The book about Bitcoin was written 20 years before its appearance

In the distant 1997, two authors, an American and an Englishman, published a book entitled "The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age". Most likely, then James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg hardly suspected that they had written a historical book describing the near future. The authors of the book persuaded the readers that humanity expects great changes. In bold and strange descriptions, they, in fact, managed to predict the idea of a crypto currency, with frightening accuracy embodied in today's Bitcoin.

"The advent of the Information Age entails a revolution of money," - thus begins the chapter of the book "Sovereign Personality" published in the 90s.

"The beginning of cyber-trading will inevitably lead to cyber-money. A new kind of money will change priorities, reducing the ability of world states to determine who is a sovereign person. An important part of the changes will be the release of rich people from the compulsory alienation of property under the influence of information technology", the book says.

Lord William Reese-Mogg was a famous writer and master of his craft. Even with the advent of computers, Mogg continued to write his books by hand and refused to drive. He wrote a lot about the economy and was a supporter of the gold standard.

At the time when Mogg and his co-author Davidson wrote "Sovereign Personality", he was 67 years old.

"Now the advent of the Information Age implies another revolution in the character of money," a subsection at almost the exact middle of TSI, written in the late 1990s, starts. "As cyber-commerce begins, it will lead inevitably to cyber-money. This new form of money will reset the odds, reducing the capacity of the world's nationstates to determine who becomes a Sovereign Individual. A crucial part of this change will come about because of the effect of information technology in liberating the holders of wealth from expropriation through inflation," they write.

Lord William Rees-Mogg died in 2013 at the age of 84. He was a man of letters, having spent a notable stint as editor at the venerable Times of London, the youngest to have ever held the job. He was known throughout his life for adhering to the pinstripe suit long after everyone else had gone casual. He wrote by hand, even with the ubiquity of computers and word processors. He even refused to drive a car.

His editorials were filled with gems. When polite British society, of which he was surely a member, tutted at 60s boy band The Rolling Stones for their drug usage, and cheered their potential caging, his Lordship castigated, "If we are going to make any case a symbol of the conflict between the sound traditional values of Britain and the new hedonism, then we must be sure that the sound traditional values include those of tolerance and equity," he wrote, defending the then-lads. The title of that defense bears reprinting, "Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?" He also wrote a great deal about economics, and was a fan of the gold standard.

He was around 67 years old when he and his co-author, Mr. Davidson, continued in TSI during the late 1990s, "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," they predict.

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