then to be paid about $300 million. Several pages in the book are then used to describe how that much money can move hands. It is in worldwide real estates, numbered accounts, weird sounding LLCs on the Cayman Islands, and so on.
This book came out in 2023, so I would guess Cory should know that holding and moving $300 million in Bitcoin is trivially simple. Also, he could have known that building yet another privacy crypto project is nonsense because money tends to be winner-take-most. But I guess that would have made the story shorter and less interesting? Or maybe he, like most people, isn't understanding how truly useful and liquid Bitcoin and adjacent projects are yet?
I guess only mis-understanding Bitcoin can make one a sceptic, and only misunderstanding it gives you the need to make a 'better' alternative. It so happens that this week I was listening to a podcast episode on Tetragrammaton where Rick Rubin is interviewing Jack Mallers. In it, he explains the how?, what? and why? of Bitcoin. If you want to understand Bitcoin better, give the episode a listen. Bonus: even the adverts on this podcast are a joy to listen to. I only wish more podcasts were made with such love for the craft.
