The Fiat Stallion

Through his new book The Fiat-Standard, a sequel to his global best-seller The Bitcoin Standard, Saifedean Ammous takes us on a journey through the history of money, state currencies, the banking system, and their consequences in our daily lives. Gold served as money for thousands of years, before the English government of the time gradually switched to a fiat currency.

Saifedean objectively analyzes the reasons for this transition, highlighting the shortcomings of gold and the advantages of fiat currencies. The “fiat” concept is then duplicated to many other areas where the state intervenes massively. In the second part, the author highlights the catastrophic consequences of the state monopoly on monetary power, causing economic distortions, in sectors such as education, food, health, energy, science and research... Finally, Saifedean explains how a monetary system based on Bitcoin would allow a transition to a sound currency, free of the bad economic incentives caused by fiat currencies.

Bitcoin freely competes with the current centralized monetary monopoly. What will be the consequences? Will we see a transition to a free currency market? The Fiat Standard is trying to answer this, by providing a critical vision of the current fiat system, in contrast to mainstream discourse.

” SAIFEDEAN'S INSIGHT lies in his original explanation of how the fiat system works by analogy to how Bitcoin works. In this context, we can consider fiat money as a digital currency, like an altcoin, by defining its qualities and characteristics as well as its strengths and weaknesses. While The Bitcoin Standard's analytical framework focused on evaluating sellability over time, and how this store of value function explains the monetization of gold and bitcoin, in The Fiat Standard, Saifedean uses the sellability framework in space to explain the rise of fiat currencies and how they replaced gold. Far from being a targeted attack on the fiat system, The Fiat Standard clearly illustrates and explains the benefits that made the global adoption of state currencies possible. This framework also provides the basis for analysing the rise of Bitcoin, its security model, and its chances of long-term success.”

—excerpt from the preface by Ross Stevens, founder and executive chairman, NYDIG

” I SPENT MY WHOLE CAREER to study books on monetary theory, the gold standard, monetary systems, central banks, and monetary and financial reform proposals. I would rate a tiny fraction of the books I've read on these topics as excellent. Dr. Ammous' book, The Bitcoin Standard, contains an excellent analysis of all of these topics in addition to a remarkable account of bitcoin. It's essential reading for anyone interested in learning about the role that bitcoin could play in a future free and healthy currency regime.”

—Joseph Salerno, Academic Vice President, The Mises Institute, on The Bitcoin Standard

” THIS BOOK BLEW ME AWAY ; it is a work of genius. I have never seen a better grouping of technical, economic, motivational, and other similar issues around the subject of Bitcoin. The best compliment I can give to this book is that once I read it, I decided to buy $425 million in bitcoin. This book had the biggest impact on how we thought about Microstrategy, and it made us want to switch our business to a bitcoin standard.”

—Michael Saylor, Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Microstrategy, about The Bitcoin Standard