Why Alex Tapscott Quit His High-Paying Job to Write a Bitcoin Book

A report arguing for decentralized models to help scale Bitcoin eventually became the basis for the book proposal.

"In 2015, I quit my job at the age of 29 to do something I had never done, which was to write a book with no idea what was to come next. ." Fast forward seven years later, Alex Tapscott is now a Canadian business author, known for his national bestseller Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World. of his writing projects, Tapscott is also the founder and CEO of digital asset investment firm NextBlock as well as the co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute with his father, Don Tapscott.

But what prompted the young Tapscott at the time to write about an asset class unknown to the general public? In an interview with Cointelegraph, Tapscott explained that the idea came from his father during an annual ski trip:

"My dad is an academic, author, consultant, etc. at the University of Toronto who studies how new technologies enable new forms of solving global problems. And one of the technologies we're trying to better understand is bitcoin. And then he asked me, "Would you be interested in participating as an author or leading one of these research projects?" At the time, I was working in a service position financiers at investment banking, so I was immediately interested in that."

The idea was met with skepticism at first. "Admittedly, many of my colleagues were confused; they thought I was crazy to quit a well-paying job to write a book." Additionally, Tapscott said he and his father were met with hostility by many in the business world. “A lot of people thought crypto was just bad. But part of me felt the need to chase that kind of dream.”

And after months of debate, analysis and criticism while working alongside his father on Blockchain Revolution, it became reality. Ultimately, the book became a big hit when it was published in 2016, just when a much wider audience became interested in learning more about the technology. Block...