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The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking Illustrated Edition
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A comprehensive and authoritative exploration of Bitcoin and its place in monetary history
When a pseudonymous programmer introduced “a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party” to a small online mailing list in 2008, very few people paid attention. Ten years later, and against all odds, this upstart autonomous decentralized software offers an unstoppable and globally accessible hard money alternative to modern central banks. The Bitcoin Standard analyzes the historical context to the rise of Bitcoin, the economic properties that have allowed it to grow quickly, and its likely economic, political, and social implications.
While Bitcoin is an invention of the digital age, the problem it purports to solve is as old as human society itself: transferring value across time and space. Author Saifedean Ammous takes the reader on an engaging journey through the history of technologies performing the functions of money, from primitive systems of trading limestones and seashells, to metals, coins, the gold standard, and modern government debt. Exploring what gave these technologies their monetary role, and how most lost it, provides the reader with a good idea of what makes for sound money, and sets the stage for an economic discussion of its consequences for individual and societal future-orientation, capital accumulation, trade, peace, culture, and art. Compellingly, Ammous shows that it is no coincidence that the loftiest achievements of humanity have come in societies enjoying the benefits of sound monetary regimes, nor is it coincidental that monetary collapse has usually accompanied civilizational collapse.
With this background in place, the book moves on to explain the operation of Bitcoin in a functional and intuitive way. Bitcoin is a decentralized, distributed piece of software that converts electricity and processing power into indisputably accurate records, thus allowing its users to utilize the Internet to perform the traditional functions of money without having to rely on, or trust, any authorities or infrastructure in the physical world. Bitcoin is thus best understood as the first successfully implemented form of digital cash and digital hard money. With an automated and perfectly predictable monetary policy, and the ability to perform final settlement of large sums across the world in a matter of minutes, Bitcoin’s real competitive edge might just be as a store of value and network for the final settlement of large payments―a digital form of gold with a built-in settlement infrastructure.
Ammous’ firm grasp of the technological possibilities as well as the historical realities of monetary evolution provides for a fascinating exploration of the ramifications of voluntary free market money. As it challenges the most sacred of government monopolies, Bitcoin shifts the pendulum of sovereignty away from governments in favor of individuals, offering us the tantalizing possibility of a world where money is fully extricated from politics and unrestrained by borders.
The final chapter of the book explores some of the most common questions surrounding Bitcoin: Is Bitcoin mining a waste of energy? Is Bitcoin for criminals? Who controls Bitcoin, and can they change it if they please? How can Bitcoin be killed? And what to make of all the thousands of Bitcoin knockoffs, and the many supposed applications of Bitcoin’s ‘block chain technology’? The Bitcoin Standard is the essential resource for a clear understanding of the rise of the Internet’s decentralized, apolitical, free-market alternative to national central banks.
- ISBN-101119473861
- ISBN-13978-1119473862
- EditionIllustrated
- PublisherWiley
- Publication dateApril 24, 2018
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions6.1 x 1.1 x 9.22 inches
- Print length304 pages
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"I have spent my entire career studying works about monetary theory, the gold standard, comparative monetary systems, central banks, and proposals for monetary and financial reform. I would rate a tiny fraction of the books I have read about any one of these topics as excellent. Dr. Ammous' book, The Bitcoin Standard, contains an excellent treatment of all these topics in addition to one of the few enlightened and enlightening accounts of Bitcoin that I have come across. It is essential reading for anyone interested in learning the role Bitcoin could play in a future regime of free and sound money."
―Joseph Salerno, Academic Vice President, Mises Institute
"This book blew my mind; it is a work of genius. It put together the technical, economic, motivational and related issues around Bitcoin better than anything I've seen. The best compliment I can give this book is that I read it and I decided to buy $425m of bitcoin. It was the most impactful on our way of thinking in Microstrategy and it made us want to invert our balance sheet to base it on a bitcoin standard."
―Michael Saylor, cofounder, chairman, and CEO of Microstrategy
"The Bitcoin Standard is an incredible book."
―Russel Okung, NFL Super Bowl winner
"Dr. Saifedean Ammous gave us the definitive book on digital money with The Bitcoin Standard, a must-read for anyone interested in monetary tech and worried about ruinous fiat regimes. Now his online academy gives students access to the man himself, an opportunity to learn economics as it should be taught: at market prices, online, with no wasted time or material. Ammous is a brilliant and concise teacher of Austrian school economics, and I cannot recommend his courses highly enough."
―Jeff Deist, President, Mises Institute
"Hoy les recomiendo EL Patròn Bitcoin, este libro es el mejor y más importante para entender Bitcoin."
―Ricardo Salinas Pliego, Founder and Chairman of Grupo Salinas
"The Bitcoin Standard is a great book. A really good book. It helps you understand why bitcoin is so special and so real."
―Kiril Sokoloff, Chairman and founder, 13D Global Strategy & Research
From the Inside Flap
When a pseudonymous programmer introduced "a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party" to a small online mailing list in 2008, very few paid attention. Ten years later, and against all odds, this upstart autonomous decentralized software offers an unstoppable and globally- accessible hard money alternative to modern central banks. The Bitcoin Standard analyzes the historical context to the rise of Bitcoin, the economic properties that have allowed it to grow quickly, and its likely economic, political, and social implications.
While Bitcoin is a new invention of the digital age, the problem it purports to solve is as old as human society itself: transferring value across time and space. Ammous takes the reader on an engaging journey through the history of technologies performing the functions of money, from primitive systems of trading limestones and seashells, to metals, coins, the gold standard, and modern government debt. Exploring what gave these technologies their monetary role, and how most lost it, provides the reader with a good idea of what makes for sound money, and sets the stage for an economic discussion of its consequences for individual and societal future-orientation, capital accumulation, trade, peace, culture, and art. Compellingly, Ammous shows that it is no coincidence that the loftiest achievements of humanity have come in societies enjoying the benefits of sound monetary regimes, nor is it coincidental that monetary collapse has usually accompanied civilizational collapse.
With this background in place, the book moves on to explain the operation of Bitcoin in a functional and intuitive way. Bitcoin is a decentralized, distributed piece of software that converts electricity and processing power into indisputably accurate records, thus allowing its users to utilize the Internet to perform the traditional functions of money without having to rely on, or trust, any authorities or infrastructure in the physical world. Bitcoin is thus best understood as the first successfully implemented form of digital cash and digital hard money. With an automated and perfectly predictable monetary policy, and the ability to perform final settlement of large sums across the world in a matter of minutes, Bitcoin's real competitive edge might just be as a store of value and network for final settlement of large payments—a digital form of gold with a built-in settlement infrastructure.
Ammous' firm grasp of the technological possibilities as well as the historical realities of monetary evolution provides for a fascinating exploration of the ramifications of voluntary free market money. As it challenges the most sacred of government monopolies, Bitcoin shifts the pendulum of sovereignty away from governments in favor of individuals, offering us the tantalizing possibility of a world where money is fully extricated from politics and unrestrained by borders.
The final chapter of the book explores some of the most common questions surrounding Bitcoin: Is Bitcoin mining a waste of energy? Is Bitcoin for criminals? Who controls Bitcoin, and can they change it if they please? How can Bitcoin be killed? And what to make of all the thousands of Bitcoin knock-offs, and the many supposed applications of Bitcoin's 'blockchain technology'? The Bitcoin Standard is the essential resource for a clear understanding of the rise of the Internet's decentralized, apolitical, free-market alternative to national central banks.
From the Back Cover
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO BITCOIN'S HISTORY, PROPERTIES, USES, AND FUTURE
In The Bitcoin Standard, economist Saifedean Ammous walks readers through the fascinating history of the technologies of money and explores what gave these technologies their monetary role, how they lost it, what that teaches us about the desirable features of money, and how Bitcoin is designed to improve on these technologies. Ammous elucidates the economic, social, cultural, and political benefits of sound money over unsound money to allow for an informed discussion of the potential role Bitcoin could play in the digital economy of the future. Rather than as a currency for criminals or a cheap mass consumer payment network, this book argues Bitcoin is emerging as a decentralized, politically neutral, free-market alternative to national central banks, with potentially enormous implications for individual freedom and prosperity. For anyone looking for a clear understanding of this new digital money, The Bitcoin Standard is the essential resource.
"The Bitcoin Standard should be required reading for everyone in modern society. It offers a concise and coherent narrative of monetary theory, the history of money, practical economics, and the impact of political policy on business, culture, and the economy. The book contains perhaps one of the best articulations of the virtues of strong money and the dangers of weak currency yet presented in modern literature. The Bitcoing Standard also masterfully debunks the myths of modern monetary theory and the broken ideas that have dominated the fiat economic school of thought since the early 20th century."
—From the Foreword by Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy
"I have spent my entire career studying works about monetary theory, the gold standard, comparative monetary systems, central banks, and proposals for monetary and financial reform. I would rate a tiny fraction of the books I have read about any of these topics as excellent. Dr. Ammous' book, The Bitcoin Standard, contains an excellent treatment of these topics in addtion to one of the few enlightened and enlightening accounts of bitcoin that I have come across. It is essential reading for anyone interested in learning the role bitcoin could play in a future regime of free and sound money."
—Dr. Joseph T. Salerno, Academic Vice President of the Mises Institute & Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Wiley; Illustrated edition (April 24, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1119473861
- ISBN-13 : 978-1119473862
- Item Weight : 1.26 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.1 x 1.1 x 9.22 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Digital Currencies
- #3 in Money & Monetary Policy (Books)
- #6 in E-commerce Professional (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Saifedean Ammous is an internationally best-selling economist and author. In 2018, Ammous authored The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, the best-selling book on bitcoin, published in 37 languages. In 2021, he published The Fiat Standard: The Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization, available in 26 languages. In 2023, Saifedean published Principles of Economics, a comprehensive textbook in economics in the Austrian school tradition, published in 14 languages. Saifedean teaches courses on the economics of bitcoin, and economics in the Austrian school tradition, on his online learning platform Saifedean.com, and also hosts The Bitcoin Standard Podcast.
Saifedean was a professor of Economics at the Lebanese American University from 2009 to 2019. He holds a PhD in Sustainable Development from Columbia University, a Masters in Development Management from the London School of Economics, and a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut.
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However, there are two flaws the reader has to look past to get the most from this book.
One is repetition, especially towards the end. Sadly, this is commonplace these days. Authors have 70-80 pages of material but seem to feel like it’s not a real book unless they can turn it into 250-300 pages. I’ll pay for a short, concise book if it has something valuable to say.
The second flaw is more unique to this book. The author strays far from his subject matter to poop all over all kinds of things.
He clearly despises John Maynard Keynes. That’s fine. But Keynes’ personal life has nothing to do with the subject of this book. And usually when an author resorts to attacking a person rather than that person’s ideas, that means the author’s ideas can’t stand up to the ideas it is criticizing, and thus has to attack the person behind the ideas to distract the reader.
This is an unfortunate “self-own” / own-goal by Ammous, because his ideas clearly have merit. He should have let them stand on their own. The second half of Chapter 5 and parts of Chapter 7 can be skipped by anyone interested solely in the topic the book purports to cover.
He also poops all over modern society and sees the era of the gold standard as a utopia that would return if we simply used bitcoin. For example, “Any industry in which people complain about their [jerk] boss is likely part of the [problem of loose money] because bosses can only really afford to be [jerks] in [this] economic fake reality….” In his hard-money utopia, “bosses who mistreat their workers will either lose the workers to competitors or destroy their business quickly.” Does he not remember that in the era of hard money he longs for many bosses literally owned and beat their workers? Hard money doesn't guarantee a society free of jerk bosses.
And can one really consider the rocket engine and transistor simply iterations on or somehow less significant inventions than the internal-combusting engine and lightbulb? Based on Ammous commentary you’d have to believe that.
He resorts to evidence-free assertions that the arts, culture, and society of yesteryear are better than today’s. None of this is empirically verifiable, and more importantly, none of it is relevant to his arguments about. “It was hard money that financed Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos while easy money financed Miley Cyrus’s twerks.” Please. There was plenty of the equivalent of twerking happening in Bach’s day, and there is art produced the last few decades that will last for centuries. The anguish he cites of Michelangelo over his art reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s over some of his, despite Leonard Cohen being part of our debauched soft-money era. And the poem he cites from Michelangelo is no more void of ego than some of the modern pop artists the author disdains. The author cherry-picks once-in-a-century artists of the past and compares them to some of the basest performers of today, a false comparison, and one he doesn’t even pretend to back up with any evidence or argument.
“[O]nly long pretentious diatribes shaming others for not understanding the work give it value.” This is his criticism of modern artists. The lack of irony with which he writes this, given it describes the exact chapter it appears in, shows a sad lack of self-awareness. He should have kept these off-topic opinions to himself rather than letting it soil what is otherwise the really solid case he is making.
All of this is a sad and distracting (as evidenced by how much I’m writing about these digressions compared to the book as a whole) digression from the point of his thesis. It really deserves reducing my rating by 2-stars. But because I still recommend this book despite those flaws, I’m only deducting 1 star and giving it a 4-star rating.
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Reviewed in Brazil on April 29, 2024