It is likely that Bitcoin's advantage lies not in competing with these payments for small amounts and over short distances; Bitcoin's advantage, rather, is that by bringing the finality of cash settlement to the digital world, it has created the fastest method for final settlement of large payments across long distances and national borders. It is

Hashing is a process that can take any stream of data as an input and transform it into a dataset of fixed size (known as a hash) using a non‐reversible mathematical formula. In other words, it is trivial to use this function to generate a uniform‐sized hash for any piece of data, but it is not possible to determine the original string of data from

This move by President Nixon completed the process begun with World War I, transforming the world economy from a global gold standard to a standard based on several government‐issued currencies.

With modern technology, the stock‐to‐flow ratio for Rai stones decreased drastically: it was possible to produce far more of these stones every year, significantly devaluing the island's existing stock. It became increasingly unwise for anyone to use these stones as a store of value, and thus they lost their salability across time, and with it,

While Rome continued its economic, social, and cultural deterioration, finally collapsing in 476 AD, Byzantium survived for 1,123 years while the solidus became the longest‐serving sound currency in human history.

Other ancient forms of money include cattle, cherished for their nutritional value, as they were one of the most prized possessions anyone could own and were also salable across space due to their mobility. Cattle continue to play a monetary role today, with many societies using them for payments, especially for dowries. Being bulky and not easily

There are three fundamental reasons that drive the relationship between unsound money and war. First, unsound money is itself a barrier to trade between countries, because it distorts value between the countries and makes trade flows a political issue, creating animosity and enmity between governments and populations. Second, government having

There are today two main government‐approved mainstream schools of economic thought: Keynesians and Monetarists. While these two schools have widely disparate methodologies and analytical frameworks, and while they are engaged in bitter academic fights accusing each other of not caring about the poor, the children, the environment, inequality, or

Economist Thomas Philippon27 has produced detailed studies of the size of the financial sector as a percentage of GDP over the past 150 years. The ratio was less than 3% during the years preceding World War I, but was to shoot up afterwards, collapsing during the Great Depression, but growing seemingly in an unstoppable manner since the end of