By Andrew M. Bailey, Bradley Rettler, and Craig Warmke.

Under Contract with Routledge Press, 2023

Resistance Money

A Philosophical Case for Bitcoin


Summary

Headlines about bitcoin often focus on flashy topics like 1000% price increases, ransomware attacks, and boiling oceans. But behind the hype lies a global monetary system used by millions -- with more coming in every day. In this book, we apply a diverse range of tools to introduce, situate, and evaluate the bitcoin monetary system.

Bitcoin, we argue, is resistance money. It is a competitive check against corporate and state overreach. Bitcoin empowers individuals to elude the interlocking and increasingly tight gears of institutions, both private and public. And it provides a monetary good that aligns incentives and provides new financial structures and opportunities. We consider bitcoin’s monetary policy, governance, financial inclusion, privacy, and censorship-resistance. Our vision of bitcoin is not utopian; we document how its design incurs serious and unavoidable tradeoffs. Still, we contend that bitcoin improves the world by providing new opportunities for human flourishing that outweigh its costs.

Outline

  1. Bitcoin Basics
  2. What Bitcoin Really Is
  3. Where Bitcoin Fits
  4. Money Behind the Veil
  5. Monetary Policy
  6. Security Through Energy
  7. Financial Inclusion
  8. Privacy in Public
  9. Resisting Censorship
  10. Alchemy
  11. Against Bitcoin
  12. The Scorecard

Chapters