The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

by Saifedean Ammous

When governments were on a gold standard, they had direct control of large vaults of gold while their people were dealing with paper receipts of this gold. The ease with which a government could issue more paper currency was too tempting in the heat of the conflict, and far easier than demanding taxation from the citizens.

It is likely that World War I would have been settled militarily within a few months

of conflict, as one of the allied factions started running out of financing and faced difficulties in extracting wealth from a population that was not willing to part with its wealth to defend their regime's survival. But with the suspension of the gold standard, running out of financing was not enough to end the war; a sovereign had to run out of its people's accumulated wealth expropriated through inflation.

The major adjustment of the war was the removal of many European monarchies and their replacement with republican regimes.