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In 1982 a cryptographer in Amsterdam built digital cash with the privacy of a banknote. By 1998 his company was bankrupt. Then came e-gold: five million accounts, real gold in a vault — closed by a courtroom. Bitcoin was not the first try. It was not even the second. This month we ask why every digital money before it failed, what Satoshi Nakamoto actually solved, and what falls out of that one answer.

500 years ago, a mountain of silver in Bolivia flooded Spain with riches — and triggered one of history's first inflation crises. What does that have to do with the euro in your pocket, the money printer, or Bitcoin? This month we trace the story of inflation: from silver rushes and goldsmith banks to Weimar wheelbarrows and Nixon's 1971 decision that quietly made all money "fiat."

Why did a remote island use multi-ton stone discs as money? Their story reveals the three functions every money must fulfil — store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account — and sets the stage to ask: is Bitcoin money?