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Book Talk: Once a Bitcoin Miner with Ethan Lou

Date
November 23, 2021
Time
12:30 PM EST - 1:00 PM EST
Location
Online via Zoom
Contact
Laura Greflund, laura.greflund@torontomu.ca
Once a Bitcoin Miner with Ethan Lou

Host

Alumni Relations

Description

Join us on November 23rd for a book talk with author, journalist and Toronto Metropolitan University alumnus, Ethan Lou (Journalism ’15). Ethan will discuss his latest book, Once a Bitcoin Miner: Scandal and Turmoil in the Cryptocurrency Wild West. (external link) 

In Once a Bitcoin Miner, Ethan takes readers on a richly told first-person narrative through the proverbial cryptocurrency Wild West. From investing in Bitcoin in university to his time writing for Reuters, and then mining the digital asset ― Ethan meets the likes of the late Gerald Cotten (of QuadrigaCX) and a co-founder of Ethereum, and hangs out in North Korea with Virgil Griffith, the man later arrested for allegedly teaching blockchain to the totalitarian state.

Coming of age in the 2008 financial crisis, Ethan’s generation has a natural affinity with this rebel internet money, this so-called millennial gold, created in the wake of that economic storm. At once a personal story of adventure and fortune, this book is also a work of journalistic rigor, a deep dive into this domain that everyone hears about, yet which nobody truly knows, into the lives of the fast-talkers, the exiles, the ambitious, and the daring, forging their paths in a new world harsh and unpredictable.

About the author

Ethan Lou is a journalist and author. His latest book is Once a Bitcoin Miner: Scandal and Turmoil in the Cryptocurrency Wild West. Lou’s previous book, Field Notes from a Pandemic, equal parts travelogue and COVID-19 deep dive, was named among the CBC’s best Canadian nonfiction for 2020 and shortlisted for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. His writing has appeared in publications around the world, including the Guardian and the Washington Post. Lou is a former Reuters reporter and has served as a visiting journalist at the University of British Columbia. 

For more information about Ethan and his work, please visit his website (external link) .

Moderator

Laleh Samarbakhsh, Associate Professor and Chair of Finance, Ted Rogers School of Management
Laleh Samarbakhsh, Associate Professor and Chair of Finance, Ted Rogers School of Management

Dr. Laleh Samarbakhsh is an associate professor and chair of Finance at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research interests include corporate finance, empirical asset pricing, hedge funds, cryptocurrencies, derivatives, and financial crises. She has published several academic papers in Finance Research Letters, Journal of Financial Stability, International Review of Finance, International Journal of Managerial Finance, and Journal of Economics and Finance. She has also performed and published research in financial education and pedagogy. She currently supervises graduate students at TRSM and has taught courses in Managerial Finance, Personal Finance, and Corporate Finance, and is the recipient of the 2019 Dean’s Teaching Award of Excellence. Dr. Samarbakhsh is the associate Editor of the Global Finance Journal and her work has been featured in the media including National Post, Financial Post, and CBC. Prior to joining Toronto Metropolitan University, Dr. Samarbakhsh has worked as Anti-money laundry Quantitative Analyst at TD Securities in Toronto.