Bitcoin & Libertad

About the book

Most criticisms levelled at Bitcoin reveal not so much its flaws as the intellectual confusions of an age that no longer conceives of money as a market institution, but as an instrument of administration. Its volatility is objected to as if money ought to behave like a stable measure rather than a good subject to supply and demand. Its rigidity is lamented as if monetary elasticity were not, in practice, the respectable name for credit privilege and for expansion in the service of power.

This essay confronts that confusion at its root. Joel Serrano shows that the decisive question is not whether Bitcoin fluctuates more or less than state currencies, but whether a money without a manager is possible —a money whose integrity does not depend on the prudence of the politician, the banker or the technician of the day. Against managed money, Bitcoin & Liberty defends hard money as an institutional limit on power and as a framework more compatible with a society of responsible individuals. A short, polemical and uncompromising text on the nature of money and on the possibility of separating money from the State and the Banks.

About the author

Joel Serrano is an independent researcher. His work sits within the framework of the Austrian School of Economics and libertarian political philosophy. He holds a PhD in Social and Legal Sciences (Economics) from Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC), with the thesis "Bitcoin as Hard Money: An Interpretation of Bitcoin in Light of the Austrian School of Economics". The thesis received the highest grade, Outstanding Cum Laude, from a panel formed by Dr. Jesús Huerta de Soto, Dr. Miguel Anxo Bastos and Dr. Estrella Trincado Aznar. The author also holds a degree in Philosophy from UNED, a Master's in Theoretical and Practical Philosophy from UNED and a Master's in Austrian School Economics from URJC.