The bitcoin standard: the decentralized alternative to central banking Ebook

In The Bitcoin Standard, Saifedean Ammous discusses the history of various currencies throughout the world, before discussing the future of bitcoin as digital cash. The first part of the book explains money, its function and properties. By understanding the problems money attempts to solve, one can elucidate what makes for sound and unsound money, and apply that conceptual framework to understand how and why various goods, such as metals, government money, and Bitcoin, have served the function of money, and how and why they may have failed at it. The second part of the book discusses the individual, social, and global implications of sound and unsound forms of money throughout history, while the third focuses on critically analyzing the possible uses of Bitcoin as a form of money. The final chapter provides a guide to using Bitcoin, written to help the reader understand the economics of Bitcoin, and how it serves as the digital iteration of the many technologies used to fulfil the functions of money throughout history.