Catching Up to Crypto E-Book

Ben Armstrong

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 428

Beschreibung

A fun and authoritative guide to bitcoin and the future of money In Catching Up to Crypto: Your Guide to Bitcoin and the New Digital Economy, celebrated crypto and Bitcoin expert Ben Armstrong delivers an exciting and fresh new exploration of Bitcoin and digital currencies. He explains what Bitcoin is, how it works, and how and why we're all transitioning to a digital economy as we speak. He discusses the deficiencies of traditional fiat currency, how it's commonly manipulated, and how we can all benefit from the adoption of new, digital assets. In the book, you'll discover how Bitcoin operates in the real-world and how the underlying technology--known as the blockchain--operates. You'll also learn about: * The importance of decentralization, trust-less commerce and cryptographic consensus. * The humble origins of Bitcoin, as well as how it nearly died out, and how it went on to take over the world * How monetary and financial policy is being revolutionized by the introduction of Bitcoin and other crypto-assets. An essential and engaging review of Bitcoin, digital assets, and the new digital economy, Catching Up to Crypto is the hands-on and comprehensive introduction to crypto that investors, enthusiasts, the crypto-curious, and finance professionals have been waiting for.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

CHAPTER 1: The Great Devaluation

Central Banks

The Fed

Notes

CHAPTER 2: Digital Money Tree

New Money

New Ways to Spend

Notes

CHAPTER 3: First‐Gen Giants

Cypherpunk

Disruptive Tech

Notes

CHAPTER 4: Genesis Block

A Culture Is Born

Bitcoin for President

Notes

CHAPTER 5: A Short Course in Blockchain

Blockchain 101

Blockchain 201

Blockchain 365

Notes

CHAPTER 6: A Necessary Evil

Silk Road

The Streisand Effect

Notes

CHAPTER 7: “Mo' Money, Mo' Problems”

BitInstant

Regulators Take Notice

Notes

CHAPTER 8: What the Fork?

Shots Fired

ASICBoost

Notes

CHAPTER 9: The Future Is Born

The Ethereum Team

Blast Off

The DAO

Notes

CHAPTER 10: Digital Gold Transformation

Bitcoin Becomes Digital Gold

Halving

Notes

CHAPTER 11: Crypto Turning Point

Buy Bitcoin

Moonboys and Lambos

Notes

CHAPTER 12: New Layer to the Internet

DeFi

The Challengers

Notes

CHAPTER 13: Brave New World

Stablecoins

Oracles

Memecoins

Community Coins

Notes

CHAPTER 14: Investment Prep

Step One: Researching

Step Two: Choosing

Step Three: Deploying Capital

Notes

CHAPTER 15: Tips of the Trade

Trading Tokens

Some Trading Caveats

Trader Training

Types of Trading

Risk Management

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Notes

CHAPTER 16: Non‐Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Historical NFTs

The Next Generation

The Next‐Next Generation

Notes

CHAPTER 17: Web3 and the Metaverse

The Metaverse

Not a New Idea

Notes

CHAPTER 18: Crypto FUD

The Long Arm of the Law

Notes

CHAPTER 19: Crypto Warnings

Hackers

Scammers

Contagion

Notes

CHAPTER 20: The Future of Crypto

Crypto Grows Up

Stablecoins

Blockchain Equities

The Flippening

Regenerative Finance

Universal Basic Income

Notes

CHAPTER 21: Where Do You Go from Here?

Community Is Key

Mainstream Takes Time

Embrace Change

Notes

Appendix: Essential Resources and Tools of the Trade

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

Appendix: Essential Resources and Tools of the Trade

Index

Wiley End User License Agreement

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Catching Up to Crypto

Your Guide to Bitcoin and the New Digital Economy

BEN ARMSTRONG

Copyright © 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © binik/Shutterstock; GoodStudio/Shutterstock

This book is dedicated to the love of my life, my wife, Bethany Armstrong.

Foreword

Catching Up to Crypto is a book that needed to be written, and there is no better person than Ben to write it! The crypto world is new for most people, and it's moving incredibly fast too. I think I speak for all of us in saying it's a daunting task to stay on top of it. Everything sounds like a foreign language, and getting up to speed with what it's all about means that you always have to ask the “dumb” questions. That never feels good.

However, we're all learning together. Crypto is new for all of us, and there are no “dumb” questions. We're all still beginners, and we all need a good guide and mentor to answer all the questions in our heads. This is what Ben does with this book.

Ben is a deep expert in the space, but he also possesses that magic quality of being a very effective communicator and a champion of helping people understand everything – from the basics to the complexities. This book showcases Ben's ability to help everyone in their crypto journey with the understanding they really need to invest as well as thrive.

The world of crypto really matters. It's not some flash in the pan or a tulip bubble as many in the media will tell you. It's one of the biggest changes to global business models, let alone the entire financial system … ever. And it's happening at the fastest pace of adoption of any technology in human history. When something this important is underway, it can create tremendous opportunities for those who take the time to learn, to either invest in the space or to use the technology to grow their own business.

The media paints an image of crypto being about lawless gambling and scam artists speculating around something of no value, but the reality is very far from that. Hundreds of billions of dollars of investment from the smartest VC investors is creating a magnet for the most talented entrepreneurs, developers, marketers, hedge fund managers, asset managers, etc. The smartest, most talented people in the world are now dedicating their lives to crypto, and more than a trillion dollars of value has already been created. However, this is still just the start of this revolution. Even the largest brands, companies, and financial institutions in the world are now developing their own Web 3/crypto strategy, fueling yet more opportunity and funneling yet more talent and capital into the space.

No one can afford to be left behind. So many people have been let down by the system – sidelined and not given the opportunity to create their own success. Web 3.0 and the crypto world is leveling the playing field, and we all need the knowledge to get started.

I really hope Catching Up to Crypto gives you the leg up that you need on the path to your success.

—Raoul PalCEO/Cofounder, Real Vision Groupwww.realvision.com@RaoulGMI on Twitter

Preface

People ask me a lot what is the secret to my success. It's simple. It's Bethany. When we got married 13 years ago, we barely knew each other. We'd only dated for seven months before we were married. Looking back, it was quite a risky endeavor. Marriage is a rite of passage for most and I believe most treat it that way. You're constantly looking for the person who will eventually become your spouse. But you can't really understand marriage until you're married. Marriages are notorious for ups and downs. And I can tell you we have certainly seen those. Three kids, five dogs, and a bazillion failed businesses will do that.

I started my first business in 2011 and it was wildly successful. I went from making $25k per year as an assistant manager at a car wash to making $350k within two years. Life was good and we were comfortable. But things dramatically changed over the next few years and we were back to living paycheck to paycheck. When I tell you I tried everything to get our finances back on track, I tried everything. Web design, graphic design, animation, SEO, YouTube channel, social media manager, memorabilia, blogs, consulting, creating online courses, flipping things—and those are just some of the many failed businesses I started over the course of a five‐year stretch.

And yet, no matter how much I failed, I got back up and went at it again with as much zeal and fervor for the next thing as I had for the previous endeavor. It would have been easy for me to give up and go back to the rat race. But I was determined. And I wasn't in it alone. No matter how many times I failed, no matter how many hard financial conversations we had to have, no matter how poor we were, Bethany never gave up on me. She pushed me and encouraged me and consoled me and motivated me. And when I failed, she was the reason I got back up. She never wavered in her belief that I was going to make something out of myself.

In 2018, we sold our house so we could survive while I started the BitBoy Crypto YouTube channel and went full‐time in crypto. That's crazy! We moved across the state and only survived on side hustles and the profits from the sale of our first home. The home all our kids were born in. I still don't know how she was able to believe in me yet again. But she did.

In early 2020, I sat her down and explained that, though we could barely afford groceries, our life was about to drastically change. I did this because in January of 2020, as clear as day, the Lord spoke to me in a dream and told me that we needed to get our house in order because our lives would dramatically change by the end of the year. I told Bethany that by the end of the year we would be millionaires, we'd own a home, and life would look completely different. She looked at me and said she didn't understand how, but she believed me.

In September of 2020, we bought our second home after two years of renting. With cash. And on New Year's Eve 2020, just like I received in that message, my crypto accounts hit $1 million for the first time. And yes, life looks completely different for us now. I can't stress how grateful and appreciative I am for having such a supportive wife. I could not have done any of this without her.

I would also like to dedicate this book to my three kids: Madden, Zoe, and Blake. I don't know how I was blessed with virtually perfect children because, after the way I behaved as a kid … I certainly didn't deserve it. This is an example of radical grace! Sorry, Mom!

In addition, this book is dedicated to everyone who has been with me along the way … my parents, my siblings, my grandparents, my Uncle Tim, and of course my best friend, Jim aka Brooootheeeeerrrrr!

And of course, this book is dedicated to the largest and greatest crypto community in all the interwebs … the BitSquad! I would be nowhere without the support of my community. I'm forever indebted to the viewers of my channel. When I meet people at meetups, often they thank me for what I've done for the crypto space. And then I tell them thank you right back. If it weren't for all the loyal BitSquad members that gave me a chance, my channel would be nothing. The community is what makes it great.

This book is for all of you.

Acknowledgments

This book wouldn’t have happened without the infrastructure we built at BitBoy Crypto and Hit Network. The amount of streamlining we did to make this book possible in only six months' time was quite the undertaking. Every person on my team has played some role because we are all in this together.

But some specific people need to be particularly thanked for their role in creating this book.

The biggest thank you goes out to Nick Dimondi, the Head of Content at BitBoy Crypto. Nick has helped us to radically transform the direction of BitBoy Crypto ever since he joined the team. Balancing all of the content we produce is difficult, but Nick always delivers on cue. And Nick played the biggest role in helping us get ideas and narratives from the whiteboard into the structure of this book. He organized meetings and managed the project to keep us well ahead of aggressive timelines. Nick is the glue that held this project together. There's no topic that can't be broken down by me, Nick, and a whiteboard. We are dangerous!

Next, huge thank you to John Vibes. John has been a writer with BitBoy Crypto for a significant amount of time and was really the workhorse that made this project go. John and I have been in crypto for about the same time and have experienced many of the same things, whether it is libertarian meetups, crashing and hacked exchanges, philosophical battles on decentralization, etc. This resulted in an extremely easy writing process where we debated what should and should not go in this book. It's great to be able to work with people with completely different opinions and experiences. However, working with John Vibes shows that it's way easier when you agree on almost every topic.

Cannot forget to send a huge thank you to my assistant, Allison Fiveash. Without Allison, not only does this book not get written … but also I don't eat or go to the doctor, I forget to pick up my kids, I botch up my calendar, and I generally make a mess out of the basic things in life. Allison keeps me on schedule and on target at all times. I don't want to flex, but Allison really is the greatest assistant in the history of assistants.

Thank you to the graphic design team here at BitBoy Crypto for helping us with art mockups for the cover and graphics, specifically Ashley Cooper and Graphic Design Lead Steven Polizzi. I appreciate you.

And of course thank you to my business partner, TJ Shedd, for your overall support. We are the Shaq and Kobe of crypto … if they never decided to break up. (Obviously I'm Shaq because I'm taller.) We've already won a ton of championships and there's even more down the road.

Introduction

I have bad news for you and good news.

Bad News: Crypto is hard. Let's get that out of the way right off the rip. Just like building a website was in 1995. Over time it will get easier as adoption grows and simpler processes are introduced. The space is big and it's complicated. Crypto is cutting edge technology, the next step of human evolution in terms of making our lives easier. So it seems to be a bit of a paradox: something extremely difficult to understand that ultimately will make our lives simpler.

Good News: You can learn it. I know this because I learned it. I'm a regular guy. I'm not a technology guru. I'm not a gamer. To be honest, I don't even read books often. I read a lot of tweets, watch a lot of YouTube videos, and break down news articles. I'm not your prototypical technology nerd. So even if you have no understanding of crypto, investing, or technology, I'm here to tell you: I did it and you can too. As I break down my journey in crypto, I think you will understand why I believe you can make it.

The first time I ever heard of Bitcoin was in November of 2012. I was running an online ticket company where I basically sold tickets for events all over the United States on Craigslist. I used an automated ad poster for Craigslist to crank out over 800,000 ticket ads per day across the entire country. The name of the software was called CLAD Genius and it was a killer work of art that made my life 100 times better. To do this, though, I had to post in every local Craigslist. But here was the problem: using automated software was against the Craigslist terms of service.

The creator of the software was Yuri from Ukraine. Craigslist decided to sue Yuri for creating the software. To answer the lawsuit, Yuri would have had to come to America, which is obviously something he wasn't going to do. And since he didn't show up in the States, through ICANN the US government was able to seize Yuri's website and cancel all his payment processors.

To use Yuri's service, we had to pay Craigslist a monthly fee for every license we had. I had 12 licenses and the money added up quickly. And Yuri couldn't just keep his service going for free. So he paused our payments until he could figure something out. For about six months there was no progress until November of 2012, when Yuri sent me an email saying he would begin accepting this new type of digital currency called Bitcoin. I didn't care to learn more about it – all I wanted was to catch up on my payments to keep the software. So I immediately went through all the steps, including creating a wallet with the site Mt. Gox as well as sending and receiving crypto through a company called BitInstant. After a couple days of a learning curve, I was off to the races and running with Bitcoin.

Throughout 2013 I bought more and more Bitcoin. People often think that's how I became wealthy. WRONG! The truth was I didn't understand Bitcoin. If, instead of paying Yuri (who MUST be a billionaire now) every month in Bitcoin, I had simply invested that money and hodled, I would have been worth eight figures in 2017. This haunted me for years. But that's what eventually led me to create my YouTube channel, where I actually have a higher earning potential than I ever would've had if I'd just gotten rich early without doing the work.

In November of 2013, the price of Bitcoin broke $1,000. Suddenly the double digits' worth of Bitcoin I had in my wallet for payments were worth four figures. I decided to sell it. I sold 6 Bitcoin for $1,700. At the time I thought I was a super genius. I took my wife and kids to Florida for a little vacation and spent the rest on some bills. At the peak of the bull run in October of 2021, that dust would have been worth $420,000. This is the mistake that drove me deep into crypto.

Selling Bitcoin was a lot harder than buying, though, because it involved using a third party to do the transaction, including an escrow account on LocalBitcoins.com. I posted my price and the available amount, and it matched me with several different investors. I looked at all the choices and one guy stood out, as I could tell he wasn't scamming. We scheduled a meet‐up at a local McDonald's.

This is a very important part of the story. We were supposed to meet, but the guy was late. So while I waited I researched Bitcoin – for almost an hour. I guess there was a little voice in my head telling me I should sell some Bitcoin, but I wasn't sure I wanted to sell all I had. The idea of Bitcoin sounded so insane, and I could barely understand how to use it. The education available on Bitcoin in 2012 was awful. Most of the information out there was poorly written, insanely bad news articles. There was only one YouTube channel, called Bitcoin Unnecessary. So for an hour I tried to grasp who this Satoshi Nakamoto was – the still‐unidentified person or persons who invented Bitcoin – and what gave Bitcoin its value. But I just couldn't get all this talk of blockchains, coins, trading, investments, and whatever else. So when the guy finally showed up – he'd gone to the wrong McDonald's – I ended up selling him just 6 Bitcoin rather than cashing it all out. I transferred the Bitcoin to him over Wi‐Fi, and he handed me $1,700 and left.

Again, that was in November of 2013. In February of 2014, Mt. Gox – a Bitcoin exchange based in Tokyo, Japan, which handled about 90% of all Bitcoin trading activity – announced that the site had been hacked, and everyone's money was gone. And as I write this in 2022 the Mt. Gox saga is still not over; there are many lawsuit claims still pending.

It is important to note that, even though I didn't sell all my remaining Bitcoin at McDonald's, it's not like I would have actually kept it long term. In fact, I wouldn't have had it at all. Exchanges are vulnerable not just to hacks but also to insolvency and bankruptcy. But because all my Bitcoin was on Mt. Gox, it would have disappeared anyway. So in reality, while it may seem pretty dumb to have sold 6 Bitcoin for $1,700, given the timing it turned out to be the best decision.

But that didn't help me avoid the pit of regret in my stomach when Bitcoin hurled to the moon in 2017. I didn't think Bitcoin would ever get as popular and maintain the insane prices it did in 2017. In fact, in 2014 when Mt. Gox crashed, because of my lack of education and understanding of Bitcoin, I thought it was a failed experiment that wouldn't come back. But over 2015 and 2016 I watched Bitcoin periodically, and I couldn't believe when prices started rising again. I bought and sold a few here and there with my buddy Jim, but never a significant amount.

Over Thanksgiving of 2017, I watched the price of Bitcoin and altcoins completely rip. Though at that point I did have some exposure to the market, the pain of regret was almost too much to handle. I was living paycheck to paycheck and felt I'd missed my golden opportunity. It had been handed to me on a platter and I had fumbled it. Badly.

But I should have given myself a break. For one thing, as I mentioned, when I tried to learn about Bitcoin in 2012 there were no good resources. Whereas, in 2017 resources abounded. And 2017 saw the ushering in of the Crypto YouTuber/Influencers. I watched Crypto Daily, Doug Polk, Data Dash, Crypto Crow, Crypto Love, Crypto Beadles, Ian Balina, Ivan on Tech, and many more, and learned from all of them. I was inspired by their dedication. Seeing how much fun they were having and how much money they were making, I decided I'd like to join in.

The original idea for my channel BitBoy Crypto was to follow the antics of a crypto superhero named BitBoy and his loyal sidekick turtle, Hodl; it was actually called BitBoy and Hodl. I worked on characters, memes, animation, and more. However, starting a fun channel in January 2018 at the literal top of the market wasn't an idea that would last and give me the ROI on my time and money that I needed. Nobody was looking for fun in the bear market, so my initial attempts at the channel failed.

In March of 2018, my friend Justin Williams – who is now my VP of NFT Development (and who actually came up with the name BitBoy) – suggested that instead of animation I should start covering crypto news. He told me I had an entertaining personality and a knack for breaking down topics simply. After a couple weeks of his prodding, I made my first crypto news video in March of 2018, and have made on average two to three videos per day ever since. Somewhere along the line, by putting in hard work, I became an expert in both crypto and content creation.

But it wasn't always easy. For a long time people didn't seem to be interested in my content – I wasn't getting views or subscribers – but I kept plugging away and working toward something bigger. Fast‐forward to today and I have over 6 million total social media followers, over 300 million views on YouTube, and 1.5 million subscribers. For two years no one watched and I kept going. Then in 2020 to 2021, I went from 10,000 subscribers to 1.45 million subscribers.

So as you can see, I started out with zero knowledge. The cliché “Rome wasn't built in a day” has proven true in my career as a crypto YouTuber. To truly understand crypto you have to spend a lot of time researching it, watching videos, checking the temperature of crypto culture on Crypto Twitter, and more. You need to immerse yourself in it. You can't possibly know everything in crypto, but you can start with basic concepts and niched areas. That will help you build a foundation.

But here is my promise to you if you read this book: you truly are going to “catch up” to crypto. This book was designed to walk you through the history of crypto so you have perspective on major events. The first section is going to answer a lot of the questions about the early days. Then we're going to stop and enjoy the present for a while as we cover some of the popular narratives and niches relevant to crypto right now. Then we're going to gaze off into the future and project where this all goes. This book will also teach you some basic principles of investing, but this is not an investing book at heart. It's a book of understanding. You will gain incredibly valuable insight and perspective that will propel you further, faster, in any area of crypto you want to dig into.

So enjoy this book and make sure to share it with others interested in catching up to crypto themselves!

CHAPTER 1The Great Devaluation: Old Money, Central Banks, and the Fed

There is a long trail of victims around the world affected by the crimes that led up to the economic crash of September 2008, when over $10 trillion was wiped out of the American economy and millions of people lost their homes. Homelessness has always been a problem in the United States, but it became much worse after the 2008 crash. In the decade following the crash, large tent villages began to pop up in every major city, and this heartbreaking trend has continued to grow, even after the stock market recovered and soared to new highs.1

For nearly a decade beforehand, the government and large financial institutions had promised that everything was okay, even though it should have been obvious that the real estate market was in a bubble. Many economists, like Peter Schiff and Nouriel Roubini, were actually warning that this was the case, but the Federal Reserve (the Fed) and the bankers assured the public that the fundamentals in the market were strong. Ben Bernanke, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve at the time, said that the “troubles” in the “subprime sector” would be “limited,” and that they did “not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.”2

The media was complicit as well. “Mad Money” Jim Cramer was on television night after night telling his viewers to keep their money in failing institutions like Bear Stearns: “Bear Stearns is fine. Do not take your money out. If there's one takeaway, Bear Stearns is not in trouble. I mean, if anything, they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear. That's just being silly. Don't be silly,” Cramer shouted at the camera.3

Unfortunately, these assurances couldn't have been further from the truth. The market was a house of cards, and it was only a matter of time before it came crashing down.

This crisis began in the real estate markets. In the late 1990s, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), a government‐sponsored financial institution commonly known as Fannie Mae, began experimenting with something called “subprime mortgages.” These were basically high‐value mortgages that were given to working‐class people with low credit scores – essentially, people who weren't actually qualified to receive the loan. As a result they were “highly leveraged”: meaning that, ultimately, the debt to the financiers was greater than the combined value of the owners' income and their home.

That's because the banks covered their assets by implementing very strict terms on these types of loans. These loans didn't just have high interest rates; the rates were also adjustable, which meant that they would fluctuate based on market conditions, such as changes to the Fed's balance sheet. In the mid‐2000s, the Fed began raising its rates after years of offering cheap money, and interest rates for homeowners began rising to unaffordable levels. People quickly found themselves unable to pay their mortgages, and had to forfeit both their homes and the money they'd invested in them. And because the banks had signed off on way too many of these unconscionably predatory loans, foreclosures began to spiral out of control. Numerous financial institutions were facing ruin as a result of the crash, including many with federal backing, but the government stepped in with a massive $700 billion bailout package to save them and prevent further damage to the economy.4 In other words, “too big to fail” criminals were given the chance to recover (and rebound) from the consequences of their mistakes – a benefit that taxpayers and small business owners have never received. Wall Street was rescued, but Main Street was left holding the bag, which made it very obvious that our financial system is not designed to protect the average person. Most Americans were furious, regardless of where they fell on the political spectrum. It was one of the few times that the left and the right actually agreed about something. That political cease‐fire didn't last very long, however, since the tribes quickly took their grievances in separate directions – through movements like the conservative Tea Party (which began in 2009) and Occupy Wall Street (which began in September 2011). But the crash of 2008 revealed the cracks in the system, and forced people from all walks of life to get more educated about economics.

Central Banks

Those of us who dove into the research eventually learned that most of the financial problems that we see across the world with corruption, instability, and inequality, all seem to trace back to the global system of central banking. A central bank is essentially a government‐focused bank that is tasked with issuing and managing a country's currency. These banks are the most powerful financial institutions in the world, and in many ways they are even more powerful than the governments they're supposed to be working for. In the United States we have the Federal Reserve, which manipulates the global economy through its control of the US dollar, the global reserve currency. While the Federal Reserve and other central banks are primarily single‐customer operations that deal with specific governments, they are actually independent institutions. Central banks are not government entities; they are businesses, and governments are their customers.

This means that central banks have no real obligations to the citizens of the countries that they claim to serve, and they often run into situations where their interests clash with those of the general population. The same can be said about many politicians as well, but the organizations that are in control of our money and our economy have much more secrecy – and since they're unelected officials, they don't need to worry about keeping voters happy for the next election. The president and the members of Congress might get all of the attention, but there's an extensive web of unelected, much less visible officials who arguably have more power and influence in the US government. This element of government is often called the “deep state.”5 And since the media usually doesn't pay much attention to them, they're able to both effectively push through their policies and maintain those policies over a long time horizon. High‐ranking officials in intelligence agencies often know more about our spying operations than the president or Congress do; and, in many cases, they don't have to answer to elected officials – even when their programs are extremely unpopular with the general public. (We saw this in action in 2013 after computer intelligence consultant Edward Snowden leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency.) Supreme Court justices also hold more power than elected legislators, and we see this trend in nearly every corner of government. Even in seemingly innocuous sectors like health there are figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci who, having “advised every president since Ronald Reagan,”6 has a large influence on national policy.

The Federal Reserve is a whole agency of unelected officials, and it isn't even technically a part of the government – it's a private bank that plays by its own rules. This situation is not unique to the United States; there is a network of central banks all across the world that play similar roles in their local economies. These banks often have drastically different policies based on the politics of the region they're located in, but their structures are nearly identical, with small centralized groups of bureaucrats having total control over the money supply. In my view, this experiment has been a total failure everywhere it was attempted, with some estimates suggesting that the average lifespan of a fiat currency is only 35 years.7 (“Fiat currencies” are legal tender; there's more on them in Chapter 2.) Currencies are typically short‐lived, lasting only a few decades before a crash or total debasement of the asset. When governments are able to survive these crashes, they will rarely actually change the name of their currency, but in order to bring their nation's economy back to life they are often forced to drastically change monetary policies in ways that change the fundamentals of the currency, effectively making it an entirely different asset. That's what we've seen in the United States over the past century that the dollar has been in circulation. The dollar has taken many different forms over the years: slowly, and then quickly, descending into a worthless piece of paper due to policies enacted by the Federal Reserve and politicians from both parties. By constantly changing interest rates and tweaking other policies to control the monetary supply, they maintain the stability of the economy temporarily, but it comes at the cost of the long‐term stability of the money.

This same scenario has played out many times before throughout history, with empires growing out of control and eventually imploding because their currency was diluted and lost its value. This was one of the primary contributing factors to the collapse of both the Greek and Roman empires, and this cycle has continued to repeat over the centuries. Even now, around the world there are numerous countries like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Argentina facing economic collapse for this very same reason.8 You would think that the people who end up with control of large economies would learn from the mistakes of those that came before them, but it seems the power that comes along with printing money is just too tempting for most bureaucrats to turn down.

The Fed

Central banks and fiat currencies were not always a part of the American story; these were actually among the evils that this country's founders were seeking to escape in the New World. This was one of the many ideals that fell by the wayside in American politics as future generations of politicians and bankers sought new ways to fund their expanding budgets.

The Federal Reserve took control of the US economy in 1914, after many years of debate about whether or not a central bank belonged in America. The bank was established with the support of a powerful coalition of politicians and bankers, led by the infamous J. P. Morgan, but it was still highly controversial at the time. A large economic crash in the early twentieth century known as the “panic of 1907” was used as justification for the new monetary regime. The Federal Reserve was sold to the American public as a solution to market volatility that would prevent future crashes,9 but in the first years after its creation, the bank would preside over one of the most volatile times that this country's economy has ever seen, followed by a crash that brought the whole world down with it.

The Great Depression brought more extreme changes to the country's monetary policy. In 1933, less than 20 years after the Fed was formed, the United States in effect took its first step off of the gold standard (which I'll define later on) with the Emergency Banking Act of 1933. (The actual step off the gold standard occurred on August 15, 1971, when President Nixon announced on television that the United States would no longer exchange currency for gold.) In the first years after the policy was implemented in the 1930s, US citizens were legally required to sell their gold to the government far below market prices. Given that these citizens were reimbursed for their gold, historians often debate whether this was technically a confiscation10 – but it effectively was, considering that they were forced to hand over their gold and they weren't paid a fair price for it.

With the gold standard, all paper money represented gold in a vault somewhere, and was redeemable for gold. The properties of this paper currency were heavily influenced by the gold that backed it. Most importantly, since gold is in limited supply, there is an equal limit to the money that can be printed under the gold standard. But without the gold standard, there is no limit to how much money can be printed. Most banks around the world, including central banks, aren't even required to hold all the paper money they have on their ledgers; they're only required to have a fraction of these reserves on hand, in an arrangement that's aptly named “fractional reserve banking.” The logic behind this scheme is that an expanded money supply will free up money for lending, which will create businesses that add measurable value to the economy.

On its face, increasing the money supply sounds great, and it does have some short‐term positive effects on the economy. But more money in circulation doesn't mean that everybody is richer; it means that our currency is devalued. Basically (without going too much into the details), with every dollar that the Fed prints, the dollars already in circulation become diluted, and lose a little bit of their value. This causes prices to rise for everything in the market, including the basic necessities needed to survive, in a process known as inflation. Since we were taken off the gold standard – in my view – inflation has spiraled out of control and the purchasing power of the dollar has declined by over 90% when compared to gold.

When compared to the longevity and stability of precious metals like silver and gold, fiat currencies with no backing rarely stand the test of time. Governments haven't seemed to learn their lesson, though, because they continue to roll out these worthless currencies after hundreds of similar experiments have now failed. This is not because they're stupid; it's because keeping the money entirely fiat is the only way to maintain total control, so they see this as the only viable option, even if they know that it will eventually fall apart and hurt a lot of innocent people.

Despite these risks, the US dollar is still the primary global reserve currency today, which means that this is the most commonly used asset for international trade, and is held by central banks all over the world. Most central banks hold a variety of different reserve currencies, and the US dollar has been the most popular for a long time. Having control of the global reserve currency gives the US government an incredible amount of financial power over other countries because it allows them to borrow at a much lower cost, giving them advantages worth over $100 billion per year.11 This upper hand may soon be coming to an end, as the US dollar slowly loses its dominance on central bank balance sheets.

The share of US dollars held by central banks shrank from around 70% in 2000, to under 60% today.12 I believe that, at some point, the US dollar will fail and fall from its status as the global reserve currency, and the everyday people of this world will be left to pick up the pieces yet again. The bankers and politicians will insist that the system can be reformed, that everything will be back to normal after a few small tweaks – but since the system is broken by design, it will be impossible to fix. We need an entirely new way of doing business, where power is decentralized in the hands of the many, instead of centralized in the hands of the few.

Some of the smartest people of our time can clearly see the crossroads we're approaching, and they have already begun creating bridges to a better future. As the old and dysfunctional financial system slowly crumbles and fades into obsolescence, we have an opportunity to participate in the creation of an entirely new type of financial network that is open, transparent, and permissionless. If you picked up this book, you probably already know that I'm talking about blockchain technology, crypto assets, and Web3 applications. These innovations will change the world in the coming decades, just as the internet created a world that is unrecognizable from the one I was born into. We are in the very early stages of this transition, and it isn't always going to be easy. But the good news is that the tools that can help us through these times of economic uncertainty are already available. To stay ahead in the new economy, you'll want to learn as much as you can about this technology and figure out how to use it to your advantage. The most important investments you can make in this industry are your time, your brain, and your energy. But note that this space can be a bit overwhelming for newcomers, and things move so fast that it can be hard to keep up, especially if you don't know the basics. In the following pages, we'll track the progress that this technology has made in the short time that it's been around and will dig deep into the most important fundamentals in the crypto industry. It's time to catch up on everything you've been missing in crypto. Let's get it.

Notes

1.

John Carney, “America Lost $10.2 Trillion in 2008,”

Insider

, updated February 3, 2009, 11:57 a.m.,

https://www.businessinsider.com/2009/2/america-lost-102-trillion-of-wealth-in-2008

; Colleen Shalby, “The Financial Crisis Hit 10 Years Ago. For Some, It Feels Like Yesterday,”

Los Angeles Times

, September 15, 2018, 10 a.m.,

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-financial-crisis-experiences-20180915-htmlstory.html

; Oliver Burkeman, “US Tent Cities Highlight New Realities as Recession Wears On,”

The Guardian

, March 26, 2009, 15:18 EDT,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/26/tent-city-california-recession-economy

.

2.

Jordan Major, “Economist Who Predicted 2008 Financial Crisis Says ‘U.S. Economy Is About to Shut Down,’” Finbold, May 10, 2022,

https://finbold.com/economist-who-predicted-2008-financial-crisis-says-u-s-economy-is-about-to-shut-down/

; Stephen Mihm, “Dr. Doom,”

New York Times Magazine

, August 15, 2008,

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/magazine/17pessimist-t.html

; Reuters Staff, “Bernanke Sees No Spillover from Mortgage Woes,” Reuters, May 17, 2007 5:41 a.m.,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-bernanke/bernanke-sees-no-spillover-from-mortgage-woes-idUSWBT00698520070517

.

3.

Jim Cramer, “Bear Stearns Is Fine!,” Mad Money with Jim Cramer,

CNBC.com

, March 11, 2008,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUkbdjetlY8

.

4.

Matthew Ericson, Elaine He, and Amy Schoenfeld, “Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout,”

New York Times

, accessed August 4, 2022,

http://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/200904_CREDITCRISIS/recipients.html?source=post_page

.

5.

Sean Illing, “The ‘Deep State’ is Real. But It’s Not What Trump Thinks It Is,”

Vox

, May 13, 2020, 11:00am EDT,

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/5/13/21219164/trump-deep-state-fbi-cia-david-rohde

.

6.

Davey Alba and Sheera Frenkel, “Medical Expert Who Corrects Trump Is Now a Target of the Far Right,”

New York Times

, March 28, 2020,

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/technology/coronavirus-fauci-trump-conspiracy-target.html

.

7.

“Fiat Currency Graveyard: A History of Monetary Folly,” Gini Foundation, accessed August 7, 2022,

https://ginifoundation.org/kb/fiat-currency-graveyard-a-history-of-monetary-folly/

.

8.

Jared Krebsbach and Eric Lambrecht, “What Role Did Inflation Play in the Collapse of the Roman Empire,” DailyHistory.org, accessed September 3, 2022,

https://dailyhistory.org/What_Role_Did_Inflation_Play_in_the_Collapse_of_the_Roman_Empire

; Douglas Broom, “These Are the Countries with the Highest Inflation,” World Economic Forum, August 13, 2019,

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/inflation-deflation-venezuela-global/

.

9.

Jon R. Moen and Ellis W. Tallman, “The Panic of 1907,” Federal Reserve History, December 4, 2015,

https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/panic-of-1907

.

10.

Thomas E. Woods Jr., “The Great Gold Robbery of 1933,” Mises Institute, August 13, 2008,

https://mises.org/library/great-gold-robbery-1933

; Larry Elliott, “Rise of Cryptocurrencies Can Be Traced to Nixon Abandoning Gold in 1971,”

The Guardian

, August 15, 2021, 07:20 EDT,

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/15/rise-of-cryptocurrencies-can-be-traced-to-nixon-abandoning-gold-in-1971

; Chris Colvin and Philip Fliers, “How the US Government Seized All Citizens’ Gold in 1930s,” The Conversation, May 21, 2020, 10.32am EDT,

https://theconversation.com/how-the-us-government-seized-all-citizens-gold-in-1930s-138467

.

11.

Kenneth Rogoff, “America’s Endless Budget Battle,” Project Syndicate, October 1, 2013,

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/kenneth-rogoffwhat-a-us-default-would-mean-for-america-and-the-world

.

12.

Serkan Arslanalp and Chima Simpson‐Bell, “US Dollar Share of Global Foreign Exchange Reserves Drops to 25‐Year Low,” IMFBlog, May 5, 2021,

https://blogs.imf.org/2021/05/05/us-dollar-share-of-global-foreign-exchange-reserves-drops-to-25-year-low/

.

CHAPTER 2Digital Money Tree: eCash, E‐Gold, and eBay

Money is such a permanent fixture in our world and in our personal lives, but very few people actually understand how it works, and most people would struggle to even come up with a definition for “money.”

Broken down into its simplest terms, money is a representation of value, time, effort, and scarcity. Economists usually point to three principles that separate money from other commodities. In order to be classified as money, a commodity must operate as (1) a medium of exchange, (2) a store of value, and (3) a unit of account. An asset such as money is considered a medium of exchange when it is commonly used and accepted as payment in the economy. Money also serves as a store of value, which means that it can retain its value over time, allowing savers to store their purchasing power for a later date. As for the third principle, units of account are used to measure the prices of goods and to calculate wealth. These assets are divisible into smaller units and they are always fungible, which means that they can be evenly exchanged for other identical assets of the same type and size. For example, one pound of gold will always be considered of equal value as another pound of gold, one dollar will always equal one dollar, and one Bitcoin will always equal one Bitcoin.

That's the technical rundown of how the experts define money, which gives a good overhead view of how it operates on a mechanical level, but it goes much deeper than that. All of the physical and tangible properties that define money are driven by faith. Money is essentially a meme that won't work unless a lot of people believe in it. This is the radical and often overlooked property of money that has allowed it to take so many different forms throughout history.