Summary of Paul Vigna & Michael J. Casey's The Truth Machine

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The most subversive, anti-authoritarian idea in finance is a ledger. Bitcoin, released in 2009 by a person or persons using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, was designed to be an end-around to the banks and governments that have for centuries been the guardians of our financial systems.

#2 Ledgers are record-keeping devices that help deal with the problems of complexity and trust. They help us keep track of all the multiple exchanges that make up society. Without them, the giant, teeming cities of twenty-first-century society would not exist.

#3 The blockchain is a digital ledger that is decentralized, and it is this feature that allows peer-to-peer transactions to take place. The distributed nature of the blockchain ledger makes it virtually impossible for anyone to change the historical record once it has been accepted.

#4 The breakdown of trust in the banking sector, and the subsequent financial crisis, was a result of a vast manipulation of ledgers. The recorded value of the assets those ledgers were supposed to track turned out to be largely vapor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822548862

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Insights on Paul Vigna & Michael J. Casey's The Truth Machine

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The most subversive, anti-authoritarian idea in finance is a ledger. Bitcoin, released in 2009 by a person or persons using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, was designed to be an end-around to the banks and governments that have for centuries been the guardians of our financial systems.

#2

Ledgers are record-keeping devices that help deal with the problems of complexity and trust. They help us keep track of all the multiple exchanges that make up society. Without them, the giant, teeming cities of twenty-first-century society would not exist.

#3

The blockchain is a digital ledger that is decentralized, and it is this feature that allows peer-to-peer transactions to take place. The distributed nature of the blockchain ledger makes it virtually impossible for anyone to change the historical record once it has been accepted.

#4

The breakdown of trust in the banking sector, and the subsequent financial crisis, was a result of a vast manipulation of ledgers. The recorded value of the assets those ledgers were supposed to track turned out to be largely vapor.

#5

Trust, particularly in our institutions, is a vital social resource. When it works, we take it for granted. But when trust is lacking, things really break down.

#6

The rise of bookkeeping to the level of truth itself happened over many centuries, and began with the hostility European Christendom had to lending. The ancients were fine with debt, while the Judeo-Christian tradition had a deep anti-usury culture.

#7

Around the 12th century, Europeans began trading with the East, and they encountered the mathematics that had developed in the Arab world and Asia. Fibonacci’s new numbering system became a hit with the merchant class, and his Liber Abaci, a book filled with integers and fractions, square roots and algebra, showed how this new math had commercial applications.

#8

The merchant class was able to make loans acceptable by connecting them to the Bible, which allowed them to make double-entry bookkeeping. This led to the Renaissance and modern capitalism.

#9

The problem with the 2008 financial crisis was that our trust in a system of accounting, which was