This is the first in a series of excerpts adapted from “Bitcoin Is Venice” by Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers, which is available for purchase on Bitcoin Magazine store now.
The following is a direct excerpt from the foreword to the book, written by Alex Gladstein.
What if the year was 1400, and you were on the brink of the Renaissance but didn’t know it? What if someone handed you a magic book that would explain what the coming Renaissance was like, reveal the injustices and inefficiencies of the medieval system, and predict why and how things would change in the decades to come?
What you have in your hands, dear reader, is a book that will do just that for you today, as we approach the Bitcoin Renaissance.
Humanity has potentially embarked on a historic transformation comparable to the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and with potentially even greater impact.
It may sound bizarre, but this book makes a convincing argument that it is, in fact, true. In the same way that medieval Venice prepared the ground for the peoples of Europe to break free from empire and rise from serfdom to freedom, and from financial slavery to financial sovereignty, today the Bitcoin network is the way to escape the broken and unsustainable position. -1971 political economy.
In the newspapers and on television we are told not to worry about inflation, that employment is more important than savings, and that we cannot own anything and be happy. We should be content, in other words, to work for those who own the assets, just as we watch their wealth continue to grow and concentrate, as we watch the currency we earn depreciate and watch our exit from debt vanish.
This book is a stunning rejection of this nascent neo-feudalism and its administrators.
Over the past decade, governments, economists, and journalists have relentlessly hammered into the minds of their populations and audiences that Bitcoin is dangerous and risky. That’s for criminals. It’s a Ponzi scheme. That he destroys the planet.
Time has shown, however, that it is dangerous and risky not to hold bitcoin, which has been, since its inception, the best performing financial asset in the world.
But against the facts, Bitcoin users are still regularly told by the authorities that their choice – peacefully opting for a new, fair and neutral monetary system – is wrong, immoral, even treasonous.
The reality, as the authors of this book argue, is that the global financial system is a cruel maze, and we are all trapped inside, stuck in a situation where tomorrow is traded for today, where capital is mined without consideration for the future, where our money is devalued by central planners, where our freedoms are increasingly eroded, and where our behavior is spied on and used to trick us into becoming more docile and dependent.
Bitcoin fixes that and helps us escape but not through violence. It is “not a sword for Theseus to fight the Minotaur, but a thread to follow to get out of the Labyrinth”.
And we will go out. After all, we don’t owe the Minotaur anything. Let the beast starve. We will find our own way out.
The path is through a new type of Venice in cyberspace accessible to everyone in the world, regardless of wealth, social class, race, religion, gender, nationality or profession. Where any of the billions of people with internet access can connect to this revolution, be a part of it, and even own a part of it. This is what makes this revolution so different from those that preceded it. While those obtained change through new hierarchical structures, Bitcoin will change the world through decentralization.
As more and more people begin to realize that Bitcoin is monetizing before our eyes, creating an alternative to the degenerate, fiat capitalist system we were forced to participate in, we should feel no debt to the old short-thinking regime. long term, top down planning, consumer spending, growth obsession, central banking, bailouts, rent seeking, regulatory capture, toxic scale, risk transfer, globalism and financialization.
Instead, we should turn our eyes to a future of long-term thinking, peer-to-peer collaboration, open-source architecture, development, replenishment, risk-sharing, localism, and growing productive capital, where the farmer plants his seeds instead of eating them and enjoys many harvests to come.
To understand what is coming, we need a guide. There could hardly be a better one than the book in your hands.
From the amazing accomplishments one receives from reading Chapter Three, “That’s Not Capitalism,” to the illumination provided by Chapter Five, “The Capital Mine,” the authors are accomplishing something extraordinary. in future chapters.
These clear and vivid pages explore every nook and cranny of the impact Bitcoin will leave on the world, particularly in regards to investing, communications, culture, energy consumption, environmental sustainability, and how how we build our communities.
In the crescendo of the book, chapter six, “Bitcoin Is Venice,” we receive a clear call for a better future: more inclusive, less exploitative, filled with choice, reason, and compassion. An unrigged financial system, with us, the people, in charge. Digital gold, digital money and real estate rights for all.
Perhaps you found it surprising that a human rights defender was asked to write the preface to a book on finance and economics. But read the book and you will understand why I have been commissioned to prepare you for this journey.
It’s not just about how money and finance work – although you’ll learn a lot along the way – it’s a book about how we can and should harness the power of Bitcoin to secure freedom in the electronic age.
Already as you read this, tens of millions of people around the world are peacefully opting for Bitcoin. Not just in dictatorships and broken economies, where 4.3 billion people languish under authoritarian regimes and 1.6 billion suffer from double- or triple-digit inflation, but also in the West. Even the most hardened skeptics admit that yes, Bitcoin has a use case somewhere.
But why? Why, every day, more and more people are leaving the existing financial system for something new? This book explains why: people are leaving the old system of degenerate fiat capitalism, as the authors call it, because their money isn’t theirs, it’s someone else’s, and the real owners abuse the money printer.
This book is a guide to the system-wide effects of what happens when the money printer continues to operate, when an absurd aggregate debt-to-equity ratio steals value from future generations, and when value is stealthily transferred from the have-nots to the have-nots. at.
But it is also, more importantly, an inspiring vision of a better currency laying the foundations for a better future. As crazy as it sounds, the authors will explain why it’s not just a dream and it’s something that can, and probably will be achieved – thanks to a nice incentive structure -. Most people don’t know that yet.
I feel comfortable saying that this book will be much more appreciated in five years, ten years and twenty years, than today.
It will age very well.
Everyone else will be able to enjoy it in due time. Today you have a glimpse of the future.
Enjoy the ride.
This is a guest post by Alex Gladstein. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
