Rettler to Give UW Faculty Senate Speaker Series Presentation March 26

University of Wyoming philosophy Associate Professor Bradley Rettler is the spring semester Faculty Senate Speaker Series award recipient.

He will discuss the truths and myths of bitcoin in his talk, “Money for the Marginalized,” at 4:10 p.m. Tuesday, March 26, in the Wyoming Union Family Room. The presentation also will be available on UW’s WyoCast system by going here. A reception will follow the presentation.

Rettler is among three authors of the forthcoming book “Resistance Money: A Philosophical Case for Bitcoin.” He wrote the book with colleagues Andrew Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy at Yale-NUS College, and Craig Warmke, an associate professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University.

“Bitcoin isn’t just for criminals, speculators or wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs -- despite what the headlines say,” Rettler says. “In an imperfect world of rampant inflation, creeping authoritarianism, surveillance, censorship and financial exclusion, bitcoin empowers individuals to elude the expanding reach and tightening grip of institutions both public and private. So, although bitcoin is money, it is not just money. Bitcoin is resistance money.”

“Resistance Money” explains why bitcoin was invented, how it works and where it fits among other kinds of money. The three authors then offer a framework for evaluating bitcoin from a global perspective and use it to examine bitcoin’s monetary policy, censorship-resistance, privacy, inclusion and energy use. The book is intended for the public -- “from the clueless to the specialist, from the proponent to the die-hard skeptic and everyone in between.”

During his Faculty Senate Speaker Series presentation, Rettler will develop a comprehensive and measured case that bitcoin is a net benefit to the world, despite its imperfections. He will focus on the ways bitcoin is used by people on the margins of society.

The 12-chapter book, published by Routledge Press, can be preordered here.

Rettler has been at UW since fall 2018. Among the UW courses he teaches are “Metaphysics, Philosophy and Science Fiction”; “Philosophy of Religion”; and “Critical Thinking.” He will have a new book on the philosophy of religion coming out later this summer.

Rettler received his doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2014. He previously taught at Baylor University and Fordham University.

UW’s Faculty Senate schedules a speaker for both the fall and spring semesters.

For more information about Rettler’s program, call the Faculty Senate office at (307) 766-5348.