CANR
WORK TITLE: The Trolls of Wall Street
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.nathanielpopper.com/
CITY: Oakland
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME: CA 388
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married Elissa Strauss; children: one.
EDUCATION:Harvard University, graduated.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist. Forward, New York, NY, reporter; Los Angeles Times, New York, NY, New York business correspondent; New York Times, New York, NY, business reporter, 2012—early 2020s; Tarbell Fellowship, journalist in residence. Previously worked on a research station in Puerto Rico. Also worked as a coproducer on the 2023 Optimist Films documentary This Is Not Financial Advice and a consulting producer for the 2024 Netflix show Bitconned.
AWARDS:Fellowships from organizations, including the International Center for Journalists.
WRITINGS
In addition to his work for the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, has been a contributor to numerous periodicals and magazines, including The Nation and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
SIDELIGHTS
Nathaniel Popper is a journalist whose work focuses on financial markets. He holds a degree from Harvard University. Popper began his career as a journalist at the Forward, a Jewish periodical. At the Forward, he covered subjects ranging from the kosher meat industry and the competition for the role of Ukraine’s chief rabbi. Popper’s next position was New York business correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. In 2012, Popper became a reporter for the New York Times, writing on financial markets.
One of the subjects about which Popper writes in the New York Times is the new digital currency Bitcoin. In 2015, he wrote a book called Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money. In an interview with Laura Shin, a contributor to the Forbes Web site, Popper discussed the benefits of Bitcoin: “This is money that can, in itself, be transferred very quickly anywhere very cheaply without needing to go through a central institution that can say yes or no or screw up or add security risk into the equation.” Popper continued: “It’s good for transmitting either very large or very small amounts of money either over very large distances or very small distances—like transferring money to a friend across the table, or to someone in China rather than through existing systems. People think of this as replacing cash, but I think that’s not one of the places where you see much uptake—partially because cash already does a pretty good job. The idea behind the creation of this was to create something that could serve as cash in the digital world.” In the book, Popper profiles Bitcoin’s mysterious inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto. He explains how the currency became popular among businessmen and criminals alike and comments on its repercussions for the finance industry.
James Downer, a contributor to the Coin Desk Web site, offered a favorable review of Digital Gold, stating: “It’s a compelling and extensive narrative that gives a reader a personal look at the heroes and villains of bitcoin’s brief history. Digital Gold presents the most extensive history of bitcoin thus far, making it an invaluable page-turner for bitcoin aficionados and newbies alike.” Downer added: “ Digital Gold is a must read for anyone interested in understanding what many consider to be the greatest invention since the Internet.” Writing on the Quartz Web site, Tim Fernholz suggested: “ Digital Gold, the new book from journalist Nathaniel Popper, is an impressive accomplishment. No, it doesn’t clear up the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto, though Popper clearly has a favorite candidate for the role. But the book … is a lucid guide to the heady mix of innovation, ideology, avarice, and accident behind the burgeoning world of bitcoin, depicting the key players as they encounter and evangelize the new technology. And it does all this without getting drawn into the hyper-optimism or deep cynicism that seems endemic to commentary on bitcoin.” “This book is a great primer on bitcoin and it gives you a quick rundown of all the major players. It is a very human book—rarely does Popper get bogged down in technical terms—and it makes it clear that Bitcoin is a boon more for business and less a technoutopianist super- currency,” asserted John Biggs on the Tech Crunch Web site. Booklist reviewer David Siegfried described the volume as “a solid piece of reporting on a potentially disruptive technology to keep an eye on.” Ricardo Laskaris, a critic in Library Journal, commented: “This is an engrossing look at a system creatively designed to bring money into the twenty-first century.” “Readers may not be any less confused about … Bitcoin … when finished with this book, but they will certainly know enough to make intelligent choices.”
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After leaving the New York Times in the early 2020s, Popper became a journalist in residence at the Tarbell Fellowship. He also wrote his next book: The Trolls of Wall Street: How the Outcasts and Insurgents Are Hacking the Markets. The book focuses on Jaime Rogozinski, Jordan Zazzara, and the subreddit that Rogozinski founded, WallStreetBets. Popper chronicles how its emphasis on memes and trolling has upended Wall Street, particularly in the trading around GameStop and AMC, which caused a short squeeze that led to significant losses for some institutional investors. Popper also investigates how young Americans are changing how they view money, wealth, and finance, and the impact that could have on the wider culture.
“Popper’s account is densely detailed on both the financial and technical fronts,” wrote a reviewer in Kirkus Reviews. They predicted that “aspiring investors” would “learn some valuable information from the book.” The reviewer was pleased, however, that Popper “never loses focus on the people involved, however disaffected and conflicted.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2015, David Siegfried, review of Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money, p. 6.
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2015, review of Digital Gold; June 1, 2024, review of The Trolls of Wall Street: How the Outcasts and Insurgents Are Hacking the Markets.
Library Journal, May 15, 2015, Ricardo Laskaris, review of Digital Gold, p. 90.
ONLINE
Coin Desk, http:// www.coindesk.com/ (May 24, 2015), James Downer, review of Digital Gold.
Crunch Base, https:// www.crunchbase.com/ (February 17, 2016), author profile.
CryptoCoinsNews, https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/ (February 17, 2016), author interview.
Forbes Online, http:// www.forbes.com/ (January 27, 2016), Laura Shin, author interview.
Nathaniel Popper website, https://www.nathanielpopper.com (July 4, 2024).
Quartz, http://qz.com/ (May 15, 2015), Tim Fernholz, review of Digital Gold.
Tech Crunch, http:// techcrunch.com/ (May 26, 2015), John Biggs, review of Digital Gold.
Nathaniel Popper
Nathaniel Popper covers finance and technology from San Francisco for The New York Times. He is the author of "Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money." Before joining The Times he was a reporter at The Los Angeles Times and The Forward.
Nathaniel Popper is currently the journalist in residence at the Tarbell Fellowship.
He covered Wall Street and Silicon Valley for The New York Times for over a decade. Before that, he worked at the Forward and the Los Angeles Times in New York City. His work has been featured in several documentaries, including the recent Netflix production Bitconned.
Nathaniel’s first book was Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Reinventing Money. The book, the definitive account of Bitcoin’s origin story, was published by HarperCollins and was a New York Times Editors Choice, an Amazon Editors Pick, and a finalist for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year.
His upcoming book, The Trolls of Wall Street: How the Outcasts and Insurgents Are Hacking the Markets is a tale of money, masculinity, power and online culture. It will be released on June 11, 2024 by Dey Street Books.
Nathaniel is represented by Pilar Queen at United Talent Agencies.
Popper, Nathaniel THE TROLLS OF WALL STREET Dey Street/HarperCollins (NonFiction None) $32.50 6, 11 ISBN: 9780063205864
A sidelong though revealing look at the odd "laddish" subculture that has fueled private Wall Street trading for the last few years.
Whereas Ben Mezrich's The Antisocial Network and Spencer Jakab's The Revolution That Wasn't were straightforward takes on the GameStop meltdown, former New York Times finance and technology reporter Popper, author of Digital Gold, is more interested in some of the subthemes behind the debacle. Though he pays attention to the bigger picture, he is especially good in his portraits of the little actors whose interactions turned disastrous--and even dangerous. At the center of the narrative is WallStreetBets, an online forum that "fed into a whole universe of lonely, often mistrustful young men." The community arose at a time when many young men decided that they were just aggrieved enough to become vocal Trump supporters, some diving headlong into QAnon and 4chan, most venting at some point or another about the unfair economic cards they'd been handed after the recession of 2008. In the process, Popper writes, WallStreetBets and its founders remade the small-investment landscape: Whereas $21 billion came onto the table through amateur traders in 2019, four years later, that figure was $118 billion. Much of the side-bet activity centered on cryptocurrency. However, as a survey conducted by Charles Schwab revealed, those young investors "started with the goal of notching short-term wins but were learning from their mistakes and focusing more on long-term investing," democratizing the market with fresh blood and money. Popper's account is densely detailed on both the financial and technical fronts--aspiring investors will learn some valuable information--but the author never loses focus on the people involved, however disaffected and conflicted.
A look inside what one investing whiz kid called a Pandora's box--one that, Popper makes clear, won't soon be closed.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Popper, Nathaniel: THE TROLLS OF WALL STREET." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A795673833/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f900310e. Accessed 26 June 2024.