This first part of the book consists of five chapters covering essential topics for a thorough understanding of the arguments used in the second part, which is dedicated to refuting the disinformation about bitcoin.
The first deals with the concept of money: its origins, the properties any good must have in order to function well as money, the different goods that have been used as money throughout history, the emergence of coinage, and the birth of paper money and deposit banking.
The second chapter pauses in the history of money to address the topic of inflation --- a word used frequently but not always well understood. It covers the causes of inflation, who benefits from it, and who it harms.
The third chapter focuses on the fiat system: its origins and the reasons that led to it. It also addresses all the ethical and economic problems that stem from it.
The fourth chapter is a very brief overview of the history of modern cryptography and the pro-privacy, individual-sovereignty cultural movements that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s --- the fertile ground that made bitcoin’s emergence possible.
The final chapter of this first part of the book attempts to answer two questions: “what is bitcoin” and “how does it work”. The answers rely neither on the mathematics nor on the cryptography underpinning it, with the aim of making the chapter accessible to the widest possible audience.