James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg had predicted cryptocurrency in the book they co-wrote, “The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age”, twelve years before the birth of bitcoin.

Bits Media reports that the book, published in 1997, tells about transitions and changes the humankind could expect in the nearest future, including the “revolution in the character of money” as a result of the beginning of the information age.

“Soon, you will pay for almost any transaction over the Net or World Wide Web at the same time you place it, using cybercash. This new digital form of money is destined to play a pivotal role in cybercommerce. It will consist of encrypted sequences of multi-hundred-digit prime numbers. Unique, anonymous, and verifiable, this money will accommodate the largest transactions. It will also be divisible into the tiniest fraction of value. It will be tradable at a keystroke in a multi-trillion-dollar wholesale market without borders,” wrote the American Davidson and Englishman Rees-Mogg.

They also predict, “Inevitably, this new cybermoney will be denationalized. When Sovereign Individuals can deal across borders in a realm with no physical reality, they will no longer need to tolerate the long-rehearsed practice of governments degrading the value of their money through inflation. Why should they? Control over money will migrate from the halls of power to the global marketplace.”

James Davidson was much younger than his co-author Lord Rees-Mogg and became renown for his economic predictions: he was the one to predict the financial crisis of 2008 in USA.

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