The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

Author's Preface to 2021 Update

Money

Primitive Moneys

Monetary Metals

• Why Gold?
• Roman Golden Age and Decline
• Byzantium and the Bezant
• The Renaissance
• La Belle Époque

Government Money

• Monetary Nationalism and the End of the Free World
• The Interwar Era
• World War II and Bretton Woods
• Government Money's Track Record

Money and Time Preference

• Monetary Inflation
• Saving and Capital Accumulation
• Innovations: “Zero to One” versus “One to Many”
• Artistic Flourishing

Capitalism's Information System

• Capital Market Socialism
• Business Cycles and Financial Crises
• Sound Basis for Trade

Sound Money and Individual Freedom

• Should Government Manage the Money Supply?
• Unsound Money and Perpetual War
• Limited versus Omnipotent Government
• The Bezzle

Digital Money

• Bitcoin as Digital Cash
• Supply, Value, and Transactions

What Is Bitcoin Good For?

• Store of Value
• Individual Sovereignty
• International and Online Settlement
• Global Unit of Account

Bitcoin Questions

• Is Bitcoin Mining a Waste?
• Out of Control: Why Nobody Can Change Bitcoin
• Antifragility
• Can Bitcoin Scale?
• Is Bitcoin for Criminals?
• How to Kill Bitcoin: A Beginners' Guide
• Hacking
• The 51% Attack
• Hardware Backdoors
• Internet and Infrastructure Attacks
• Rise in Cost of Nodes and Drop in Their Numbers
• The Breaking of the SHA-256 Hashing Algorithm
• A Return to Sound Money
• Altcoins
• Blockchain Technology11
• Potential Applications of Blockchain Technology
• The Economic Drawbacks of Blockchain Technology
• Blockchain Technology as a Mechanism for Producing Electronic Cash