Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard, argues fiat money is the root cause behind much of the 20th century’s destruction.

He told Cointelegraph:

“The 20th century is just an enormous amount of wealth being taken away from people who produced it and being sent to the meat grinder of war.”

Fiat, war, and an alternate 1915

In Ammous’ latest book, The Gold Standard, he sketches an alternate history in which a decentralized system for transferring gold emerges soon after World War I begins.

In the real timeline, the four-year war killed more than 40 million people across 30 countries and helped trigger revolutions and the collapse of the Habsburg, Romanov, and Hohenzollern dynasties.

Ammous’ core premise is that these outcomes were downstream of fiat banking and credit expansion.

A decentralized gold network by airplane

The story centers on French aviator Louis Bleriot, who partners with the Wright brothers to form the Bleriot Transport Corporation (BTC), a fleet that physically delivers gold for settlement.

Ammous writes:

“The automobile and aviation industries traded with one another across international borders without having to resort to central banks.”

As demand for direct gold settlement grows, the book depicts capital flight draining central bank vaults, making war finance difficult.

Peace, prosperity, and ‘hypergoldenization’

In the novel, the war ends early and is formalized in a Treaty of Geneva and an International Committee for Self-Determination.

Ammous describes a society where governance becomes more transactional:

“People pragmatically chose to live under the governments that provided them security and services at the lowest cost.”

He also portrays a daily life of abundance:

“Comfort is taken for granted, and prosperity is ordinary.”

From gold bug to Bitcoin

Ammous said he embraced Austrian economics around 2007 and was initially a gold advocate before changing his mind after learning about Bitcoin mining in 2014.

His Gold Standard project, he said, aims to teach the same lessons through fiction rather than straight economics.