Nixon, the Gold Standard and a Bitcoin Bonanza: Niall Ferguson

It was Sunday night on Aug. 15, 1971, and many Americans were watching television — the most popular show that evening being the Western series “Bonanza.” (Older readers will recall that it chronicled the adventures of the Cartwright family — Ben, his three sons and their Chinese cook — on their Ponderosa Ranch in Nevada.) At 9 p.m. Eastern time, the Cartwrights and their rivals on the other two networks were interrupted by the somewhat less popular figure of President Richard Nixon.

The word “bonanza,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was introduced into American English in the 1880s to ...