George Selgin is an American economist. Until his retirement in July 2025, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, where he was the founding Director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and editor-in-chief of its online publication, Alt-M.
He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, Honorary Professor at Francisco Marroquin University, and an associate editor of Econ Journal Watch.
George Selgin is considered a Bitcoin OG, having participated in the original cypherpunk mailing list alongside Wei Dai and Nick Szabo—a forum that contributed to the ideas behind Bitcoin’s creation. Hal Finney and Nick Szabo have both said that his work helped inspire the development of Bitcoin.
He was among the first economists to study the economics of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Selgin is also an expert on the history and economics of traditional metallic coinage. His book, Good Money, recounts the story of private coin minting during Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution. He is widely regarded as a leading authority on Gresham’s Law, the longstanding economic principle concerning the circulation of money.