“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.” ?From the foreword by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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 ?poque 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