Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous.

If you’ve read the previous two books I’ve recently recommended, The Fiat Standard and Broken Money, this one ties it all together. You don’t have to read them in that order, but doing so gives you a complete arc. I actually read this one first myself. That’s when I realized I had it backwards. Bitcoin is the solution, but to really grasp that, it helps to understand the full scope of the problem first. That said, this book stands on its own just fine.

The Bitcoin Standard lays out exactly why Bitcoin isn’t just another tech idea or speculative bet. It’s a return to hard money principles, only this time without the limitations that held gold back. Ammous gives a solid historical walkthrough of what sound money is, why it matters, and how it got torn apart by fiat systems. But the heart of this book is Bitcoin’s structure, why it works, why it’s different, and why it fixes the incentives that broke everything else.

Here’s where I bring in one of my best known quotes: “Bitcoin is to economics what the speed of light is to physics.” Some folks treat that like a catchy line to hype Bitcoin, but it’s not. It’s a mathematical truth. In physics, the speed of light is a constant. It doesn’t change. And because of that, it serves as a reliable baseline, something you can measure other things against. It’s how you build stable theories that hold up under pressure.

Economics has never really had that. Everything else is a variable, money supply, interest rates, inflation, even definitions of value. With Bitcoin, for the first time, we have a true constant. Fixed supply. Predictable issuance. Unchangeable rules backed by a global network whose sole job is to enforce them. It’s not just that you can build a system around it, you can build one that doesn’t move the goalposts. And that’s the foundation everything else needs if we ever want honest money again.

Compare that to fiat, which is based on manipulation and political expedience. Or gold, which even with all its benefits still requires trust because it can’t move through space easily. That physical bottleneck means we need middlemen. And we already know we can’t trust them. Bitcoin strips that away. It moves across the globe in minutes. It settles with finality. And it does it all without needing permission.

This book also does a great job connecting Bitcoin to Austrian economics. It’s not just a store of value, it’s a tool for low time preference living. Save now. Think long term. Build instead of borrow. Gold served that role in the past, but it’s stuck in the physical world. Bitcoin takes those same principles and applies them to a digital future, where money can be owned outright, held without counterparty risk, and moved or layered however you need it.

You won’t find a focus on volatility, regulation drama, or headline noise in this book. Ammous sticks to the fundamentals, and that’s what makes this one so valuable. If you want to understand what Bitcoin really is, not just what it does, but why it matters, this is the book to read.

So whether you’re new to the concept or already down the rabbit hole, The Bitcoin Standard is one of those foundational texts that helps you think clearly and practically about what money should be. If you’ve read the other two, this book completes the picture. If you haven’t, it’s still a solid place to start.  So pick up a copy of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous today and you may come to truly appreciate just how revolutionary Bitcoin is.