Sleuths demystify cryptocurrency
The year was 2011. Cryptocurrency was a little-understood novelty, and Sen. Chuck Schumer called a news conference to vent outrage over a one-stop online shop for illegal drugs whose technology made sellers “virtually untraceable.”
The New York lawmaker’s description of Silk Road helped seed a persisting myth that technology reporter Andy Greenberg exhaustively dispels in “Tracers in the Dark,” that transactions of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can’t be tracked.
Greenberg sketches the evolution of a wholly new discipline in the surprisingly lively real-life police procedural, following law officers and programmers who invent and deploy cryptocurrency-tracking tools to catch a new breed of criminal. They take down Silk Road and other “dark web” markets and merchants, finger crypto money launderers and snare the system administrator and users of Welcome to Video, a major South Korea-based distributor of child sexual abuse material.
In the spotlight are Armenian-born accountant-turned-IRS agent Tigran Gambaryan and Danish programmer Michael Groniger, co-founder of Chainalysis, a pioneer in commercial crypto-tracking that counts law enforcement and intelligence agencies among its main customers. Readers also meet academic crypto-tracking pioneer Sarah Meiklejohn, a meticulous prosecutor’s daughter.
Greenberg deftly teases out technical detail without slowing the narrative. A writer for Wired magazine, he has done this in other titles charting the beginnings of tech phenomena.
For all their success tracking cybercurrencies,
the heroes of Greenberg’s book are frustrated by a lack of legal cooperation, from Russia in particular. None of the tools smithed by programmers at Chainalysis and its competitors — Elliptic and TRM Labs among them — can put away a thief that justice cannot reach. — Frank Bajak, Associated Press
The title of film historian Steven Bingen’s book
is reminiscent of B-movie trailers of the 1950s that breathlessly hype “The Most Important Picture of the Year!” But like many of those overripe flicks, “The 50 MGM Films that Transformed Hollywood” can be entertaining, too.
The qualifications for getting on the list are surprisingly squishy. Bingen doesn’t limit himself to the “real” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer productions created by or inside the Culver City studio ruled by moguls such as Louis B. Mayer. He writes as if any milestone in MGM’s journey — success or failure, trendsetter or swan song — is transformative given MGM’s starring role in Hollywood history.
He also counts “films” as theatrical releases, television productions,
cartoons and documentaries financed, distributed or later acquired by MGM throughout its corporate history. That means MGM stalwarts like “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) and “Forbidden Planet” (1956) sit side by side with “Dr. No” (1962), first of the James Bond films released by United Artists but acquired years later by MGM. Such dings aside, Bingen’s book offers thoughtful essays sprinkled with fun trivia.
Bingen’s best analyses come when he juxtaposes related films to achieve greater salience for both, such as examining the divergence between the World War II standard “Battleground” (1949) and the more elegiac “The Red Badge of Courage” (1951).
But “50 MGM Films” can descend into flabby writing and occasional errors. For instance, by no means was HAL 9000 a “robot” in “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968).
Hardcore aficionados and budding cinephiles alike can enjoy Bingen’s informed take on the titles. “50 MGM Films” proves that strands of the studio’s corporate and creative DNA continue to influence today’s entertainment.