The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

Before reading The Bitcoin Standard, my understanding of money was pretty basic: you earn it, you spend it, and sometimes the number in your bank account goes up or down seemingly at random. Bitcoin? That was just that confusing internet money thing people argued about online.Saifedean Ammous didn't just explain Bitcoin; he took me on a journey through the history of money itself, from primitive seashells to gold standards to the current fiat system. And let me tell you, that journey is eye-opening. He makes a compelling case for why Bitcoin isn't just another digital fad, but a potential paradigm shift in how we think about value, scarcity, and freedom from centralized control.This book is incredibly well-researched and argued. Ammous has a knack for explaining complex economic concepts in a way that's both rigorous and surprisingly readable. It's not just for the crypto-bros; it's for anyone who's ever wondered why prices keep going up, or what gives money its value in the first place.Reading this book felt like getting a fundamental upgrade to my understanding of the world's financial plumbing. It challenged my assumptions and gave me a completely new perspective on economics and technology.If you want to move beyond the headlines and understand the fundamental principles behind Bitcoin and why it matters, The Bitcoin Standard is an essential read. It's insightful, thought-provoking, and might just change the way you view money forever. Highly, highly recommended!

This book was very helpful to me and I highly recommend. Bitcoin is admittedly an extremely obscure and abstract concept, but once understood, is almost unfathomably enlightening. When one looks at the world around them and sees all the ills and craziness, it's often possible to trace the underlying issue back to a bad incentives created by bad money. This bad money regime is enabled by an ever-present, yet often unseen, handful of individuals who single-handedly possess the ability to take from some to give to others (often in the form of taking from those on the margin and giving to those whose needs are already met). This book is in laymen's terms and is suitable for most everyone, regardless of prior experience with finance, money or business. The book answers a question most have never thought to ponder, "What is money, exactly?". The book provides a great overview of the history of money, lays out the characteristics that make for both good and bad money and finishes with an overview of how Bitcoin was created as a potential solution to some of the negative aspects present in today's fiat money system. Lastly, the book concludes with a balanced pros/cons discussion and highlights potential scenarios that would lead to both Bitcoin working and not working. Though it sounds hyperbole, this book completely changed the way I view money, finance, business, free markets and the world as a whole. Bitcoin provides a plausible avenue to a better world. As the quip from the famous Charlie Munger ironically goes, "show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome". Bitcoin represents a paradigm shift and realignment in the underlying incentive structure driving outcomes in the world we live in. Cheers and I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.

Excellent book! A must-read even if you don't care about Bitcoin.The author discusses the foundations of what makes 'sound' money and describes how, over history, we've departed from these foundations, leading to a recurring set of consequences that inevitably end with the downfall of the currency and sometimes of the civilization/country. In particular, I found the history of the Roman currency interesting and telling.Later, the book discusses why gold has historically been a great store of value, and shows hard numbers that prove that it fits the conditions previously described as ideal for sound money. This part of the book feels airtight in its logic.As the author moves on to the era of fiat money, the book helped me understand the significance of Bretton Woods, the Nixon shock, as well as understand how the Keynesian, Monetarist and Austrian school of political economy understand the cycles of capitalism. I had not previously realized that despite the fact that centralized economies are no longer considered sound economic policies, the way that our Central Banks control the interest rate and currency emission is a residue of that kind of thinking. And, in the context of Democratic governments vying for the public's support, this gives Governments a tool that offers immediate short-term relief in exchange for fuzzy long-term pain which most likely will be felt by the next administration. Many of the vices of populist governments are fundamentally exploiting this loophole.The book became less insightful to me in the last 20% as it discusses Bitcoin. The discussion is centered around the properties that make it a suitable sound currency for the future, relating them to the previously established framework. While the conclusions are generally correct, Bitcoin is discussed entirely on an economic level and you won't find many technical details or explanations relating the technical design to its emerging properties.