The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

by Saifedean Ammous

As the ability to run a bank started to imply money creation, governments naturally gravitated to taking over the banking sector through central banking. The temptation was always too strong, and the virtually infinite financial wealth this secured could not only silence dissent, but also finance propagandists to promote such ideas. Gold offered no mechanism for restraining the sovereigns, and had to rely on trust in them not abusing the gold standard and the population remaining eternally vigilant against them doing so. This might have been feasible when the population was highly educated and knowledgeable about the dangers of unsound money, but with every passing generation displaying the intellectual complacence that tends to accompany wealth,13 the siren song of con artists and court-jester economists would prove increasingly irresistible for more of the population, leaving only a minority of knowledgeable economists and historians fighting an uphill battle to convince people that wealth can't be generated by tampering with the money supply, that allowing a sovereign the control of the money can only lead to them increasing their control of everyone's life, and that civilized human living itself rests on the integrity of money providing a solid foundation for trade and capital accumulation.