Austrian Economics: The Foundation for Understanding Bitcoin

Saifedean Ammous is an economist and the author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, which has been translated into 20 languages. In this episode, he discusses:

• the basic tenets of Austrian economics and why it is the only school where Bitcoin is possible
• historical examples of currencies and how they lost their monetary value
• the stock-to-flow model and how Bitcoin fits into that model
• the three functions, or descriptive properties, of money and why Bitcoin fulfills these functions
• the concept of sound money
• the idea of time preference in economics and why he believes it is so important
• the distinction between debt and money, and why they are not the same
• the significance of difficulty adjustment and why he believes it is the crowning achievement of Bitcoin
• why he views Bitcoin as the best store of value humanity has ever invented
• the metrics he watches when assessing Bitcoin
• what he thinks is in store for Bitcoin in the future, and whether he still thinks central banks will buy Bitcoin as a reserve currency
• his thoughts on Ethereum and other digital currencies
• and his predictions for Bitcoin in the next year

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Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/

Episode links: 

Saifedean Ammous: https://twitter.com/saifedean

Saifedean’s website: https://saifedean.com

The Bitcoin Standard: https://saifedean.com/book/

Invest Like the Best episode with Saifedean: http://investorfieldguide.com/ammous/

What Bitcoin Did episode with Saifedean: https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/saifedean-ammous-on-understanding-bitcoin-economics

Plan B’s stock-to-flow model applied to Bitcoin: https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/modeling-bitcoins-value-with-scarcity-91fa0fc03e25

https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/bitcoin-stock-to-flow-cross-asset-model-50d260feed12

Essay on why the stock-to-flow model is wrong: https://www.coindesk.com/why-the-stock-to-flow-bitcoin-valuation-model-is-wrong

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