In 1972, one year after President Richard Nixon defaulted on the dollar and formally took the United States off of the gold standard for good, the financial historian and analyst Michael Hudson published “Super Imperialism,” a radical critique of the dollar-dominated world economy.

How Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin project married the concepts of digital cash and digital gold and how pioneering cryptographer Adam Back continues the work of making it a better tool for freedom.

One summer day in August 2008, Adam Back got an email from Satoshi Nakamoto.

Has America strayed from its founding ideals? An activist and a refugee think Bitcoin can help it get back on track.

Today, Americans celebrate 245 years of independence from the British Empire.

France still uses monetary colonialism to exploit 15 African nations. Could Bitcoin be a way out?

In the fall of 1993, Fodé Diop’s family was saving up for his future. A brilliant 18-year-old living in Senegal, Fodé had a bright path in front of him as a basketball player and an engineer. His father, a school teacher, had helped him find inspiration in computers and in connecting with the world around him. And his athletic talents had won him offers to study in Europe and in the United States.

As political demonstrations show the world that Cubans are tired of dictatorship, Bitcoin is providing an option to peacefully protest and opt out of a broken system.

Lucia is a 30-year-old medical worker and Bitcoin user living in Matanzas, a city of about 150,000 people sitting about 50 miles east of Havana on Cuba’s northern coast. Named after an aboriginal rebellion against Spanish colonizers, the word “matanzas” literally translates to “slaughter.” The settlement later turned into a 19th-century epicenter of slavery and sugar plantations. Today, like all Cuban cities, it is ground zero for a financial and human crisis.

Bitcoin gives Palestinians a powerful avenue for peaceful protest, and the opportunity to find sovereignty among oppressive economic policies.

One day last week I spoke to a Bitcoin user inside the Gaza Strip.

Tracing Bitcoin’s journey in El Salvador, from new hope in a small village to a new law by an increasingly authoritarian government.

I was standing in a small coffee shop just off of an unpaved street, in a Central American village with no traffic lights, an hour’s drive west on curvy jungle roads from the nearest major city.

A pioneering female CEO has been promoting Bitcoin in Afghanistan since 2013 and sees it needed in her home country now more than ever.

Roya Mahboob — the first female Afghan tech CEO, one of TIME’s most influential people in the world and one of the first entrepreneurs to introduce Bitcoin to Afghanistan — was seven years old when the Taliban first took over her country and invaded her hometown in 1996.

Can Bitcoin reduce aid corruption, help end dependency and bootstrap renewable energy for emerging markets?

Bitcoin is typically thought of as an investment and a strictly financial innovation. But what if some of its greatest impact over time ends up being in the humanitarian and environmental spaces?

While those comfortable in the dollar bubble deride Bitcoin, the stories of three emerging market users demonstrate why it is so important.

In the eyes of most Western elites, investors, journalists and academics, Bitcoin rates anywhere from an annoyance to a disaster.

The world’s reserve currency relies on oil, dictators, inequality and the military-industrial complex. But a Bitcoin standard could change this.

In its growth from conceptual white paper to trillion-dollar asset, Bitcoin has attracted an enormous amount of criticism. Detractors focus on its perceived negative externalities: energy consumption, carbon footprint, lack of centralized control and inability to be regulated. Regardless of the validity of these arguments, few critics stop to think comparatively about the negative externalities of the world’s current financial system of dollar hegemony.

In Book II of Virgil’s epic poem “The Aeneid,” one of the most iconic plotlines of classical mythology unfolds with trickery and subterfuge. The Greek forces, having failed to capture the City of Troy after a decade-long siege, attempt an ultimate attack on their enemy not by strength, but by guile, through a clever plan hatched by Ulysses.

In the fields outside of Troy’s impregnable walls, the Greek army departs, but leaves behind a massive wooden horse. A lone remaining soldier leads the Trojans to believe that the horse is a tribute to Minerva, the goddess of war and strategy, and is an apology for the blood that the Greeks spilled. The Trojans think their rival has sailed off in surrender, and — despite warnings from Cassandra and Laocoön, who gives us the famous saying “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” — they bring the horse into the city as a trophy of victory. Blinded by zeal, they think it will make them invincible.

China’s centralized blockchains couldn’t be any farther from Bitcoin’s. Designed for maximum control, they will become tools for improved surveillance and social engineering.

On October 24, 2019, President Xi Jinping gave a major speech about how China is going to make blockchain technology a national priority. He said China would “take the leading position in the emerging field of blockchain” and explore its use “in people’s daily life.” China’s most-watched daily news show covered the speech in primetime, and the next day, the People’s Daily propaganda newspaper ran a front-page story on Xi and blockchain. Searches for “blockchain” on China’s most popular browser Baidu rose 200 percent.