An age ago in Bitcoin years (early 2021), Eric Yakes released The 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution. It was among the first great “Bitcoin-money” books, a standardized genre where authors thoughtfully consider the role of money in society and history, assess its qualities and characteristics, and only brings in bitcoin and its technobabbling details about halfway through.
“it wasn’t until I wrote a Bitcoin book that I realized there were so many Bitcoin books out there.”
Over the years, we’ve been inundated with books like that. Some of great quality, like Lyn Alden’s Broken Money that I — full disclosure — edited, and others of regular trash status.
The writing-publishing endeavor has, as far as I can tell, cooled down a bit, with the audience more than saturated. To publish successful Bitcoin books a cycle-plus after Yakes, you gotta go big macro (Larry Lepard’s The Big Print), big beginner (Natalie Brunell’s Bitcoin is for Everyone) or very specialized (Leon Wankum’s Digital Real Estate or Aaron van Wirdum’s The Genesis Book — both of which I also worked on).
The book is almost six years old now, so I wondered what Eric would have done differently today. “There’s a million things I’ve learned since writing the book,” Eric says. His major point with The 7th Property was to give a synopsis of money, banking, and bitcoin from an investor standpoint — the latter being the key demographic.
“The book did much better than I would have expected at the time.” He described how some books are too heavy on opinion and commentary, and others too lengthy and heavy on the raw, dry facts. You have to strike a balance between expertise and editorializing. “I wanted this to be something that is engaging.”
He received a lot of mixed feedback: some people thought The 7th Property had “a clear understanding of the problem” and dealt with money and banking in a comprehensive way; others that it was too technical of a book, or too summary. Also, “there was a lot of dentists reaching out… that surprised me.”
I read a quote to him from the book — “For Bitcoin to compete with the incumbent system, the incumbent’s financial services will need to be replicated in bitcoin” (p. 263) — and wondered if, given the Paper Bitcoin Summer and the last year’s treasury company wave, he stands by that line.
“I 100% still think that statement is true. Bitcoin is something where the value proposition increases with the amount of capital that enters the system.” By way of a tree analogy, Eric tells me that Bitcoin, like trees searching for sunlight, “is growing toward where the capital is, toward financial markets and the stock market specifically.”
“The larger bitcoin becomes, the more it can stand on its own.” But until then, building bridges to and integrating with where the capital exists today is how way we make Bitcoin bigger. A lot of people in Bitcoinland have an idealized, black-and-white view of how adoption should proceed. “I don’t think it works like that… we don’t get to choose how adoption happens. That idealized path, it doesn’t exist.”
One thing that hit me on re-reading the book now, a cycle-and-a-half later, is the emphasis throughout monetary history on trading off trust for efficiency. The book gives two seemingly contradictory positions on the matter:
- “Digital money will reach an inflection point at which people will need to decide if they will trade trust for efficiency once again. It is my goal to convince enough people that they should not.” (p. 57)
- “some people do not want to spend the time to be their own custodians, and that is perfectly reasonable but potentially costly” (p. 261)
“This is where my thinking has developed the most on since writing the book.”
He clarifies that he thinks that this trade-off warning is mostly intended for fiat. As we’re talking, the Liquid hack/heist has just happened, the Coldcard debacle fresh on everyone’s mind, Lightning service providers getting hacked left, right, and centre. When I mention these token wars, and he says that within Bitcoin, he’s softened his stance there a little: “we’re going through growing pains in software. As long as the tools that create security can be used for attack, we’ll reach a system of far more robust software. We’re going through growing pains… in the long run, I’m not so concerned by it.”
“This is one way in which owning physical gold at home is safer than owning bitcoin (at least until someone shows up at your house and robs you).” He admits that he hasn’t seen any victory laps from the goldbugs on this either, which is sort of surprising.
At the end of our talk, I ask about Helsinki and BTCHEL, as Eric will give a keynote on the first day and also spoke at the event last year. He says he’s looking forward to heading out to Finland and that “BTCHEL is a good vibes conference.”
What he loved about last year was that there “seemed to be a lot of new people,” an audience that’s very different from the usual crowd that attends conferences. The BTCHEL team is working at the marginal forefront of Bitcoin, expanding the circle, reaching new audiences.
Good vibes indeed. See you all next week!
