Seashells to Satoshis II

What the book covers

Every kind of money has had to answer the same question: what stops someone from making more of it? The book follows that question through five eras.

1. Early history

   Shells, beads and stones

   Early communities used shells, beads and stones as money. They worked while they were hard to find, and lost their value once someone could gather or make more of them easily.

2. Thousands of years

   Gold and silver

   Precious metals became money across the world because they were scarce, durable and divisible. They were also heavy to move and hard to check, and some rulers clipped or diluted their coins.

3. From the 1600s

   Paper backed by gold

   Goldsmiths and banks issued paper receipts for metal held in their vaults. Paper was easier to carry, but it only worked while people trusted the gold was really there.

4. 1971

   Money by decree

   When the US ended the dollar's link to gold, the major currencies became fiat money, backed by government decree. Central banks can now change how much money there is, and most currencies have lost much of their purchasing power since.

5. 2009

   Bitcoin

   Bitcoin's software caps its supply at 21 million coins, and anyone can check its public record. It is still young: its price has fallen by more than 70% more than once, and history can't tell us how it will hold up.