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Check Your Financial Privilege

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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% 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around the world, outside of Wall Street, Bitcoin offers a means of freedom from inflation, political strife, and an outdated monetary system.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.

Proceeds from the sale of this book support the Human Rights Foundation.


"In Zimbabwe our biggest note became an astonishing but useless one hundred trillion dollar note. We lost everything because a brutal and corrupt government took it all. Alex Gladstein reveals what Bitcoin can and is doing for people who are at the mercy of political looting gangs in designer suits backed by the military. He shows how Bitcoin is a genuine chance at freedom for billions of people trapped in financial oppression."—
--Evan Mawarire, Zimbabwean Pastor and Pro-Democracy Advocate

“Alex has done a fantastic job reporting on the use of Bitcoin by people throughout the developing world as a tool against both authoritarianism and high inflation. This aspect of Bitcoin remains poorly understood in general, which is what makes his detailed work on the topic so useful.”
--Lyn Alden, Founder, Lyn Alden Investment Strategy

“’Cash Rules Everything Around Me.’ This incredible Wu-Tang hook references everything Alex explores in these chapters on the control exerted by governments and corporations through monetary policy, and how the Bitcoin protocol will help free us all.
--Jack Dorsey, Co-founder and former CEO, Twitter; Founder and CEO, Block, Inc.

“Alex is one of the few experts who truly understands what Bitcoin can mean for the billions living under dictatorship -- but also, how the current system creates & sustains inequality, authoritarianism, and imperialism. This collection of essays is a must-read for those invested in anti-authoritarian, progressive, and democratic causes."
--Iyad el-Baghdadi, Arab Spring activist and President, Kawaakibi Foundation

"This book is the first of its kind thanks to a holistic approach, guiding the reader through multiple layers of finance, economics, politics, and history in a beautiful way with clarity and fluidity. Gladstein shows how this novel money is defying traditional wealth-building methods by working with humanity rather than against it."
--Farida Nabourema, Togolese writer, human rights defender, and Pan-Africanist

Proceeds from the sale of this book support the Human Rights Foundation.

Alex Gladstein is a regular contributor to Bitcoin Magazine. Read more of his insights and analysis at

271 pages, Paperback

Published March 9, 2022

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Alex Gladstein

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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Profile Image for Emma.
65 reviews2 followers
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March 4, 2024
This was a fascinating book. It took us from Afghanistan to Cuba to Palestine to right here in the good old US of A and all of it was super interesting to what Bitcoin is and how it can be used for the betterment of people.

I was not expecting the anti-imperialism points it made, which was a good surprise. Overall, I’m just shocked at how diverse the book was. I think people see the Bitcoin space as a finance bro utopia but this book touched on a lot of differing viewpoints from all over the world.

Do I agree with everything the author said? No, but it touched on so many of the talking points that people have against Bitcoin, that I was impressed.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone wondering how Bitcoin could change anything.

Read for school.
7 reviews1 follower
March 13, 2023
Besides the obvious topic of financial inclusion and freedom money, the book has a very good 20ish pages part about the history of digitial cash and the path to the invention/discovery of Bitcoin as well as the early days of Bitcoin.
It's interesting cause Sathoshi implemented all the findings and learnings since 1977 about digital encryption, digitial cash and distributed systems into Bitcoin.
The only thing Satoshi invented was the Difficulty Adjustment.
Well, but that's only about those 20 pages that don't really seem to fit the book at first, but are amazing for sure.

Gladstein also backs his writing with astonishing 459 references/soruces.
That should speak for how well resreached the book is.

By the way, the book is quite big for a Paperback and the pages have barely any free space wihtout text. So it has more content than it seems, when You see it has effectively 220ish pages.
Profile Image for zogador.
68 reviews6 followers
July 28, 2022
Anyone who downvotes this book is braindead, of unfortunate intelligence, or has their lips wrapped around the Cantillon phallus. After reading more than a dozen books about bitcoin, it's truly astounding how much more remains to be learned. Alex Gladstein has done a superb job bringing up fresh topics, and recent world events, layered over a solid historic backdrop of monetary policy in the US and around the world. These topics, often presented in the form of first hand accounts, showcase individuals who used bitcoin to escape political tyranny and financial oppression. This is the life-changing side of bitcoin which isn't commonly told, and highly relevant to the current hodler revolution.
Profile Image for Warren Mcpherson.
195 reviews29 followers
May 18, 2022
This book is an expression of the beautiful vision for bitcoin.
It is a brutal answer to the question of why Bitcoin could even be relevant. If you are sitting in corporate headquarters in Omaha Nebraska strategizing the promotion of diabetes, it may seem that bitcoin could not be relevant to you. But for 90% of the world population there could be some distinct advantages to paying attention.
There are stories of bitcoin usage in El Salvador, Africa, Cuba, Palestine and Afghanistan. At times it feels like an update of the book The Age of Cryptocurrencies. The previous volume felt a little like it was techno utopian showing small case studies and ideas about how bitcoin might help. Now we are seeing much larger groups making significant commitments. Furthermore, while the author focused on extreme cases, each case mentioned has proximate examples that likely carry much more volume. Indonesia, Nigeria, and Brazil represent less dire cases than Afghanistan, Senegal, or Cuba but they all represent places where people have a vivid intuition of why it is a good idea to hodl some bitcoin. And there is significant evidence that people are starting to do so.
The last chapter makes about five hundred references to another book and explores the monetary element of American imperialism. This seems to open a very interesting topic, and it is certainly related to the rest of the book, but it feels a little clumsy and certainly doesn't tie up the book neatly.
There are several references to the events of 2021, the book is very current. I expect the editorial challenge of delivering the book in such a timely fashion was quite significant. The result is worth it. There are many vivid examples of how this technology is valuable not just in a theoretical way to silicon valley insiders but to a very large and growing number of people all over the world. The main reason to read it is to bring yourself up to date on bitcoin adoption beyond your immediate community.
Profile Image for Alexander Mooij.
58 reviews2 followers
July 2, 2023
This topic really changed the way I thought about bitcoin. All the fuss about the btc price used to turn me off and made it look like a scam, but when you hear the stories about Palestinians, Cubans, Afghani and so many others finally being able to operate on a reasonable level playing field when it comes to currency. What an amazing invention.
Profile Image for Armin.
214 reviews9 followers
July 8, 2023
very insightful and important deep dive into the current state of many countries across the world, and how bitcoin can help change their fate. this book ties together why bitcoin is much more than money for the rich, but really an escape hatch for the poorest of the poor, and the un-banked of the world.
30 reviews3 followers
May 17, 2023
Besides the obvious bias the author has for bitcoin as the solution; I learnt a lot from the book and appreciate a lot of new ideas it brought to me personally.
3 reviews1 follower
May 20, 2022
Internally inconsistent and largely filled with anecdotes as opposed to real substance. Seems to misunderstand economic theory on a pretty fundamental level.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews

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