Bitcoin is one of the most talked about but least understood technological innovations of recent years, continuing to draw new backers on Wall Street and Silicon Valley. New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper's book, Digital Gold, illuminates this confounding technology through the first ever narrative recounting of Bitcoin's dramatic rise to prominence, which benefited from access to all the major players. He will be joined on stage by the programmer who has been leading the Bitcoin project since 2010, Gavin Andresen, and one of the biggest venture capitalists to back the technology, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. The conversation will be instigated by New York Times columnist and CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin.
GAVIN ANDRESEN is the Chief Scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation and is one of the longest serving and most widely respected developers of the Bitcoin protocol. Prior to this, he wrote 3D graphics software in Silicon Valley.
NATHANIEL POPPER is a reporter at The New York Times, where he has covered the intersections between Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Before joining the Times, he worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Forward. Popper grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from Harvard College. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN is a financial columnist for The New York Times , a co-anchor of CNBC's "Squawk Box," and the editor-at-large of DealBook, a news site he founded that is published by The Times. Sorkin is the author of the best-selling book,Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves. Sorkin co-produced an HBO adaptation of the book, which was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards. He has won numerous journalistic honors including two Gerald Loeb award and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Sorkin began writing for The New York Times in 1995 under unusual circumstances: he hadn't yet graduated from high school.
FRED WILSON has been a venture capitalist since 1987. He currently is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures and also founded Flatiron Partners. Fred has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Fred is married with three kids and lives in New York City.
