Broken Money
A Comprehensive Overview of the Past, Present, and Future of Money Broken Money explores the history of money through the lens of technology. Politics can affect things temporarily and locally, but technology is what drives things forward globally and permanently. The book's goal is for the reader to walk away with a deep understanding of money and monetary history, both in terms of theoretical foundations and in terms of practical implications. From shells to gold, from papyrus bills of exchange to central banks, and from the invention of the telegraph to the creation of Bitcoin, Lyn Alden walks the reader through the emergence of new technologies that have shaped what we use as money over the ages. And beyond that, Alden explores the concept of what money is at its very foundation to give the reader a framework to analyze and compare different types of monetary technologies and monetary theories. The book also takes a distinctively human look at how money impacts the lives of real people, and how new monetary technologies shape the power structures within society. In the modern era, energy abundance and technological enhancements have broadly improved human well-being, but the global monetary system has been slow to keep up. There are over 160 active currencies in the world, each with a local monopoly over its own country, and with little or no acceptance elsewhere.
Stats for nerds
15recommend
27mentions
17people
2023–2026years
85% recommend15% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Broken Money by Lyn Alden is a good book on the topic
- I'm sorry but this post is highly biased and serves as gaslighting in its own way, just for a different crowd. I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but it's very telling that it's on HN frontpage.
There's no mention of:
- The lightning network (bitcoin-native layer 2 enabling near-instant transaction speed)
- Role of mining in grid stabilisation, methane reduction, etc.
- How mining hardware is actually used by miners when cost of energy is nearly free.
- Bitcoin's difficulty adjustment algorithm
- Protocols like Cashu (Chaumian Cash based on Bitcoin)
And one last thing. Mixing in a big bag "crypto" and "bitcoin" is in itself just a very bad take. sigh.
As a side note, I highly recommend Lyn Alden's book Broken Money.
- > The ten minutes I watched was one big appeal to authority. "Here's Doctor X, a highly respected scientist. Look at all the big name universities he's linked to.
Fair point. Although two wrongs don't make a right.
> If I need to assume something about (let's say) geology - which I know little about and haven't the time to research myself - I'm going to trust the general consensus of professional geologists.
This is the intelligent, inituitive approach - I agree. However one of the main points that the documentary makes is that there's a hidden corruption involved which means that in the case of climate this is actually the wrong approach to take. The combined state and money printer-backed financial system has an enormous incentive to encourage scientists to find a global climate crisis, and because most scientists rely on government funding, they in turn have enormous incentives to produce statistics that align with this, or else lose their funding. The so-called climate experts that are presented to you are in fact selected by this system because they produce work that aligns with the system's incentive to make people believe there is a climate crisis.
This corruption all stems from the fact that we gave a few questionable people a money printer, and decades later they're getting closer and closer in their ultimate goal of enslaving the world.
https://x.com/OppCostApp/status/1952831340597948565 (only a two minute video this time)
Read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" or "Broken Money" by Alden for the full story.
- The book Broken Money by Lyn Alden describes this well (economy not social media), it was all concepts I vaguely knew and understood but having it laid out so clearly helped.
- Your comment indicates that you fundamentally misunderstand BTC. I recommend reading Broken Money by Lyn Alden.
- We need to be clear about the features of money we are talking about (and there are many):
For money to work as a convenient way for people or companies to settle transactions, long-term inflation or deflation does not matter. If A wants cement and has mangoes, B wants pants and has mangoes and C wants mangoes and can do tooth fillings they just need something universally accepted to convert what they have into. And, a bit later, buy what they want. Most money satisfy this, but usually people want more features.
For money to also be a store of value it should maintain its purchasing power. This allows an individual to, say, pay for an education of a child when the child grows up: I can save in today's money and be fairly confident that when the time comes to pay it will cover the (future) cost. This feature is what people tend to refer to as "digital gold" as gold generally maintains its purchasing power over very long times.
For money to enable governments to stimulate society in different ways, money should be deflationary. Easy long term store of value makes people less responsive to short-term government stimuli. Without deflationary money a government cannot print extra money when it overspends or if not enough players want to lend to that government.
The last two tend to cause eternal strife between individualists (who want small government that does not do things people did not explicitly ask for) and progressivists (who want to push the society along the path they see as the best one).
There are more features of money (highly recommend reading "Broken Money" by Lyn Alden)
