Learn › The Bitcoin Standard › Lesson 1 of 11
Prologue: a new kind of money
The book opens with Bitcoin's arrival: an anonymous developer posts a design to a mailing list, and within a decade the network is worth hundreds of billions without any company, central bank or government behind it. The author's claim is that Bitcoin solved two problems at once: digital cash that needs no trusted middleman, and a money whose supply nobody can increase at will.
Summary in our own words, not a quote from the book. The author's arguments, not investment advice. Book · Author's course
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Key ideas
- Digital cash without a trusted third party
- A fixed, predictable supply schedule
- The book frames Bitcoin through the history of money, not technology first
Check yourself
- Which two problems does the author say Bitcoin solved together?
- Why does it matter that no organisation runs Bitcoin?
- Why start a book about Bitcoin with the history of money?