Following Seveneves and Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon is the third Neil Stephenson book I have read. Weirdly, I stumbled over all three books in different second hand book shops.

The story is built around the theme of cryptography. The author takes you into two major storylines. The first is about the encryption arms race between the Allies and the Axis forces during World War II. In the second storyline, which plays in the late 1990s, the characters use encryption to build a secure data haven. Established in a authocratic South East Asian country this data haven is built to host permissionless files and establish a digital currency pegged to gold.

I read this book during my trip through India whenever we were driving between places. I enjoyed the character and relationship development and the nerdy explanations of the different technologies (one time pad encryption, van eck phreaking, etc.) at play. While India is not The Philippines, reading this book in a hot and busy country brought the main characters’ adventures in the Philippines to life even more.