Check Your Financial Privilege

By: Alex Gladstein

Narrated by: Guy Swann

Alex Gladstein has a lot to say about Bitcoin, human rights, financial privilege, and personal freedom. In Check Your Financial Privilege, he says it, starting with the fact that anyone born into a reserve currency like the euro, yen, or pound has financial privilege over the 89 percent of the world population born into weaker systems.

In Nigeria, human rights activists depend on Bitcoin for donations after crackdowns by authoritarian regimes. In Cuba, after a dual-currency system devalued the peso, those who saved in Bitcoin managed to stay afloat. In El Salvador, where remittance fees and exchange rates can eat away a simple money transfer to family members in need, Bitcoin offers hope with lower fees and faster transactions (and now it's legal tender).

As CSO of the Human Rights Foundation, Gladstein is uniquely positioned to detail the rise of Bitcoin from cypherpunk dream to the real-life Bitcoin stories happening to real people across the globe. For people around the world, outside of Wall Street, Bitcoin offers a means of freedom from inflation, political strife, and an outdated monetary system. For these people, the majority of the world’s population, it might even save their lives.

©2022 Alex Gladstein (P)2022 Alex Gladstein

BTC MAXIMALIST REVIEW

As a BATM owner/operator since 2014 I’m pretty critical of “stakers and shakers,” and even though I was slightly put off by the title, this a great book for Bitcoin support and supporters.

Well worth the credit; re-frames your world view

Love the framing of the discussion. This will make you re-think this whole problem (if you even knew it was one!)

Brilliant historical breakdown

In his clarifications of where we’ve been, the author has woven together the dollar’s dominance, with the literal exploitation of developing nations. He presents a clear case a solution.

Extremely thoughtful and educational world economic overview

If you’re interested in how the current global financial system works, how we got where we are, or what may be coming next, read this book.

Contains a meaningful amount of history as well as incredible stories of just how crippling the current financial system can be to those without real power.

I’ll be passing it along to those I care most about because the information is that important.

The reason why we need Bitcoin

The book details how fiat money has been a means of controlling and impoverishing the have nots and has been a tool of the powerful and elite.