This post refers to the history of physical bitcoins, to the man who devoted an entire book to it. So you have two options, either send a few merits to this post, or volunteer to contribute to the creation of a new chapter of the book. Unfortunately, I do not have any merit to appreciate this post, so I'll leave it here.
This was a nice surprise, as I don't frequent the forum as much as I used to. The response here is heartwarming.
To clarify, the 'Revised Edition' came out less than a year after the first, and only had a few extra pages- it is a hardcover 'coffee table book', and is an improvement upon the original softcover in terms of design, presentability, and some updated information.
Interestingly, the book was written in the first place was because I got PM's here saying I should expand upon the Casascius eBook I published in 2014. When I began writing the Encyclopedia in late 2014, the projected length was much shorter, but the amount of coins grew exponentially over the 2-year writing process.
One of the challenges of the Encyclopedia was that it was not possible to get all the specs like size, weight, or denomination of all coins, or even quality images or information, of all coins. Further, come coins were far less interesting and remarkable than others. As such some coins needed to be left out, as adding bits and pieces of incomplete and seemingly insignificant info would have make the final result look disjointed. The scope of 'physical bitcoins' is large, and you would be surprised by just how many ICO's and crypto startups created metal coins or plastic chips. Luckily, the Encyclopedia was out before ICO's became a thing. Then there are whole other closely related areas: 'crypto bills' and 'crypto cards'. I will note here, that the book did credit BitBills in the Foreword though they were not part of the primary material.
While I love the book format, I think the best first step for the next iteration is to create an
openly accessible online resource that lists as many coins as possible along with all available specs and links to primary sources. As there is so much more "physical crypto" material than before, this would need to be sourced by
a team of researchers initially, and later crowd-sourced with a simple mechanism for new entries and specific pieces of data to be continually submitted and published. I have the initial framework ready for this database ready to go, as well as a basic version set up for Casascius coins at
https://www.cryptonumist.com/casascius-gallery/In this new iteration, I envision that each entry could credit the name(s) of whoever contributed data.
Let's make this happen- once the information is all in one place, I can actually put it into a book, perhaps editions such as "Physical Bitcoin: 2017-2019 - The ICO Era', etc.
Consider this a call for volunteer researchers
