Bitcoin Verse of the Day — October 14, 2026
“The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash. A method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A.”
Milton Friedman, 1999
Milton Friedman said this in a February 10, 1999 interview, years before Bitcoin existed. He was not describing Bitcoin by name. He was identifying a missing capability of the internet: digital cash that could move directly between people without requiring the sender and receiver to know one another.
The Hoover Institution preserves the original Take It To The Limits interview. A transcript published by Freedom & Prosperity TV records the same e-cash passage. The exact interview excerpt is embedded below, followed by Hoover’s full archival recording.
Bitcoin later arrived with a design explicitly called A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. That history connects directly with BitcoinVersus coverage of the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi Nakamoto’s letter to Wei Dai, and The 21 Laws of Bitcoin. Friedman’s verse matters because it captures the problem before Bitcoin supplied one answer.
Verse themes: Electronic Cash · Privacy · Peer-to-Peer Money · Internet · Monetary Technology
Archive status: FROM BITCOIN VERSES
BitcoinVersus.Tech Editor’s Note:
We volunteer daily to ensure the credibility of the information on this platform is Verifiably True. If you would like to support to help further secure the integrity of our research initiatives, please donate using the QR code provided
For best QR-code scanning results, please scan this donation code from a desktop or larger screen. Mobile screens may prevent camera recognition.
BitcoinVersus.tech is not a financial advisor. This media platform reports on financial subjects purely for informational purposes.
Leave a Reply