Hello, and welcome to the second edition of the /XMR/ book club. The past week, we started "What Has Government Done to Our Money" by Rothbard.

The first chapter dealt with introducing the concept of money. Though it seems obvious that a paper with a man's face stamped onto it can buy us a loaf of bread, few understand the importance and the proper function of money. The chapter starts off with some brief notes on society. Money did not arise on happenstance, but is a prerequisite to society itself. Money arises as a medium of exchange through free market principles from barter. Since within a barter some goods will serve better a transitory commodity or medium for exchange. How good a "money" is ultimately dependent on how well it can be used as a medium of exchange. Only from this properties such as "divisibility" and "fungibility" arise, but keep in mind these arise afterwards to characterize common properties permitting good use.

From there it is explained how the supply and demand for free money functions on a free market basis, and why the cries of bureaucrats of "hoarding" or "fluctuating price levels" are as unfounded for money, as they are for any other commodity. One important note is that as money is not used, monetary increase in supply does not confer social benefit. However, Rothbard admits that proper use does not mean inflation. So by the Austrian measure, neither gold, nor Monero are inflationary.

The chapter ends by analyzing the institution of banking, which is simply a warehouse like we have for wheat or iron. Fractional reserves are the creation of unfounded warehouse receipts so fraud. Nonetheless "free banking" still has limitations onto the amount of inflation it can do. The following chapter will deal with how those constraints were systematically eliminated, alongside important factors to consider such as Gresham's law, the origin of fiat, or the history of government meddling before fractional reserve banking.

It is already clear from this chapter that digital cash functions in a near pure state described in this chapter, ultimately preventing government theft. So it is no wonder that we've seen cryptocurrencies retrace the path that gold and silver once took. Personally, I'd argue that the use of L2s and custodian services (warehouses) will be the prime attack surface to put us on a "standard", then take it away completely. But what is your opinion?

>Will governments do/Are doing the same to cryptocurrencies as they did with gold and silver?

And most importantly

>Do you agree with the book? Do the arguments of Rothbard still stand?

Any other questions, notes are more than welcome, even on the broader scope of Austrian Economics.