Who Really Invented Bitcoin? | Mark Thornton

In this episode of Minor Issues, Mark Thornton revisits a prophetic 1970s address by Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek that laid the intellectual groundwork for Bitcoin. Delivered during the depths of stagflation, Hayek’s “International Money” lecture critiques central bank monopoly, exposes the failure of Keynesian inflationism, and calls for the denationalization of money. Mark unpacks how Hayek’s radical proposal for competing private currencies was decades ahead of its time, and why it matters more than ever in today’s age of government-managed inflation and crypto crackdowns.

Additional Resources

Choice in Currency by F. A. Hayek (based on his address, “International Money”): https://mises.org/MI_127_A

The Denationalisation of Money by F. A. Hayek: https://mises.org/MI_127_B

“Hayek Predicting Bitcoin” (excerpted from the May 1, 1984, interview with James Blanchard at the University of Freiburg): https://mises.org/MI_127_C

“The Last Days of Satoshi: What Happened When Bitcoin’s Creator Disappeared” by Pete Rizzo (Bitcoin Magazine): https://mises.org/MI_127_D

“Bitcoin” (1440): https://mises.org/MI_127_E

Register for the 2025 Mises Institute Supporters Summit in Delray Beach, Florida, October 16–18: https://mises.org/ss25

Be sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues