The Bitcoin Standard

Chapter 5Money and Time Preference

Sound money is chosen freely on the market for its salability, because it holds its value across time, because it can transfer value effectively across space, and because it can be divided and grouped into small and large scales. It is money whose supply cannot be manipulated by a coercive authority that imposes its use on others. From the preceding discussion, and from the understanding of monetary economics afforded to us by Austrian economics, the importance of sound money can be explained for three broad reasons: first, it protects value across time, which gives people a bigger incentive to think of their future, and lowers their time preference. The lowering of the time preference is what initiates the process of human civilization and allows for humans to cooperate, prosper, and live in peace. Second, sound money allows for trade to be based on a stable unit of measurement, facilitating ever‐larger markets, free from government control and coercion, and with free trade comes peace and prosperity. Further, a unit of account is essential for all forms of economic calculation and planning, and unsound money makes economic calculation unreliable and is the root cause of economic recessions and crises. Finally, sound money is an essential requirement for individual freedom from despotism and repression, as the ability of a coercive state to create money can give it undue power over its subjects, power which by its very nature will attract ...