The Economist this week came out with its review of “The Age of Cryptocurrency,” saying, essentially, that it’s a serious book worth reading, one that digs deep into the reasons that bitcoin is significant as a topic, beyond all the manic stuff you read in the media.

Here’s a clip, though we’d recommend reading the whole thing:

For any book on bitcoin to be worth reading, though, it has to delve further: into the crypto-currency’s ideological and technical roots, for instance, or what it adds to the narrative of money, or even what its economic and political impact may be. The currency’s dollar price may be three-quarters down on its peak, but the underlying technology also provides plenty of intellectual fodder—and is unlikely to go away. So there is plenty to write about if you are serious.

Paul Vigna and Michael Casey, two journalists at the Wall Street Journal, are certainly serious.

The tone is somewhat dismissive of bitcoin (“The rise and fall of the crypto-currency is good news for authors at least”), and it treats some of the other bitcoin books out there harshly. But it does highlight many of the big-picture issues we explore: the debate about the nature of money, and where cryptocurrencies lie within that; the potential to bootstrap the unbanked into the modern world, a slow-rolling revolution in finance. All in all, it’s a very positive review and we’re really pleased to get our first notice from such an august name.