In this episode Saifedean talks to regular seminar attendees about some common criticisms of hard money made by inflationist economists, and why these criticisms represent a misunderstanding of why recessions happen and how they are resolved. The conversation touches on the reluctance of mainstream economists to address the causes of The Great Depression, why they mistakenly attribute its length to the inflexibility of the gold standard, and how Austrian Business Cycle Theory provides the only coherent explanation for what happened. Saifedean draws parallels between these criticisms and popular hard money criticisms of bitcoin to show why they are also mistaken.

Resources

• A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz
• Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression 1919-1939 – Barry Eichengreen
• Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain by Andreas Antonopoulos
• Platform for running your own personal bitcoin and Lightning Network node
• Budgeting software recommended by Pavao
• Bitcoin debit card recommended by Pavao