The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking
SKU: 56583983592

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

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The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central BankingA 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

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.

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SKU: 56583983592

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John Hemphill
Houston, US
★★★★★ 4
Foes at the Top Table
Format: Kindle
Those of us who studied economics in the 60s grew up on Keynes. This book provides a fascinating picture of the great man in action. And an equally fascinating picture of the Lend Lease negotiations and then the US hard line at Bretton Woods. Behind this hard line was Harry Woods, of Lithuanian emigre stock, who clawed his way by hard work and intelligence to negotiating prominence in the US Treasury. And who was a Soviet agent of influence. Well written, lucid, and remarkably interesting.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2013
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Manuel Hinds
Chelsea, US
★★★★★ 5
A distant mirror of our current problems
Format: Hardcover
The title of this excellent book accurately describes its contents:it is about a battle fought to define a new world order, that which was emerging from the ashes of World War II. The book also conveys the messy complexity of such a historical process--how individual characters interpreted the events around them, realized that they were giving shape to a radically new future, tried to take advantage of them to advance their own personal and national interests, and succeeded in accordance with their intelligence, the cunning of their argumentation, and, above all, the shifts in the real power that supported them. Masterly, Benn Steil makes the reader feel how Keynes and White gradually reached an unspoken and unrecognized agreement regarding the shape that the new world would have, and then fought to gain advantage in that new world--Keynes trying to keep the British Empire paramount in the world order, now based not on the Royal Navy but on Britain's alliance with the United States, the emerging superpower, and White asserting the unimpeded power of the United States. Focusing on one crucial aspect of the new order, money, Steil is able to reenact the human drama of the transfer of world power from Britain to the United States in all orders of life. It is an excellent history book. The book, however, goes beyond history as the narration and understanding of past events. When reading it, there is an eerie feeling that you are reading about current events. The process that led to Bretton Woods started thirty years before, with World War I and the end of the classical gold standard. When the war ended, a new monetary system was created, which was called the gold exchange standard. It resembled but emasculated the power of the old gold standard to keep monetary order in the world at large. This new system gave central banks the power to create money independently of the international consequences of doing it. With time, central banks abused this power, created a boom in the 1920s and then a depression in the 1930s. Bretton Woods was convened to reintroduce order in the monetary world. Like the gold standard of old, the new system created there was tied to gold in an effort to ensure stability. Yet, it also allowed central banks freedom to create money under certain circumstances. As it happened in the 1920s and 1930s, central banks abused their power, blew up the international system (in this case the Bretton Woods system) and then led the world into a series of booms and busts that has not ended as yet. A new monetary order will be needed to avoid worldwide inflation and protracted recessions. To understand the issues that will be crucial to give shape to this new monetary order it will be necessary to revisit the making of Bretton Woods in detail. There is no better way to understand these issues that Ben Steil's The Battle of Bretton Woods. Thus, in addition to being an excellent history book, it is also an excellent book about current events. Full disclosure: I wrote a previous book with Benn Steil: Money, Markets and Sovereignty (Yale University Press, 2009).
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Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2013
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djwatkins487
Lake Worth, US
★★★★★ 5
The Battle of Bretton Woods
Format: Hardcover
From the growing reliance upon international finance and the devastating repercussions of two World Wars, Steil weaves together an important narrative that tells the story of America's rise to the world stage as a major power. Britain's reign of dominance comes to an abrupt end under the weight of the Second World War and the dependence of their territories. Reliance on foreign aid and mounting debt put Britain in a precarious situation for which the United States capitalized on to secure its place as the dominant world power. Through the ideas and experiences of two brilliant economists, Harry White and John Keynes, were guided through the creation and implementation of an economic solution to remedy, and further amalgamate the global financial framework. At Bretton Woods, White and Keynes promote slightly different plans that form the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; organizations designed to monitor, stabilize, and assist international finance. To Britain, and much of the world's chagrin, the organizations are formed in a manner that benefited the United States post-World War Two position as a creditor nation. Dollar dominance in the newly designed financial markets promotes short-term growth for the United States. However, financial mismanagement and over-extension soon lead the U.S. down a path of monetary hardship that ultimately results in our current situation as debtor nations (much like Britain was when the story began). The author ends the narrative by chronicling the effects of Bretton Woods on the United States, Britain, and international finance from the mid-twentieth century to the present. This book tells the remarkable story of America's rise to power through a financial lens. Steil is a wonderful writer who describes complex ideas of monetary policy, international economics, and currency manipulation in such a manner that is easy to understand and leaves the reader wanting more.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2013
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Verified Purchase
Alfred H.
Bozeman, US
★★★★★ 5
A concise, readable history of European developments prior to W.W. i.
Format: Paperback
This is part of a 4 volume series on (primarily) European history covering the development of the French and Industrial revolution(s) with particular emphasis on the Belle Epoque that marked the end of nearly 100 years of peace among the European Powers. It covers a variety of topics ranging from the emergence of the working classes; the role of the middle class; industrial capitalism; nationalism; the sciences and the arts; and, even a chapter on the "New Woman". Quite encompassing in its treatment and its analysis of the a period that serves as a background to the twentieth century.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2018
J
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Juan Manuel Wills
Charlottesville, US
★★★★★ 5
Un comentario
Format: Paperback
El mundo burgués generó desarrollos muy importantes para los habitantes de Europa Occidental particularmente; incrementó de manera importante los niveles de vida de una porción significativa de la sociedad, introdujo innovaciones claras en las ciencias, en lo educativo, en el comercio global y en el intercambio entre diferentes culturas. Mejoró la productividad, las comunicaciones, la alimentación......Pero también incorporó consigo tendencias negativas y difíciles que cambiaron para siempre la interrelación entre pares al crearse una diferencia significativa de clases, la alta, burguesa y la trabajadora y proletaria, continuó la discriminación sobre la campesina, estableció el concepto forzado de nacionalismo, transformó a los países mas desarrollados en imperios con ansias de crecimiento y de dominio de los menos preparados, se evidenció la explotación del tercer mundo, se inició el armamentismo y la instigación a la guerra que culminó con la desastrosa confrontación de 1914. El mundo, a partir de ese momento no volverá a ser igual. Todos estos conceptos, esta historia, están amenamente descritos por el autor, con un gran conocimiento de la época y con una inteligente asociación de los acontecimientos para hacer entender al lector sus grandes transformaciones e implicaciones. Como los otros tres libros de la serie, lo recomiendo ampliamente. Permite entender todo la evolución de nuestra civilización en los dos últimos siglos así como la influencia generada por los grandes imperios de la época y sus pensadores
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2011

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