The Investigative Odyssey of the DAO Hack

Matthew Leising, a reporter at Bloomberg who began covering crypto in 2015, is out with a new book Out of the Ether: The Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist that Almost Destroyed It All. In this episode, he discusses:

• the catalyst that led to him writing his new book, which covers the early history of Ethereum and the DAO attack of 2016
• why he thought the story of the DAO hack was compelling enough to make a book, and how he went about reporting it
• the surprising things he learned about Ethereum’s early days and Vitalik
• the twists and turns during his quest to discover the identity of the DAO attacker
• why he thinks separate people were responsible for the two biggest DAO attacks
• his meeting in Tokyo with one of the prime suspects of a copycat DAO attack
• why he decided to end his story at the Ethereum hard fork and chose not to write about Ethereum Classic 
• what he feels the long-term significance of the DAO and the hard fork has been for Ethereum
• why he thinks the lessons of the DAO are not being heeded today
• what he thinks the next chapter of Ethereum will be and how it will unfold
• the differences he’s found as a journalist covering crypto as opposed to covering more traditional finance
• and how the book is about more than just the DAO

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Episode links: 

Matthew Leising: https://twitter.com/mattleising

Out of the Ether: The Amazing Story of Ethereum and the $55 Million Heist that Almost Destroyed It All: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Out+of+the+Ether%3A+The+Amazing+Story+of+Ethereum+and+the+%2455+Million+Heist+that+Almost+Destroyed+It+All-p-9781119602934

Matt's original Bloomberg article on the DAO attack, "The Ether Thief": https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-the-ether-thief/

Excerpt in Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-16/a-trip-down-the-crypto-rabbit-hole-in-search-of-the-dao-hacker

Excerpt in CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/55m-hack-ethereum-down

Decrypt's interview with Matt about the book: https://decrypt.co/41952/book-sheds-new-light-on-ethereums-55-million-dao-hack

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