Chapter 14. Bitcoin and meaning
Every number in the book has a source. To keep the book short, the notes live here instead of in print. Each source is listed with the section of the book it supports and the words it backs up, in the order they appear in the chapter. Web addresses are links; a page may have moved since the date shown.
The chapter page · Chapter 13 sources · All chapters · Chapter 15 sources
The spiritual side, briefly: “the day Martin Luther is said to have posted his Ninety-five Theses”
Satoshi Nakamoto, “Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper,” Cryptography Mailing List, October 31, 2008. Martin Luther’s 95 theses are dated October 31, 1517; whether he nailed them to the Wittenberg church door that day is disputed by historians, beginning with Erwin Iserloh in 1961, and the date itself is not. See Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, Random House, 2016.
The spiritual side, briefly: “command just balances and just weights and call a false balance an abomination”
Proverbs 11:1 (“A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight”) and Leviticus 19:35-36, King James Version.
The spiritual side, briefly: “a warning to those who give short measure when they sell”
Quran 83:1-3 (Al-Mutaffifin, “The Defrauders”), Sahih International translation.
The spiritual side, briefly: “the tradition’s own texts count scheming and deceit as the wrong kind”
Majjhima Nikaya 117, Mahacattarisaka Sutta, on wrong livelihood (scheming, talking, hinting, belittling, pursuing gain with gain), translation by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications, 1995; and Anguttara Nikaya 5.177, Vanijja Sutta, on trades a lay follower should avoid.
Five values, no denomination required: “a dollar saved in 2020 needed about 24% more dollars beside it by 2025”
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U, series CUUR0000SA0), December 2020 to December 2025, a rise of 24.4%; the 2020 to 2025 annual averages give the same 24.4%. Series retrieved through FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, September 2026.
The patient disposition: “who had just seen an adult keep a small promise waited roughly four times”
C. Kidd, H. Palmeri and R. N. Aslin, “Rational Snacking: Young Children’s Decision-Making on the Marshmallow Task Is Moderated by Beliefs About Environmental Reliability,” Cognition 126, no. 1 (2013): 109 to 114. Children in the reliable condition waited a mean of 12 minutes 2 seconds; children in the unreliable condition waited a mean of 3 minutes 2 seconds.
Agency: what changes, and what does not: “most people have far more agency than they realize, and they give it away”
Jeff Booth, author of The Price of Tomorrow (Stanley Press, 2020). Quotation: Christina Comben, “Jeff Booth wants you to move more of your time into Bitcoin,” CryptoSlate, October 26, 2025, cryptoslate.com, retrieved October 2026.
Agency: what changes, and what does not: “grew by roughly 40% between the start of 2020 and the start”
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED, series M2SL (M2 money stock, seasonally adjusted): $15,425.0 billion in January 2020 and $21,647.4 billion in January 2022, a rise of 40.3%. Retrieved September 2026.
Agency: what changes, and what does not: “about 280 accounts and other financial products were frozen”
Department of Finance Canada, “Remarks by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance,” June 14, 2022, canada.ca, retrieved September 2026: approximately 280 financial products, including savings and checking accounts, credit cards and lines of credit, totaling approximately 8 million Canadian dollars, were frozen as of February 21, 2022. See also Public Order Emergency Commission, Report of the Public Inquiry into the 2022 Public Order Emergency, Government of Canada, February 2023.
Agency: what changes, and what does not: “banks limited how much of their own savings people could withdraw”
U.S. International Trade Administration, “Lebanon Country Commercial Guide: Trade Financing,” trade.gov, updated February 2026, retrieved September 2026 (banks introduced informal capital controls in late 2019 and have accumulated more than $72 billion in losses); The National, “Lebanon’s bank customers won’t see the $93 billion they are owed any time soon,” April 16, 2025; UPI, “Seven years after crisis, Lebanon’s banks struggle to survive,” September 8, 2026.
Fix the money, fix the world, examined fairly: “on a gold standard in 1914, and the belligerents simply suspended it”
On the suspension of the gold standard at the outbreak of the First World War: Barry Eichengreen, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919 to 1939, Oxford University Press, 1992.
Fix the money, fix the world, examined fairly: “Daniel Krawisz coined the word in 2014 and called it a voluntary move”
Daniel Krawisz, “Hyperbitcoinization,” Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, March 29, 2014.
Fix the money, fix the world, examined fairly: “a United States Strategic Bitcoin Reserve established by executive order in March 2025”
Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds approved by the SEC, January 2024; Executive Order 14233, “Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile,” signed March 6, 2025, 90 Fed. Reg. 11789 (March 11, 2025), federalregister.gov, retrieved September 2026. The order capitalizes the reserve with bitcoin already forfeited to the government and permits only budget-neutral acquisitions. As of September 2026 the government had made no purchases and had not published an official count of its holdings (CoinDesk, “U.S. Bitcoin Reserve update coming in ‘next few weeks,’ White House advisor says,” May 6, 2026).
Living on a Bitcoin standard, as a mindset: “Saifedean Ammous published The Bitcoin Standard in 2018, and the phrase has come”
Saifedean Ammous, The Bitcoin Standard, Wiley, 2018.
Living on a Bitcoin standard, as a mindset: “A Dutch family sold everything in 2017 and traveled the world on bitcoin”
CNBC, “This family bet it all on bitcoin,” October 17, 2017 (the Dutch Taihuttu family sold their house, cars and possessions in 2017); Decrypt, “The Bitcoin Family: Still on the Road After Three Years,” 2020; CNBC, June 7, 2025, on the family’s continued travels. Retrieved September 2026.
Living on a Bitcoin standard, as a mindset: “a community project put bitcoin in local shops starting in 2019”
CBS News, 60 Minutes, “Bitcoin Beach: How a town in El Salvador became a testing ground for bitcoin,” April 10, 2022, retrieved September 2026 (an anonymous donor’s bitcoin gift in 2019 funded the Bitcoin Beach initiative in El Zonte under Mike Peterson).
Living on a Bitcoin standard, as a mindset: “the federal regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac directed them”
Federal Housing Finance Agency, Director William Pulte, directive to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on considering cryptocurrency as a reserve asset in single-family mortgage risk assessments, June 25, 2025, fhfa.gov, retrieved September 2026.
Worth repeating: “The fourth halving arrived at block 840,000 on April 19, 2024”
The Bitcoin ledger, block 840,000, timestamped 00:09 UTC on April 20, 2024, which was the evening of April 19 in the United States; viewable on any block explorer (mempool.space, retrieved September 2026).
Five values, no denomination required
Satoshi Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” section 6, 2008.
The patient disposition
W. Mischel, E. B. Ebbesen and A. R. Zeiss, “Cognitive and Attentional Mechanisms in Delay of Gratification,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21, no. 2 (1972): 204 to 218.
The patient disposition
T. W. Watts, G. J. Duncan and H. Quan, “Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes,” Psychological Science 29, no. 7 (2018): 1159 to 1177. The correlation between delay at age 4 and achievement at age 15 fell by about two thirds once family background, early cognitive ability and home environment were controlled for.
Fix the money, fix the world, examined fairly
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2024 Internet Crime Report, April 2025, ic3.gov, retrieved September 2026: 149,686 cryptocurrency-related complaints and $9.3 billion in losses for 2024. The 2025 Internet Crime Report, released April 2026, put 2025 losses above $11 billion.
Fix the money, fix the world, examined fairly
CME CF Bitcoin Volatility Index (BVX), a 30-day implied volatility measure, 37 on September 29, 2026, cfbenchmarks.com; iShares, “Bitcoin Volatility Guide,” updated July 2025, citing Bloomberg 1-year realized volatility of about 54% as of January 31, 2025. Retrieved September 2026.
Found a broken link or a mistake? Write to [email protected] and I will fix it.