In this renowned book, Saifedean Ammous made the case the Bitcoin is the "sound money", that is, it is a form of currency that is reliable and compliant. Saifedean, who subscribes to the Austrian Economics priniciples, has a different view on compliance. He does not endorse the Keynesian cyclic managerial form of money currently adopted by financial institutions. Instead, he, as per his school of thought, insists that money stems from direct trade and self-induced human activity.
The book is a must-read for all the cryptonians in the wild, it offers an "engineered" opinion on the state of money. The book is divised into ten chapters covering the history of money, the econometrics of bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies role in the modern monetary system. It discusses the technicalities of the Bitcoin system without delving much in the actual code side as the author is not a seasoned programmer.
Ammous underpins some interesting notions of money flux and time preference. He argues that Bitcoin could serve as a standalone "standard" because is satisfies the conditions of what a "sound" money is. He opposes the "moral decay" of financialization and its continous inflationary mechanisms. As per his analysis, Bitcoin is superior even to gold because it is divisible, portable, and verifiable. Also, he argues that while Bitcoin leverages the best of modern computing, it is still scarce and durable, no less than gold.
As all revelations of thought, the book is candidate to critique. I think that Ammous underestimates Bitcoin's technical and social challenges. I am a Blockchain developer with 5 years of experience and I never owned BTC. Not that I am ignorant to the leading currency, but I like to know "how much" my money is and I do not mind a centralized USDT. In the book's defence, Ammous emphasizes the societal and philosophical side of the currency with less priority accorded to practicality.
Form a programmer's perspective, I find Ammous's attack on Altcoins a bit excessive. Projects like DAOs and L2s served remarkably in pushing Blockchain's state-of-the-art forward. Even by the Austrian standards, people would follow their preferences and best interests, the diversification of Blockchain projects surely contributes to the pool of choices. I think that the "math-money" should not be short-circuited for the favor of the original BTC.