A History of Digital Currency in the United States

New Technology in an Unregulated Market

This book presents detailed case studies of the first commercial internet digital currency systems developed between 1996 and 2004. Transactions completed with the new technology circumvented all US financial regulations, an opening that transnational criminals exploited. Mullan explains how an entire industry of companies, agents, and participants turned a blind eye to crimes being committed in this unsupervised environment. He then tracks the subsequent changes made to US regulations that now prevent such unlicensed activity, illustrating the importance of supervising products and industries that arise from new disruptive technology. This book distills hundreds of hours of interviews with the creators and operators of early digital currency businesses to create detailed case studies of their practices.