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SAIFEDEAN AMMOUS, PHD, is a Professor of Economics at the Lebanese American University, and member of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University.

About the Author xi

Foreword xiii

Prologue xv

Chapter 1 Money 1

Chapter 2 Primitive Moneys 11

Chapter 3 Monetary Metals 17

Why Gold? 19

Roman Golden Age and Decline 25

Byzantium and the Bezant 28

The Renaissance 29

La Belle Époque 34

Chapter 4 Government Money 41

Monetary Nationalism and the End of the Free World 43

The Interwar Era 47

World War II and Bretton Woods 53

Government Money’s Track Record 60

Chapter 5 Money and Time Preference 73

Monetary Inflation 81

Saving and Capital Accumulation 90

Innovations: “Zero to One” versus “One to Many” 96

Artistic Flourishing 98

Chapter 6 Capitalism’s Information System 105

Capital Market Socialism 109

Business Cycles and Financial Crises 113

Sound Basis for Trade 126

Chapter 7 Sound Money and Individual Freedom 135

Should Government Manage the Money Supply? 136

Unsound Money and Perpetual War 145

Limited versus Omnipotent Government 149

The Bezzle 155

Chapter 8 Digital Money 167

Bitcoin as Digital Cash 168

Supply, Value, and Transactions 177

Appendix to Chapter 8 191

Chapter 9 What Is Bitcoin Good For? 193

Store of Value 193

Individual Sovereignty 200

International and Online Settlement 205

Global Unit of Account 212

Chapter 10 Bitcoin Questions 217

Is Bitcoin Mining a Waste? 217

Out of Control: Why Nobody Can Change Bitcoin 222

Antifragility 230

Can Bitcoin Scale? 232

Is Bitcoin for Criminals? 238

How to Kill Bitcoin: A Beginners’ Guide 241

Altcoins 251

Blockchain Technology 257

Acknowledgements 273

Bibliography 275

List of Figures 282

List of Tables 284

Index 285

 “Bitcoin has no owner, no authority that can decide on its fate. It is owned by the crowd, its users. And it now has a track record of several years, enough for it to be an animal in its own right. Its mere existence is an insurance policy that will remind governments that the last object the establishment could control, namely, the currency, is no longer their monopoly. This gives us, the crowd, an insurance policy against an Orwellian future.”