How 2,000 Years of Monetary History Led Us to Bitcoin, Feat. Nik Bhatia

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8 • 786 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nik Bhatia is a financial researcher, a CFA charterholder and an Adjunct Professor of Finance and Business Economics at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. Nik’s new book “Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies” puts the rise of bitcoin into a larger historical context - from the first coinage of Rome to the introduction of credit in Renaissance Florence to the beginnings of interest rate trading in Antwerp to the genesis of the central bank system that shapes money today. In this conversation, he and NLW do a rapid tour across those two millennia of economic history, ultimately helping reframe what it means when we say that bitcoin is the new “digital gold.” Find our guest on Twitter: @timevalueofbtc -- Earn up to 12% APY on Bitcoin, Ethereum, USD, EUR, GBP, Stablecoins & more. Get started at nexo.io -- Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1438693620?at=1000lSDb Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/538vuul1PuorUDwgkC8JWF?si=ddSvD-HST2e_E7wgxcjtfQ Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ubHdjcnlwdG8ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M= Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownNLW The Breakdown is produced and distributed by CoinDesk.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I've always thought of Bitcoin as digital gold, but the analogy needed a story.
0:05.8	It's not digital gold now.
0:07.5	It's the first layer money of the future using gold as the first layer money of the past as an example to set up.
0:14.9	Why?
0:15.6	It's more than digital gold.
0:17.9	It is a first layer money that can anchor a whole financial system. Gold failed
0:23.5	at doing that. So we don't want to emulate gold. We want to take the important properties from it,
0:32.6	but then build a better system on top of it. Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.
0:40.9	It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.
0:47.7	The breakdown is sponsored by nexo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.
0:54.4	What's going on, guys?
0:55.7	It is Thursday, February 18th, and today I'm so excited for this conversation.
1:01.3	You know I geek out when I get to do a historical episode, and that is exactly what we have
1:06.8	for you today.
1:08.1	There are many people, especially in the sort of bull market we're in,
1:12.9	who will extol Bitcoin's virtues. It's hard cap, its unconfiscatability, its censorship
1:19.0	resistance, it's predictable and unchangeable monetary policy. There are far fewer people
1:25.1	who can actually explain Bitcoin's place in the evolution of money
1:30.0	over millennia, who can help make it clear why the innovation contained here is so historically
1:37.3	relevant.
1:38.4	That's exactly what Nick Batia's new book, Layered Money does.
1:42.6	I started following Nick years ago when I was doing a Sunday
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Blockworks, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Blockworks and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.