In 'The Fiat Standard', Saifedean Ammous delves into the world's transition from the gold standard to the current system of government-backed fiat money. He explains the fiat standard as a feat of engineering and technology, similar to his analysis of bitcoin in 'The Bitcoin Standard'. Ammous outlines the purposes and failures of the fiat standard, deriving its wider economic, political, and social implications. He also examines how bitcoin could affect the fiat system over time, highlighting issues such as inflation, government intervention, and the potential for bitcoin to provide a more stable and salable alternative across space. The book critiques the distortions caused by fiat money in various global markets and suggests that bitcoin could lead to an orderly upgrade of the world's monetary operating system.
I joined Knut Svanholm and Luke de Wolf on the Bitcoin Infinity Show to explore the fundamental role of money, incentives, and sound economics in shaping society. We dug into the "Give-a-Shit Matrix", a powerful framework for understanding how people allocate resources—and how broken incentives lead to systemic waste.
We also unpacked why Bitcoin is the apex of financial responsibility, how fiat incentivizes inefficiency, and why Ethereum’s staking model is fundamentally flawed. Along the way, we explored miner incentives, the real problem with ordinals, and the deeper economic distortions caused by inflation.
Why does technology keep advancing, yet people feel like they have less time? Why does the system seem designed to trap people in endless work? And how does Bitcoin realign incentives toward genuine prosperity?
This was a great conversation with some hard truths and a few laughs along the way.
Link to original episode: The Voice of Bitcoin with Guy Swann - Bitcoin Infinity Show 133 (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3rebmb4y)
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