Bitcoin & Money

Monetary History

From shells and gold to fiat and the petrodollar — how we got here.

  1. 1 Barter systems Did money really begin with barter? The myth and the evidence.
  2. 2 A history of currencies Shells, cattle, salt, tobacco, beads and stone wheels.
  3. 3 Why the world converged to gold The stock-to-flow argument for hard money.
  4. 4 The pitfalls of gold Heavy, hard to verify, and terrible over distance.
  5. 5 Debasement & clipping The oldest inflation: shaving and diluting coins — meet “Old Coppernose”.
  6. 6 How gold got centralized Portability + the cost to secure it → warlords → the first banks.
  7. 7 Religion, usury & interest Why lending was outlawed — and where an antisemitic myth was born.
  8. 8 Gold receipts — the first paper money Trading claims on gold instead of the metal itself.
  9. 9 Credit, loans & fractional reserve When goldsmiths noticed nobody audited the vault.
  10. 10 Gold-backed currency The classical gold standard and its discipline.
  11. 11 Fiat currency Money by decree, backed by nothing but trust.
  12. 12 The invisible tax Interactive Why governments print instead of taxing honestly — and who really causes inflation.
  13. 13 When money dies Weimar, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina — how currencies collapse, and the one common thread.
  14. 14 The deflation myth Is falling prices really a disaster? The good vs bad deflation the “spiral” story hides.
  15. 15 Bank runs Interactive The fragility built into fractional reserves.
  16. 16 Central banks The institutions that create money, set its price, and backstop the banks.
  17. 17 World reserve currencies From the guilder and sterling to the dollar at Bretton Woods.
  18. 18 Bancor: the road not taken At Bretton Woods, Keynes proposed a neutral global money. The US said no.
  19. 19 Triffin’s Dilemma The impossible bind at the heart of any national reserve currency.
  20. 20 1971 — the Nixon Shock The day the dollar’s link to gold was cut.
  21. 21 The petrodollar How oil re-anchored the dollar after gold.
  22. 22 Austrian vs Keynesian vs MMT Three rival answers to “what should money do?”
  23. 23 Gold is too slow for a digital age Why hard money and fast settlement seemed impossible — until they weren’t.