Bitcoin is a Gutenberg Revolution
War, Instability, and Change
The invention of the printing press lead to events that changed the course of history. What the printing press did was make it extremely easy, and economically viable to mass produce text. This included bibles from all denominations, as well as the Catholic church’s list of banned books.
While not directly causing them, the printing press accelerated the separation of church and state and the scientific revolution. It did this by dramatically bringing down the cost to creating and distributing text (information).
A Gutenberg Revolution is now colloquially used to refer to inventions that change the rules of the game. Some would argue (myself included) that the internet is one such invention.
If we look back into the last century, it seems like there were several inventions that fit this description. The computer, the internet, genetic modification, flight, and nuclear energy all could lead to revolutions of epic proportions.
The intention of this letter is to prompt you to think of Bitcoin as a Gutenberg revolution.
Bitcoin Changes the Game
Bitcoin changes something more central to our lives than energy, food, shelter, or transportation. It changes money.
The reason why money is more central than these primal and cardinal needs is because it is through money that each of these things are accessed.
Furthermore, money has historically been something that is subject to being controlled, or at least manipulated by central figures of authority. May that be a monarch, conqueror, banker, or politician.
Like the distribution of information before the printing press, all money comes from regulated and sanctioned sources.
In order to understand the rules of the game when it comes to money, we must first understand the rules that cannot change no matter what. The “Ground Rules” so to speak.
The Ground Rules
Central to every government is its economy.
Central to every economy is its money.
Central to every money is its functions (SoV, MoE, UoA).
Central to those functions are the properties that determine how well the money performs those functions (Divisibility, Durability, Fungibility, Acceptability, Transportability and Limited Supply)
A degradation in any of the 6 properties of money will result in demand for an asset/object that better fulfills these properties.
The Governor of Governments (The Old Rules)
As Ferdinand Lips puts it in his book Gold Wars, gold is the governor of governments. As he outlines, gold was not selected by governments to be the money of the world, it was selected by the people (and the free market).
The reason why gold is the governor of governments, is because if the government opts to use the money to go to war, the people can show their dissent by redeeming their bills for gold.
Furthermore, war is expensive. Going to war typically involves financing the war by printing money (altering the supply) or borrowing money from the public.
Either of these scenarios results in the nations currency being devalued. The country that wins the war may profit in gold, as war reparations are paid in gold. This may bring temporary strength to the currency of the winning nation, but at the expense of the people who fought in either side of the war. I don’t want my money to be the benefactor of war.
Within this system, people really do vote with their dollar. People can either redeem their dollars for gold (signalling disapproval), lend money to the government (signalling approval), or do nothing (signalling ambivalence).
There’s also instances where, for example America in 1933, President Roosevelt made it illegal to hold gold. Citizens had to turn in their gold or face legal action. This was done as an “emergency measure” because the Great Depression had been going on for 5 years and the central bank needed gold to keep the already dying economy afloat.
In any situation, when a country goes to war, or faces an emergency, the value of their currency goes down. When gold is at the centre of an economy, the ability for the nation to wage perpetual war is limited by the amount of gold they have in their reserves.
Since governments cannot alter the supply of gold, they have no choice but to abide by the wishes of the populous as determined by them “voting” with their dollar.
These were the old rules. The Unites States government changed the rules of the game in 1971 by unilaterally deciding to take the world off of the gold standard.
The Current Rules
Since 1971 the Unites States government has selected the money the world uses, and it’s not gold. If gold is the governor of governments, and the government has selected an instrument of its own creation, then all world governments have opted to go unregulated under “Modern Monetary Theory”.
Within the current ruleset, money printing, warfare, and misallocation of capital can go on for decades before the full scope of the disastrous implications are realized by the wider public.
Definitely check out wtfhappenedin1971.com because it pretty clearly shows that as soon as the United States took the world off the gold standard, societal decline began. I find it amazing we’ve made it 51 years later without experiencing total collapse.
The most egregious implications of money printing is the warfare that can be afforded. Under the current ruleset, war can be financed through the printing press (altering the supply).
Within this timeframe, we’ve seen (among others) the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the Afghanistan War, the Syrian War (proxy war), the war in Libya, the War in Yemen, the War on COVID, and now the war in Ukraine.
By dramatically increasing the supply of money, the US government is totally destroying the Store of Value function of money. This prompts people to look elsewhere to store value.
This is why we see much higher prices in our homes, the stock market, and yes, bitcoin. We’re currently in a period of speculation over which object will be the best store of value moving forward.
Until the world moves to a money with a more reliable store of value function, we will see perpetual warfare as the United States is able to continually fund it with printed money.
Changing World Order
We’re actually not living in exceptional times from a purely historical context. Nations become empires, empires collapse, then giving rise to other empires.
These empires obtain world reserve currency status for the money of their nation, subsequently abuse that power, and then cede that power to another rising empire.
Ray Dalio outlines this cycle in his latest video.
He outlines that a nations follow similar steps on their way to world domination. One of those steps is employing a military power to extract wealth from around the world.
That power was once the Dutch East India Trading Company, the British East India Trading Company, and is known as the Military Industrial Complex.
The problem, as I see it, is this cycle repeats. In my view, the cycle repeats because the power to control and manipulate currency has always resided within the hands of nations.
The New Rules (Bitcoin is a Peaceful Revolution)
Bitcoin changes the rules of the game so that the power to manipulate the supply of the currency is entirely removed.
As Ray Dalio points out, governments must fund military expansion by destroying the Store of Value properties of money. Bitcoin is rewriting the rules so that no government has the power to wage war through monetary expansion ever again. Money is no longer going to be an instrument of the state.
Bitcoin gives us the power to peacefully break this cycle once and for all.
Historically, when one currency dethrones another, it is because the state behind it has employed both weapons and armies. Bitcoin is not a state, so it has no weapons, no armies, and employs no one.
Unlike the currencies of nations, Bitcoin asserts itself as the dominant form of money purely through free market functions.
If I believe in the free market to select the optimal tool for a particular job (and I do), then I need not worry about bitcoin becoming the world reserve currency. It is a matter of when, not if.
The printing press resulted in and accelerated the separation of church and state. Similarly, bitcoin is accelerating and will eventually result in the separation of money and state.
This is why bitcoin is a Gutenberg revolution. It totally changes the game.
This letter is essentially a continuation and elaboration on the theme of reclaiming your mind, thinking for yourself, and realizing bitcoin has the potential to actually change our world for the better.
When I was much younger, I was exposed to an individual named Terrence Mckenna. I’ll leave you with 2 minutes of his words encouraging your to reclaim your mind.
Regards,
Keegan
What's preventing governments buying Bitcoin to fun there war efforts? Or for that matter anyone using Bitcoin the same way Fiat currencies are used ?