The only way around this is through indirect exchange: you try to find some other good that another person would want and find someone who will exchange it with you for what you want to sell. That intermediary good is a medium of exchange, and while any good could serve as the medium of exchange, as the scope and size of the economy grows it becomes impractical for people to constantly search for different goods that their counterparty is looking for, carrying out several exchanges for each exchange they want to conduct. A far more efficient solution will naturally emerge, if only because those who chance upon it will be far more productive than those who do not: a single medium of exchange (or at most a small number of media of exchange) emerges for everyone to trade their goods for. A good that assumes the role of a widely accepted medium of exchange is called money.

Bitcoin is also the first example of absolute scarcity, the only liquid commodity (digital or physical) with a set fixed quantity that cannot conceivably be increased. In times of sound money and low time preference, artists worked on perfecting their craft so they could produce valuable works in the long run. state of the economy is determined by the lever of aggregate spending, and any rise in unemployment or slowdown in production had no underlying causes in the structure of production or in the distortion of markets by central planners; rather it was all a shortage of spending, and the remedy is the debauching of the currency and the increase of government spending. Saving reduces spending and because spending is all that matters, government must do all it can to deter its citizens from saving. Imports drive workers out of work, so spending increases must go on domestic goods. Note: Seems a bit much? I think the underlying point that money has a lot of downstream effects is good thoughThe only way to make maturity mismatching safe is with the presence of a lender of last resort standing ready to lend to banks in case of a bank run. Libertarian or "Austrian economics" explanation of money. Discussing the history and social impact then anticipating the role of bitcoin.

money that is easy to produce is no money at all, and easy money does not make a society richer; on the contrary, it makes it poorer by placing all its hard‐earned wealth for sale in exchange for something easy to produce. The wonders of the twentieth century’s improvements make it easy to forget that the actual inventions—the transformative world‐changing innovations—almost all came in the golden era.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. Considering "politics" in the digital space (because money is inextricably tied to politics) has forced me to evaluate and work with some things. Now of course cash (which is what Bitcoin is) in and of itself on a functional basis is non political. It's simply cash. Yet a lot of the innovations and cryptographic history behind bitcoin have come out of the more libertarian/anarchist mindset. Certain ideas of libertarians have always appealed to me and this book is a libertarian (Austrian school specifically) perspective. For example, none of us like big government and big tech peeking into our lives and date and I don't believe anything which doesn't directly harm another should be illegal. I certainly agree with the rules being the same for everyone, multinationals included. Like the gold standard, or the fiat system, the Bitcoin standard is a proposed monetary system that was only theoretical until El Salvador recently went all in by passing a law that accepts Bitcoin as legal currency. Note: The argument for inflation is that it incentivizes investment rather than hoarding which may overcome some loss aversion.

Siempre suelo decir que hablar de economía en términos nominales, es decir, expresada en dinero y precios, nos nubla el entendimiento de lo realmente relevante para el bienestar de las personas; a saber, la producción e intercambio de bienes y servicios reales. The Bitcoin Standard sirve para recordarnos algo igual de cierto y que a menudo también se nos olvida: la importancia de tener un “buen dinero” para el correcto funcionamiento del sistema de precios, el aumento de las posibilidades de especialización e intercambio, y para incentivar el ahorro y la planificación a largo plazo. The second challenge for Bitcoin is that it needs to grow. But eventually, Bitcoin would need to rely on centralized institutions to continue growing. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a viable way around this: the more transactions that happen, the more copies of the ledger need updating. Los 4 primeros capítulos son un fantástico repaso de los distintos bienes que han actuado como dinero a lo largo de la historia y un resumen de cómo ha cambiado el consenso económico respecto a cuál es la política monetaria ideal. Los capítulos 5 – 7 son una introducción a la teoría austriaca de economía pero con una postura demasiado “one-sided” en favor de esta y contra el keynesianismo y monetarismo (que teorías acertadas o no, tienen mejores argumentos para defender su política monetaria ideal que las que se exponen en el libro). Además, en esta parte se introduce un fuerte componente ideológico libertario y el autor se va por las ramas opinando sobre temas como el arte contemporáneo o la vida de Keynes, que son claros “off-topics”. The U.S. Federal Reserve targets a 2% inflation rate. This continuous devaluation of stored wealth is intended as a mild economic stimulant. As Ammous has it, knowledge that your wealth’s purchasing power isn’t preserved while stored in USD incents levels of risk-taking beyond what people would otherwise be disposed to if they knew their wealth was safe. The risky investments that become necessary for individuals to compensate for the drain on their wealth aggregate to systemic overcompensation. Indeed, this stimulates the economy, but the planned injection synchronizes local ups and downs into systemic oscillations of boom and recession.Any industry in which people complain about their asshole boss is likely part of the bezzle, because bosses can only really afford to be assholes in the economic fake reality of the bezzle. Only with a uniform medium of exchange acting as a unit of account does complex economic calculation become possible, and with it comes the possibility for specialization into complex tasks, capital accumulation, and large markets. The operation of a market economy is dependent on prices, and prices, to be accurate, are dependent on a common medium of exchange, which reflects the relative scarcity of different goods. If this is easy money, the ability of its issuer to constantly increase its quantity will prevent it from accurately reflecting opportunity costs.

Note: Argument is that this monetary nationalism administered by central banks created more upside as well as more downside. In an asymmetric world, AKA Extemistan, that is not worth it.the fundamental driver of human progress is not raw materials, but technological solutions to problems. Technology is by its nature both a non‐excludable good (meaning that once one person invents something, all others can copy it and benefit from it) and a non‐rival good (meaning that a person benefiting from an invention does not reduce the utility that accrues to others who use it). Have you ever thought about the world before money? How did it work? Actually, it was pretty simple: people just swapped stuff. They traded a horse for a cow and so on. It worked okay, except if you didn’t have something your neighbour needed. Once people figured out you could exchange universally valued objects for goods, everything changed. Human life is lived with uncertainty as a given, and humans cannot know for sure when they will need what amount of money. Saifedean Ammous is an internationally best-selling author and economist. In 2018, Ammous authored The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, the best-selling book on bitcoin, published in 36 languages. In 2021, he published The Fiat Standard: The Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization, available in 12 languages. In 2023, he published Principles of Economics, a comprehensive introduction to economics in the Austrian school tradition. 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. main difference being that the monetary discipline of the gold standard was almost entirely lost in this world where there were no effective controls on all central banks in expanding the money supply, because no citizens could redeem their government money for gold.