Written by: Daii
The current Bitcoin price is fluctuating around $84,000, feeling dull and boring. If you have invested using the DCA method introduced in this article, the price should not be your primary concern. Instead, we need to continuously enhance our understanding and strengthen our beliefs to hold Bitcoin more steadily and for a longer time.
Reading is undoubtedly the fastest way to achieve self-improvement. Starting today, let's read a book together, "The Bitcoin Standard" (the Chinese traditional name is "Bitcoin Standard", and the Chinese simplified name is "The Future of Money").
I prefer the name "The Bitcoin Standard" because it quickly draws a comparison with the historical Gold Standard, helping us understand Bitcoin's core value. Compared to concepts like "Standard" or "Future", "Bitcoin Standard" better highlights Bitcoin's potential as the cornerstone of a new global monetary system.
After its publication in 2018, "The Bitcoin Standard" quickly became one of the most popular Bitcoin economics books globally, translated into 38 languages, and influenced countless investors, scholars, entrepreneurs, and even government policymakers.
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach, maintaining the original structure and meaning while translating to English.]Published in 2011, "Digital Gold" is the first book to comprehensively document the early development of BTC history, written by New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper. The book narratively chronicles BTC's journey from Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper to gradually entering the mainstream by 2014.
The book's core value lies in its focus on people. It vividly portrays BTC's earliest believers, including cypherpunk movement supporters, geek hackers, libertarians, Wall Street traders, and even early gray market users like the Silk Road. The book details how Satoshi Nakamoto anonymously released the BTC protocol and tells the stories of individuals like Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road founder), the Winklevoss twins (first BTC billionaires), and Charlie Shrem (BitInstant founder), allowing readers to understand BTC's rise from a human perspective.
2.2 "Mastering Bitcoin": Understanding BTC's Technical Foundation
In 2015, "Mastering Bitcoin" was written by Andreas Antonopoulos and is considered the "bible" of BTC technology, helping countless developers and BTC enthusiasts truly understand its underlying principles.
While "Digital Gold" tells the story and history of BTC, "Mastering Bitcoin" is a technical guide, with its greatest strength being its accessibility. It analyzes BTC's workings, including public key encryption, blockchain data structure, transaction scripts, mining mechanisms, and how to build BTC applications. The author demonstrates BTC's technical charm through clear language, code examples, and case studies.
The book's significance is that it transforms BTC from merely a financial concept into an open technological protocol that anyone can learn, develop, and improve. It can be said that "Mastering Bitcoin" has cultivated generation after generation of developers for the BTC ecosystem, making it more than a speculative asset, but a truly decentralized financial network.
This book was my blockchain entry point, and I started buying BTC after reading it. If you're hesitant, you might want to take a look at this book. I've also written an article recommending it.
2.3 Why Does "Bitcoin Standard" Have More Historical Significance?
If "Digital Gold" records BTC's origins and initial consensus, and "Mastering Bitcoin" establishes its technical foundation, then "Bitcoin Standard" was the first to truly place BTC within an economic framework, viewing it as Sound Money, not just an innovative technology.
"Bitcoin Standard" tells us that BTC is more than an investment target; it's the "gold" of the digital age and the cornerstone of future global monetary systems. It not only explains BTC's monetary attributes but also argues why BTC is more powerful than gold, why the central banking system is collapsing, and why the world is transitioning to a BTC standard.
These three books construct the BTC knowledge system from historical, technical, and economic perspectives, with "Bitcoin Standard" undoubtedly being the most important ideological work in this financial revolution.
3. Why Is "Bitcoin Standard" So Influential?
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach, maintaining the technical and economic nuances of the original text.]3.4 Political Economy of Currency: How BTC Influences the Global Financial Landscape?
Besides economic analysis, Ammous also explored from a political economy perspective how BTC influences the global financial landscape. His argument is similar to the realist international relations school, which suggests:
Currency is an embodiment of power, and the fiat currency system is a means for governments to control the economy, while BTC undermines the government's monopoly on currency;
The core of US dollar hegemony lies in the dollar standard, and BTC is challenging this system. El Salvador's adoption of BTC as legal tender is an important step in global de-dollarization;
BTC promotes economic freedom because it allows individuals to bypass government capital controls, directly holding and transferring wealth without banking system restrictions.
This analytical approach makes BTC not just a technological or investment phenomenon, but a catalyst for global financial order transformation.
3.5 Psychology of Currency: Understanding BTC's Long-term Value through Human Nature
Ammous not only discusses BTC's technical and economic attributes but also explores how human psychology influences monetary system choices. Using behavioral economics, he explains why BTC is undervalued in the short term but highly attractive in the long term:
Loss Aversion: People's pain from losing wealth far exceeds the pleasure of gaining wealth, and BTC provides a way to mitigate fiat currency depreciation risks;
Herding Effect: As institutions enter the BTC market (such as Strategy, Tesla, BTC ETF approval), more individuals and enterprises will follow;
Incremental Consensus: BTC adoption is a continuously strengthening process, and its value will rise as more countries, institutions, and individuals use it.
Through these psychological models, he explains why BTC may experience significant short-term volatility but has an irreversible long-term value trend.
