Edward Chancellor’s The Price of Time has been described as a history of interest rates. While accurate, this is also incomplete. Already in the first chapter, Chancellor shows that he is not writing about interest in the narrow, technical sense of a percentage attached to a loan. Instead, he describes how societies value time, how they distribute obligations across generations, and how they struggle with the moral and political consequences of charging for the future.
He describes interest from a broader perspective, it is more than a financial instrument and one of the oldest mechanisms for structuring human relations. Clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia record loans of grain and silver with interest already attached. These were not exceptional contracts, but the very fabric of early economies. Yet from the beginning, the collection of interest provoked resistance. Every civilization that used it also tried to limit its use, regulate it, or ban it altogether.
The moral and political weight of interest
Chancellor’s starting point is that interest is never neutral. Religious traditions condemned usury, sometimes absolutely, sometimes with caveats. Judaism limited excessive interest among members of the same community. Christianity forbade usury for centuries, treating it as a sin. Islam prohibits riba, often interpreted as interest, as an exploitative practice.
These prohibitions were not abstract moral exercises. Debt could devastate families, trap peasants in bondage, and destabilize entire societies. Interest was not just the cost of borrowing money; it was a source of inequality and conflict. By trying to restrain interest, religious and political authorities were attempting to manage the social consequences of letting financial obligations run unchecked.
Despite these prohibitions, however, interest never disappeared. It adapted to the constraints of each era, hiding in new contracts or appearing under different names. This persistence suggests that charging for time fulfills a deep function in human societies, even if it is never entirely accepted.
Interest as the price of time
What Chancellor makes clear is that interest is not simply the “cost of capital.” It is the price of time itself. When a lender demands interest, they are asking for compensation for the risk of waiting. When a borrower accepts interest, they are acknowledging the value of having resources now rather than later. This makes interest a cultural as well as an economic phenomenon.
The book describes how different societies place different values on patience, risk, and obligation. Interest rates are shaped not only by supply and demand, but by trust, law, and collective imagination. The concept of interest is therefore connected with how societies relate to the future.
Interest as a recurring cultural question
The first chapter of The Price of Time emphasizes that debates about interest have always been debates about justice. Is it fair to profit from another person’s misfortune? Is it moral to bind future labor with present obligations? Is it sustainable to allow debts to accumulate without limit?
These questions shaped religious rules, legal systems, and eventually, modern states. They are not relics of the past. When central banks adjust rates, when governments debate debt forgiveness, when DeFi protocols advertise double-digit yields — we are still grappling with the same fundamental issues.
What looks like technical policy is in fact a moral and political choice. How much should we demand from the future? Who bears the cost of waiting? Who gains, and who loses, when the price of time changes?
The crypto lens
For those of us immersed in crypto, Chancellor’s historical perspective is essential. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and DeFi lending pools are often presented as radical departures from the past. But look closely and the continuities are obvious. Staking rewards, lending rates, and stablecoin yields all reproduce, in digital form, the centuries-old practice of charging for time.
Without history, it is tempting to believe that crypto has reinvented finance from scratch. With history, we see both the novelty and the repetition. The infrastructures are new, but the questions they raise — about risk, obligation, and fairness — are as old as money itself.
This is why financial literacy cannot be reduced to knowing how blockchains function or how smart contracts execute. To understand what is at stake, we need to situate crypto within the longer arc of monetary history. Chancellor’s book provides a framework for doing that.
Why this book matters
The success of The Price of Time lies in its refusal to naturalize interest. It reminds us that interest is not inevitable. It is a social invention, constantly renegotiated, justified, and contested. To study interest is to study how societies manage time — how they balance present needs against future obligations, how they manage uncertainty, and how they distribute risk.
This is also why the book resonates with broader audiences. “Time is money” may be a cliché, but Chancellor shows that interest is the hinge between the two. It structures how we think about patience and impatience, security and risk, justice and exploitation.
For me, the first chapter alone justifies the book’s relevance. It provides the kind of context that economics education rarely offers. It links anthropology, history, and political economy in a way that makes finance intelligible without stripping it of its complexity.