Ethan Lou is a Canadian journalist and the author of a new book called Once a Bitcoin Miner: Scandal and Turmoil in the Cryptocurrency Wild West. The book explains how Ethan had gone to North Korea and met the Ethereum Foundation's Virgil Griffith — the man later arrested for allegedly trying to help the totalitarian state break sanctions through blockchain. Griffith pleaded guilty last Monday, and this book grants an exclusive insider's look into those seven nights in Pyongyang.

Why you should listen:

As well as covering Ethan's adventures in North Korea, and stories from the early days of bitcoin, Ethan takes stock of a world that is sometimes hostile. Ethan's millennial generation sees itself as inheriting a collapsing world, weighed by dread and meaninglessness. Stylistically evoking the western genre, this book presents Bitcoin and its insular community, bursting with wealth, as representing a new form of the frontier myth.

The book is an example of the sort of gonzo, adventure journalism for which Ethan has been known. Field Notes from a Pandemic, an accidental journey around the world at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, was named among the CBC's best domestic nonfiction of the year and shortlisted for Kobo's emerging writer award.

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