Money is a technological tool that communicates settlement between parties. The ultimate goal of money is to transmit trust within context, typically over time and over space. The distinction of the need for value settlement between time and space has allowed for a separation between commodity and currency. The dollar has arguably been the closest we have seen to succeeding at both of these tasks until the launch of Bitcoin at the start of 2009.

The transitional period we are about to experience is simply the current iteration of an eternal concept of humans and money – an economic monomyth. If this book could have been written without using the words dollar or bitcoin, it would have. Yet an economic system that grows and regulates itself purely by the actions of its participants and not its rulers is a distortion of the status quo. Bitcoin is a state change of money, settlement, and economic policy that takes us out from underneath the poles of the currency and commodity dichotomy.

Mark Goodwin is an author, journalist, photographer, and the current Editor-in-Chief of Bitcoin Magazine. Goodwin has been publicly in the Bitcoin space since 2017, and began writing for Bitcoin Magazine in 2021. Originally from Massachusetts, Goodwin has spent the last decade in the Bay Area, and when not at his desk can be found walking his dog or performing in various musical outfits.