Cryptocurrency QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to Digital Currencies, Bitcoin, and the Future of Decentralized Finance by Jonathan Reichental
PART I
MONEY AND DIGITAL INNOVATION
1
The Present, Past, and Future of Money
Chapter Overview
» Cryptocurrency and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
» How crypto came about
» Fitting crypto into the monetary system
There’s a reason so many people are intrigued by cryptocurrency. Among
other things, cryptocurrency (or “crypto” for short) is a revolutionary change
in one of humanity’s core tools: money.
The topic raises important questions. Is crypto “real” money, in the sense
that it both stores value and serves as a medium of exchange? How is it
similar to and different from the currency we’re accustomed to and use in
our everyday lives? Is cryptocurrency the future of finance or a passing fad?
To understand the future, it’s often helpful to look at the past. How has
money functioned through history, and what can this tell us about how it
will function in the future? In this chapter, I discuss the larger cultural and
social trends that affect crypto and examine how they relate to the history of
money.
The Financial Sector Meets the Fourth Industrial Revolution
The debates in the Forrest household have been getting more intense in
the last couple of weeks. Daughter Tori recently got her master’s degree in
computer science and landed a well-paid programming job at a Silicon
Valley giant, but she already feels ready to move on from this position. She’s
talking to some friends about launching a start-up in the DeFi space. DeFi,
or decentralized finance, refers to leading-edge enterprises whose mission is
to provide financial services unmediated by central authorities such as banks
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