Parallel Order

Fifteen circular Bitcoin economies in South Africa. Zero in Sweden.

That gap says something. This book is an attempt to understand what.

In the townships outside Mossel Bay, children pay for snacks with Lightning. A man in a shack has his first savings ever - twenty-five dollars in Bitcoin. In wealthy coastal towns, entrepreneurs onboard shops one by one, throwing Bitcoin barbecues to spread the word. And in Orania, a small Afrikaner community has been running its own parallel currency for over thirty years - without Bitcoin.

Parallel Order is a field report from the front lines of monetary freedom. Swedish author and documentary filmmaker Jonas Nilsson spent months in South Africa documenting what happens when people opt out of failing systems and build their own.

What you'll find inside:

The surf instructor who orange-pills his neighbors. The township where thirty-one shops accept Bitcoin. The coastal village with the highest Bitcoin adoption per capita in the world. The community that built its own bank when the national one stopped showing up. And the question that connects them all: what kind of freedom is possible when you no longer need permission to participate in the economy?

This is not a book about getting rich. It's a book about getting free.

Parallel Order is the companion book to the documentary Bitcoin Rising - South Africa's Path to Freedom.