Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies

The author did a great job explaining the history of money and the evolution of the current money system that we are still using today. Its a fascinating read!

Simple and straightforward with details and wonderful charts.

This book built up a clear and concise, theoretical model of how the world’s monetary systems have evolved over time. This book is similar to “The Bitcoin Standard”, without over playing the politics of libertarianism. Instead, the book emphasised the fragile nature of our traditional monetary system, with its heavy reliance on creating money by issuing credit and liabilities. The tone of the explanation was objective and demonstrated the enormous complexity and counter-party risks that were inherent in the global monetary system, by the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. The book was able to transition, smoothly and convincingly, to the logical benefits of using neutral monetary denominations, like Bitcoin, as a reserve currency - a first layer of a hierarchy of monetary layers.

Provides a very solid breakdown of current, past, and potential future monetary constructs. Stays higher level so it helps if you already have an understanding of how money is created, issued, and utilized. Definitely worth reading.

This could be the best book to help you understand both bitcoin and financial market structures.Focus on the concept of "layer" in the book, which will help you to understand how central banks and commercial banks to create "money", and how 1st layered money (i.e. gold) was deteriorated to government bonds (UK/US treasury), and MBS (in 2008), recently munis, AAA corporates, and even junk bonds. Then you will understand why the financial market will never go back to UST only. Thus, why Bitcoin is the new gold and how Bitcoin can be a part of the solution to the financial market reform.

This book provides an excellent account of the history of money and associated markets and how we got to the current financial landscape that involves central banks. It uses a layered pyramid to situate different forms of money and how they relate to each other. It then describes why Bitcoin is a breakthrough that is changing the entire monetary landscape.Despite the fact that I had a good understanding of many concepts in this book already, I benefitted greatly from it due to two main reasons. First, the account of monetary history and how it evolved. Second, the use of layered pyramid functions as a single thread that binds all the things together.I highly recommend reading this book.

An excellent read. It allowed me to understand the way money works in a simple coherent manner. Great in my opinion as a non economy versed person to help people like me understand a basic principle underlying our economy and how bitcoin relates to it.

This book is excellent in simply explaining the concept how Bitcoin will serve as a layer one solution to the world and combat currency debasement by central banks through relentless fiat printing. Separation of government and money is happening. 21 million bitcoin ever.

A very accessible book for those who may be curious about the history of money and credit and how the first banks and central banks formed, with a focus on how the current banking system might evolve as Bitcoin continues to grow in importance and adoption. A short, but great read for discovering new ideas to explore. If you're like me, you will probably come away wanting to read Wikipedia articles about the difference between various forms of the US Dollar over the years (US Notes in red, Federal Reserve Notes in green, etc).Definitely recommend for those wanting to explore Bitcoin and the history of banking, but this may disappoint those looking to take a deep (long) dive into the history or want a deeply academic dissection. I suspect Nik may write a second, larger book to follow up and I look forward to it.

Nik Bhatia takes you through the history of money in compelling fashion. The book is so easy to read and infinitely informative especially in a time like now when the money supply is bogus and created out of thin air. Nik takes you into a golden age of hard money. He also explains how layered money systems work in the world we live in and where we inherited the tradition. This book is a must for anyone who lives now and uses money.

Great overview of how Bitcoin may be the key to the puzzle of rearranging the monetary system in the coming decades. I really enjoyed the history of money, and feel the book would have benefited from a deeper dive with more detail on the events that formed the different layered systems, who the main players were and what their motives were. Overall though, great book and leaves you wanting more. A skill to span past to potential future. Let's hope any transition can happen smoothly!

I have worked in finance and banking for 25+ years and have never seen a clearer framework for thinking about money as exposed in Layered Money. The fact that bitcoin and other crypto-currencies fit neatly into this framework is just the cherry on the cake.

Brilliant introduction into monetary systems, their history, and how Bitcoin will become the choice reserve of the future global monetary system as well as universally trusted currency.