What Has Government Done to Our Money?
Summary
The single most-recommended introduction to Austrian monetary theory, written deliberately as a short book accessible to non-economists. Rothbard tells the story of money's evolution in three movements. Movement 1: how money emerges from voluntary exchange — gold and silver chosen by the market, not imposed by states. Movement 2: how governments progressively captured the institution — first monopolizing coinage, then debasing it, then layering paper claims on metallic reserves, then concentrating reserves in central banks, then severing the metallic anchor entirely (gold standard suspensions in WWI, the 1933 confiscation, the 1971 Nixon shock). Movement 3: what's necessary to restore sound money — a return to 100% reserve commodity backing or its modern functional equivalent. Rothbard's prose is unusually clear for monetary theory; the book can be read in an afternoon and has converted more readers to Austrian thinking than any other text.
Why It Matters for Bitcoin
This is required reading on every Bitcoin reading list. Rothbard's three-movement narrative — sound money → state capture → fiat collapse — is exactly the historical frame Bitcoin advocates extend with a fourth movement: technological escape. The book establishes the vocabulary (debasement, fractional reserves, monetary inflation, the inflation tax, Cantillon effects) that Bitcoin discourse runs on. Most importantly, Rothbard's case for 100% reserve commodity money — which sounded utopian in 1963 — describes Bitcoin's monetary properties almost exactly: 21 million units, no fractional issuance possible, no inflation by fiat, no central authority. If you read one book before The Bitcoin Standard, this should be it.