Summary of Saifedean Ammous's The Fiat Standard

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The Fiat Standard has survived for 50 years, which makes it unreasonable to dismiss it as an irredeemable fraud on the brink of collapse. Understanding how the fiat standard works and how it frequently fails is essential knowledge for navigating it.

#2 The first seven chapters of The Bitcoin Standard explained the history and function of money, and its importance to the economic order. With bitcoin showing us how an advanced monetary system can function independently of government control, we can better understand the properties required for a monetary system to operate on the free market.

#3 The fiat system was not a carefully designed financial operating system like bitcoin, but rather it evolved through a process of compromise between political constraints and expedience in managing government default.

#4 The fiat monetary system was a solution to the gold standard’s low spatial salability. It allowed governments to transfer value across space without having to worry about the gold standard’s constraints. But it allowed governments to exploit their citizens by giving them easy fiat tokens that they could use to pay their taxes.

© 2022 IRB Media (Ebook): 9781669368922

Release date

Ebook: March 24, 2022