"#Gold has been a store-of-value for thousands of years" is a mantra repeated ad nauseam by which influencers seek to convince their audience of a similar eternal value for #Bitcoin. The gullible listener soaks up such great wisdom with an open mouth, and joins the chorus of the many who sing along. The fallacious belief in such miraculous eternal value of one particular good, gold, is all the more astounding as most plebs know about the many, many other goods which have lost this prized store-of-value function in the past. In fact, any and all former monetary goods fell back to their plain use value once they demonised: Silver has the same thousand years of history as gold, but is well on its path to demonetisation nirvana, trading at under a quarter of its former SoV value, falling. Copper, Bronze, Electrum, Cowries, Wampum, Salt, Cattle, Sheep, Goats, Grain, Cocoa beans,... SoV gone. Utility value remains. The failure list is endless. Only gold is still a strong fungible SoV good, stored away by central banks and hoarders who grok the fragility of the fiat experiment. So, dear Bitcoin influencers, tell us the reason: Why is it that only one good, gold, retains this exalted function in our fiat times? Why should there now be a second good, retaining it too, and for generations? The one reason which really decides this game they will never tell you while pushing their fable of infinite SoV-NGU riches. PS: I do actually give it a good chance that Bitcoin is "it", but not for the harebrained reason that gold survived. Follow my substack "Bitcoin for the Real Economy" to learn how we can still get Bitcoin to monetise and end the fiat disaster.

Fiat monetary aggregates are pure chaos. Move a bank demand deposit into a term deposit and M1 falls suddenly, even though no money has been repaid or destroyed. But the fiat bank has merely renamed one of its liabilities! With Bitcoin and Bitcredit, sound money, banks can neither create base money M0 nor add credit money M1. A term deposit requires an actual transfer of Bitcoin, which continues to exist and is simply held by the honest bank. ==> So, M2 rises while M1 stays unaffected and true. Perfect money.

I agree with Verda Ventures’ thesis in their latest newsletter: "Non-dollar stablecoins do not need to displace the dollar. They need to solve a specific problem inside a specific market better than a dollar token can." Most importantly, this idea applies not only to stables but also to #bitcoin. Why? Because stables, while less volatile, inherit all the institutional problems and political attack points of fiat currencies. Even today, #bitcoin has important capabilities which stablecoins don't: - Bitcoin is nobody's liability, there is no issuer - It has absolute finality where stables can be seized - Jurisdictional neutrality in geopolitical uncertainty And this is just today! If and when Bitcredit Protocol starts taking root, it will naturally stabilise Bitcoin's purchasing power. Once stable, #Bitcoin will beat every stablecoin in the world, including the dollar. (NB: Unless the U.S. switches to a Bitcoin-redeemable dollar.) The endgame will be one neutral asset and one censorship-resistant settlement network worldwide.

The "Global Trade Finance Gap" is officially estimated at $2.5 trillion, but unmet financing needs of exporters and importers are hard to measure. Gap studies typically use rejected applications, but roughly half of all rejections may concern non-creditworthy applicants. The unmet demand however may not be the demand in rejection data but the demand that never materialises at all. “If you’ve been rejected once, you may not come back to the banks anymore,” says Marc Auboin, Head of Trade Finance Research at the World Trade Organization. In this scene a new option is rising: #Bitcredit Protocol facilitates direct trade finance between exporters and importers on decentralised #Bitcoin rails. For the global production sector the new method promises relief against the increasingly dysfunction of traditional banking caused by geopolitical tensions, political interventionism and fiat system centralisation.

Too few indeed. Bitcoin must become medium of exchange. Commercial credit, for real goods in the supply chains, is the way. View quoted note →

A bitcoin company in the supply chain! View quoted note →

Shocked to learn that Economist Thomas Greco has passed away a few weeks ago. I must have corresponded with him by email just days before. Tom had a unique practical experience with community currencies and firmly supported free choice in currency. I always enjoyed my debates with him, recently here on the question of an ideal base money.

Bitcoin for the Real Economy

Thomas H. Greco, Jr. on Bitcoin for the Real Economy

Do not the same arguments hold true if you replace the word, "Bitcoin" in your essay with the word, "gold" or "silver" or "market basket of selecte...

Yesterday's Austrian Economics Salon fled Vienna's Hayek Institute in favour of a pleasant open air evening. Stephen DeMeulenaere, accompanied by Scott Morris, shared their lifelong practical experiences with regional and alternative currencies, reasons for success and reasons for ultimate decline. This holds some valuable lessons for the big job of overcoming today's disastrous nationalised fiat currencies and hopefully, the return to a sound monetary system and free choice in currency. PS: #Bitcoin is our best chance as the economically illiterate political caste has no chance to mess up a Bitcoin Standard like they did with the Gold Standard.

Why #Bitcoin will be indispensable? Because banks have been informally politically captured, not expressly and intentionally, but as a clear side effect of the recent trend to authoritarian money and banking law. In most countries, banks now "debank" customers on a whim, meaning they simply close accounts without due process or even giving a reason for the affected customer to respond to. This works on an enormous false positive ratio. For businesses, most of which are legitimate, this is extremely disruptive in digital age. In South Africa, the central bank enjoys even more power, they can seize anybody's fiat money from any bank under their power. This is a sign of things to come everywhere with digital central bank money, #CBDC. #Bitcoin is mankind's only hope against tyranny and the misery, war, and poverty which comes with it. https://newsday.co.za/business/18817/well-known-south-african-loses-r4-2-million-after-2-emails-and-one-government-gazette/

So, you want to understand how Bitcoin can become a true money, a medium of exchange? And what's next? Bitcredit Protocol has three talks at @BTCPrague this week, the first is on the Main Stage at 17:20 on Thursday. See you there!

It's not even about "when". At @BTC Prague, I will talk about where the fiat experiment is ALREADY failing, and how bitcoiners can profitably fill the gap.