The 7th Property

Eric Yakes wrote The 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution. Black Poodle Publishing published it in 2021. Yakes comes from corporate finance and private equity. His subject is Bitcoin as a possible foundation of a new monetary system, so we read the book as an argument for a particular monetary thesis. [1] [3]

The contents move from monetary properties through the history of decentralized and centralized money to banking and the Federal Reserve. The second part follows Bitcoin’s origins, operation, rules and ecosystem. The conclusion compares monetary properties and discusses objections. This sequence helps connect how the network works with the problem the author believes it should solve. [1]

Yakes works with scarcity, durability, acceptability, portability, divisibility and fungibility. These are different criteria for evaluating money, rather than six names for the same thing. A property useful for preserving value does not necessarily explain convenient payments or other people’s willingness to accept the money. [1]

The author proposes adding immutability. He connects it with decentralized production and storage of money. In an accompanying article, he asks whether those managing money face a conflict of interest with society. The label seventh property thus expresses his argument against dependence on powerful intermediaries; it is not the name of a seventh feature of Bitcoin software. [1] [2]

In the section on this property, the book separates mining from holding funds. For mining, it examines the concentration of pools, operators, locations and hardware manufacturing. For storage, it considers the user’s decision to hold funds directly or use an intermediary. This distinction matters: dispersed mining does not itself resolve whom a user entrusts with control of their money. [1]

Yakes also writes that long-term decentralization is not yet an economic reality. The book therefore provides grounds for asking whether its own ideal is being realized in practice. Figures on concentration and adoption belong to the time of publication; we do not present them as current statistics. Assessing today’s ecosystem would require new data. [1]

In the accompanying article, Yakes emphasizes responsibility for one’s own keys and recommends reading sources outside the Bitcoin community as well. This gives readers two separate questions: do they find the author’s monetary theory convincing, and do they understand the consequences of personally managing funds? Agreement with the first question does not automatically settle the second. [2]

Epoch makes the book available as a PDF. This overview checked bibliographic information, the contents, the introduction and selected passages on monetary properties and decentralization, supplemented by available excerpts from the author’s article. It is a guide to the book’s particular argument and structure, not a claim to have read and verified every chapter. [4] [1] [2]