Preface xi
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction 1
What is Money? 2
Money as a Store of Value 5
Demise of the Gold Standard 6
Planting the Seed for the Denationalization of Money 9
Part One: The Foundation 11
Chapter 1: Money Through Time – A Different Perspective 13
“The Holy Gift of Free Gold” 17
National Debt, National Blessing? 18
Following the Yellow Brick Road 21
“Breaking of the Gold Fetters” 24
“Let Me Lay to Rest the Bugaboo…” 27
Chapter 2: The Fundamentals of Money 31
Narrow Money versus Broad Money 33
The Theory of Money and Credit 35
Full Faith and Credit: Money is the Government’s Debt 37
Chapter 3: Banking – An Overview 41
A System That Multiplies Money 43
Money is Credit, and Credit is Money 45
“Not for Profit, Not for Charity, but for Service” 45
Chapter 4: The Denationalization of Money 47
Irving Fisher: Abolish Fractional Reserve Banking 48
Milton Friedman and Setting the Nominal Interest Rate to Zero 50
Friedrich Hayek: Denationalize Money 51
Chapter 5: The Rise of Cryptocurrency 55
Coins and Tokens 57
Is it a Security or a Utility? The Howey Test 60
Stablecoin: Establishing Trust and Stability 62
How Should We Value Coins and Tokens? 63
Chapter 6: The Role Model 69
Everything the Banking System is Not 71
Part Two: The Four Pillars – Our Building Blocks 77
Chapter 7: Pillar 1 – Modern Portfolio Theory and the Risk-Free Asset 79
Evolving Modern Portfolio Theory and the Risk-Free Asset 83
Summary of Pillar 1 84
Chapter 8: Pillar 2 – The Credit Theory of Money 87
Creating Money Under the Credit Theory of Money 88
Creating a Medium of Exchange 91
Summary of Pillar 2 93
Chapter 9: Pillar 3 – Solving the Trust Gap = Blockchain 95
It All Started with the Cloud 98
What, Exactly, is Blockchain? 100
Why Should We Care? 103
How Does Blockchain Work? 103
Why Would Anybody Do This? 106
Who Maintains the Network? 107
Blockchain Components and Ecosystem 108
Protocol Tokens and App Coins/Tokens: Working Together 112
The Other Layers 114
Summary of Pillar 3 115
Chapter 10: Pillar 4 – Capital Markets as a “Technology” 117
What are Capital Markets? 118
What are Money Market Accounts? 119
What’s in a Money Market Fund? 121
How Efficient is the Repurchase Market? 123
How Does This Relate to Our Third Pillar, Blockchain? 124
What is Securitization, and Why the Prejudice Against It? 125
How Securitization Works 126
How Subordination Works 128
Slicing and Dicing Our Way to Risk-Free 129
Summary of Pillar 4 130
Part Three: The Concept 133
Chapter 11: Transcending Space and Time 135
From Star Trek to the Death Star 136
“Copper, Beads, and Such Like Trash” as Money 138
A Store of Value that Transcends Space and Time 140
Chapter 12: Bringing the Building Blocks Together 141
A Known Store of Value: The Blockchain Revolution 143
A Different Objective: Zero Risk 144
Weight, Mass, and the “Risk-Free Rate” 144
The Kilogram and the Specimen 145
An Elastic Definition of the Specimen 149
A Sample Specimen 151
Convergence Checklist 154
Chapter 13: A Neural Network Begins 155
A Perspective on a Decentralized Market in Money 156
The Other Sides of Zero 159
The Paradigm Begins to Shift 160
The Paradigm Shifts: One Loan 162
The Neural Network is Born 164
Chapter 14: Conclusion 165
Securitizing Individuals at an Individual Level with Blockchain 170
Welcome to a Whole New World, Mr. Keynes 172
Appendix A: The Future of Money – A Credit-Based Society 175
Structural Superiority 177
Illustration 178
Appendix B: A House of Cards 179
A Debt-Fueled Illusion 181
Our Perspective Must Shift 182
Glossary 185
Resource Guide 191
Bibliography 207
About the Author 221
Endnotes 223
Index 241
