Some thoughts about The Bitcoin Standard

First off, I'm a Singaporean and am vested in bitcoin. Singapore has strict but clear regulations on digital tokens and CEXes. No capital gain tax. So not fud posting or anything.

Reading The Bitcoin Standard, around 20% through. Here are some thoughts.

The book The Bitcoin Standard focuses on monetary systems, salability of money, hard vs soft money etc, and states that gold as hard money brought about prosperity and wealth in nations while soft money and in turn, inflation brought about their ruin. Two glaring omissions are the economics of and exploitation via slavery and colonism, two major mechanism that funnelled enormous wealth from Africa and Asia to Western nations.

In particular, Qing China used silver as its currency but was impoverished through two Opium Wars, and forced to pay massive reparations to the Western nations for their trouble and ceded land to them as well. Again, the collapse of Qing's economy instead is attributed in the book to its usage of the "weaker" currency, silver, when at the turn of the 19th century, the West, in particular, Great Britain, was having a massive trade deficit as it wanted tea, silk, porcelain, and other refined products from China but had little in return to offer for trade. If not for the combined blunt force of the military might of eight nations brought to bear on Qing China, usage of silver was not an issue as it had a healthy and robust industrial base and near monopoly of luxury goods at that time.

Qing China had corruption eroding the nation from within. But what it lacked was modern weaponry, not the gold standard.

Between gold, silver, fiat, and gun barrels, it is easy to see which is the harder of them. With enough weapons, you can make a nation use monopoly money as their currency if you so wishes.

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Will continue reading and learn more.