Price is not value. Price is an expression in a unit of account. Value is purchasing power over time. When the unit of account weakens, prices rise even if nothing real has changed. This is not growth. It is dilution. Fiat currencies expand by design. As supply increases, each unit represents less claim on real goods and services. Prices adjust upward to reflect this loss. Wages lag prices because wages are reactive, not instant. They are renegotiated periodically. Prices reprice continuously. The gap is the hidden tax paid by labour. This is why people feel poorer even when GDP rises and salaries increase. The measuring stick is shrinking faster than income adjusts. Hard money exposes this reality. When the monetary unit does not expand, value shows up as: • Falling prices • Higher quality • Increased purchasing power Productivity is no longer masked by monetary debasement. Progress becomes visible instead of distorted. Bitcoin does not make things more expensive. It makes the currency honest. Price fluctuates. Value is preserved. Confusing the two leads to false conclusions. #Bitcoin #HardMoney #Finance #Value #FiatCurrencies

A new year is a natural reset. People set goals. They reassess what matters. They decide where to direct their time, energy, and effort. This makes it a good moment to think about money. Money is not wealth. It is a tool for measuring and storing the value you create. When the measuring stick is unstable, effort is distorted. Productivity is punished. Long-term thinking becomes difficult. For decades, most people have been forced to trade their time for a currency that loses purchasing power by design. The result is predictable: higher risk, more speculation, less saving, and constant pressure to chase returns just to stand still. Hard money changes the incentive structure. When money holds its value: • Saving becomes rational. • Long-term planning becomes possible. • Productivity is rewarded instead of diluted. Bitcoin represents this shift. Not as a get-rich-quick scheme. Not as a trade. Not as a yield product. But as a fixed-supply monetary system with no issuer, no discretion, and no need for trust. In a Bitcoin standard, progress shows up differently. Not primarily through rising prices, but through: • Falling costs • Better tools • Higher quality • More efficient coordination The goal isn’t to “number go up.” The goal is to produce more value with less waste, and store that value honestly. As this year begins, the question isn’t: “How do I make more money?” It’s: “What am I building?” “What value am I creating?” “And what money do I store that value in?” Hard money rewards patience. It rewards discipline. It rewards real work. That is a good foundation for any year ahead. #Bitcoin #NewYear #Productivity #ValueCreation

Over the past few days, I’ve been involved in a long debate about #Bitcoin, #money, and #economic growth. Below summarises the debate outside of the comments we have had back and forth. What became clear is that most disagreements about Bitcoin are not really about Bitcoin. They are about which economic framework you start from. Two schools of thought Most modern economics taught in universities today is derived from Keynesian and neo-Keynesian models. In this framework: • Money is a policy tool. • Credit expansion is necessary for growth. • Debt is not a problem if it funds activity. • Inflation is tolerated, even encouraged, to stimulate spending. • Economic health is measured primarily through GDP. Within this model, a fixed supply monetary system looks dangerous. If money cannot expand, the assumption is that growth will stall, liquidity will dry up, and the system will collapse under its own weight. This is why many people instinctively conclude that Bitcoin “cannot work” as money. There is another school of thought, often referred to as classical or Austrian economics, which starts from different assumptions. This is where Bitcoiners sit. In this framework: • Money is a measuring tool, not a control mechanism. •Growth comes from productivity, innovation, and efficient coordination of capital. • Credit should emerge from real savings, not monetary expansion. • Inflation distorts price signals and transfers wealth. • Falling prices due to productivity are a feature, not a failure. From this perspective, a fixed or hard monetary base is not a limitation. It is a discipline. Why universities teach what they teach Modern states operate on debt-based monetary systems. Governments, banks, and institutions depend on the ability to expand the money supply. It is therefore not surprising that: • Economic models that justify managed money dominate academia. • Models that limit state discretion are treated as historical or impractical. • Monetary failure is usually framed as “policy error,” not systemic design. This doesn’t require malice or conspiracy. Systems tend to teach what sustains them. Historical evidence is often misread Empires did not collapse because money was “too hard.” They collapsed because money was debased. • Rome did not fall under a fixed monetary system. It progressively reduced silver content in its coinage to fund military and state spending. Trust eroded, prices rose, and economic coordination broke down. • Weimar Germany did not fail due to hard money, but due to rapid monetary expansion to service war debts. • Zimbabwe did not collapse because of sanctions alone. Monetary issuance was used to paper over structural collapse, destroying the currency. • Time and again, monetary expansion is used as a short-term solution that creates long-term instability. Hard money systems did not “fail.” They were abandoned when political constraints became inconvenient. Where Bitcoin fits Bitcoin does not ban credit. It bans base-layer monetary manipulation. Its base layer is slow by design because it prioritises final settlement, not throughput. This is not new. Gold functioned the same way for centuries. Higher layers always emerged on top of sound settlement layers. Bitcoin separates: • Money from policy • Settlement from payments • Value storage from discretionary issuance When people argue that Bitcoin must adopt inflation, tail emissions, or permanent issuance to “support growth,” they are assuming growth must come from monetary expansion. Bitcoin challenges that assumption. It forces growth to come from: • Better coordination • Better incentives • Better productivity Why the disagreement persists If you believe: • Money must be managed • Growth requires issuance • Stability comes from flexibility Bitcoin looks flawed. If you believe: • Money should constrain power • Growth should reflect reality • Stability comes from rules Bitcoin looks inevitable. This is not a debate about intelligence, credentials, or good intentions. It is a debate about what money is allowed to do. Bitcoin did not create this disagreement. It simply made it impossible to ignore.

Most of the world prices goods, services, and labour in fiat terms. As the currency supply expands, prices rise. Wages lag behind. The gap widens over time. This distorts the concept of fair value. People trade finite time and energy for a unit that steadily loses purchasing power. The loss is not always visible, but it is cumulative. Productivity improves, technology advances, yet the currency measures less of both. Price inflation is often blamed on greed or shortages. In reality, much of it is a reflection of the measuring unit deteriorating. #Bitcoin exposes this distortion. When Bitcoin is used purely as a store of value after converting from fiat, it is treated as an investment. That is a rational response within a fiat system, but it is not the full design intent. Bitcoin was not created to be a speculative asset. It was created to be a stable monetary unit. When value is stored in a unit that does not dilute, prices fall as productivity improves. Purchasing power rises without requiring higher nominal wages. Fair value re-emerges because the measuring stick remains constant. The distinction matters. If Bitcoin is only bought with fiat and never earned or spent, it behaves like an asset. If Bitcoin is earned, saved, and spent, it functions as money. This is why circular economies matter. Not for ideology, but for measurement. Fair value cannot exist when the unit of account is unstable. Sound money is not about getting rich. It is about preserving time, energy, and truth in pricing. Bitcoin makes that possible.

#Bitcoin was not designed to be an IOU. It was designed to remove the need for trusted intermediaries in money. When you hold Bitcoin through: – ETFs – custodial exchanges – broker apps – derivatives and paper claims you do not hold Bitcoin. You hold a promise denominated in Bitcoin. That distinction matters. Paper Bitcoin recreates the exact system Bitcoin was built to escape: • custodians control access • regulators control custodians • price discovery moves off-chain • users lose sovereignty If most “Bitcoin ownership” exists as paper claims, then Bitcoin becomes: – easy to freeze – easy to censor – easy to rehypothecate – easy to politically capture The protocol still works. The rules don’t change. But the people stop using it as designed. Bitcoin’s security model assumes: – users self-custody – nodes independently verify – transactions settle on the base layer (or trust-minimised layers) ETFs do none of this. They increase price exposure while reducing network participation. That is why ETFs strengthen fiat markets, not Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not gain strength from number go up. It gains strength from: – self-custody – real settlement – node verification – voluntary use If you don’t run a node, you trust someone else’s rules. If you don’t self-custody, you don’t control your money. If you never transact, you don’t participate in the system. Bitcoin survives paperization. But it does not benefit from it. If Bitcoin is treated only as a speculative asset, it will be absorbed into the system it was meant to replace. If it is used as money, it remains outside that system. The choice is not institutional vs retail. The choice is custody vs sovereignty. Use Bitcoin. Verify Bitcoin. Hold your own keys. That is how Bitcoin stays Bitcoin.

#Bitcoin’s protocol still works. The risk is not in the code. It is in how people use it. Bitcoin is increasingly held through ETFs, custodians, and treasury vehicles. That gives exposure, but it reduces participation. Price discovery moves off-chain. Coins consolidate into regulated pools. Users stop verifying. This does not break Bitcoin. But it weakens its sovereign properties. Bitcoin was designed to be self-custodied money, settled peer-to-peer, enforced by users running nodes. That is what makes the rules hard to change and capture expensive. When convenience replaces verification, enforcement thins. When exposure replaces ownership, sovereignty erodes. Institutions will always prefer paper claims and intermediated control. That is rational for them. It is not neutral for the network. As a Bitcoiner, the responsibility is to be honest about this trade-off. If you want Bitcoin to remain hard money: • Hold your own keys • Run a node if you can • Use Bitcoin as money, not just as a price ticker Bitcoin does not need belief or protection. It needs users who participate. The protocol survives only if sovereignty is practiced, not outsourced.

Credit is not savings. It is a claim created against the future. In modern systems, credit is issued first and funded later. Banks do not lend deposits. They create new money when they issue loans. The borrower receives purchasing power that did not previously exist. The liability is pushed forward in time. This process expands the money supply without increasing real goods or productivity. At small scale, credit coordinates investment. At large scale, it distorts prices. When credit is cheap and abundant: • Asset prices rise before wages • Risk is mispriced • Debt grows faster than income • Consumption is pulled forward • Future output is assumed, not earned This is not growth. It is temporal displacement. The system requires continual expansion to remain solvent. Old debt is serviced by new credit. If expansion slows, defaults appear. If expansion stops, the system contracts. There is no equilibrium. Only acceleration or collapse. Because credit is created without hard limits, it concentrates power in institutions that can issue it. Those closest to issuance benefit first. Those furthest away pay later through inflation and higher taxes. This is why inflation is described as a “mystery.” Its cause is structural. Sound money constrains credit. Fiat money amplifies it. Bitcoin does not prohibit lending. It prohibits credit creation from nothing. Loans must come from saved capital. Risk must be priced. Time preference must be real. This is the difference between money that measures value and money that manufactures claims. One preserves reality. The other replaces it with promises. #Bitcoin #Credit #Finance #CentralBanking

Taxation Was Never Meant to Be Permanent Income tax was introduced as a temporary emergency measure. In the UK, income tax first appeared in 1799 to fund the Napoleonic Wars. It was repealed, reinstated, and only made permanent in 1842. In the US, income tax emerged during the Civil War, was repealed, then reintroduced in 1913, sold as a tax on the wealthy, not the population at large. Before permanent income taxation, societies still functioned. Cities had roads, bridges, ports, universities, water systems, and trade infrastructure, all built without perpetual taxation of labour and savings. So what changed? Modern taxation didn’t expand because governments suddenly became more efficient. It expanded because governments stopped running surplus budgets. Under Keynesian economics, deficits are not a failure, they are a policy tool. When growth slows, governments borrow. When debt compounds, they inflate. When inflation bites, they tax more. Not to improve services, but to keep the system solvent. This is why politicians fail time and time again. They overpromise and underdeliver, not because they are uniquely incompetent, but because the system is structurally designed to fail. You can see the consequences everywhere: Cost of living crises Pension crises Housing affordability breakdowns Declining public services despite rising tax burdens From an Austrian economics perspective, this outcome is inevitable. When money can be created without constraint, fiscal discipline disappears. Taxation becomes a mechanism to offset monetary mismanagement, not a means of funding productive public goods. This is not a left vs right issue. It doesn’t matter who is in power. Until the underlying system changes, until Keynesian assumptions are challenged, politicians will continue to fail, budgets will remain permanently in deficit, and citizens will continue to carry the cost. Broken money produces broken incentives. Broken incentives produce broken governance. History is clear on this. And it’s repeating, again.

A recurring pattern I see in Bitcoin discussions is the conflation of the protocol with the market built around it. Bitcoin is a monetary protocol. TradFi exchanges, market makers, ETFs, custodians, oracles, and fiat on-ramps are optional market infrastructure layered on top of it. When people critique Bitcoin by pointing to exchange failures, liquidity providers, pricing oracles, or custodial risk, they are not critiquing Bitcoin. They are critiquing fiat-era intermediaries interacting with Bitcoin. That distinction matters. Within the protocol: • No miner can censor a valid transaction • No market maker can change the rules • No exchange can prevent settlement between self-custodied users • No institution controls issuance or supply • No authority can override consensus Bitcoin does not eliminate intermediaries by force. It makes them optional by design. The confusion arises when people treat: • price discovery as governance • custody as control • liquidity as authority • markets as protocol That framing imports TradFi assumptions into a system that was explicitly designed to remove them. My aim has always been to evaluate Bitcoin on its own terms — at the protocol layer — not through the lens of fiat market behaviour built around it. When you separate those layers, most of the common criticisms collapse. Bitcoin is not perfect. But it is precise. And precision is what most debates are missing. #Bitcoin #FiatMoney #TradFi

The stock-to-flow ratio explains why some forms of money endure and others fail. Stock is the existing supply of an asset. Flow is the amount added each year. When flow is small relative to stock, supply is stable. When flow is large, value is diluted. This ratio matters for money. Gold functioned as money for centuries because its stock-to-flow was high. New supply could not be produced quickly, even when demand increased. That constraint protected purchasing power over time. Fiat currency has a stock-to-flow problem by design. Flow responds to policy, not scarcity. When demand for money rises or debt becomes unmanageable, supply expands. Purchasing power declines as a result. Bitcoin was designed with this distinction in mind. Its total stock is capped. Its flow is known in advance. Issuance decreases on a fixed schedule. Every four years, Bitcoin’s flow is cut in half. Its stock-to-flow rises automatically, without discretion or intervention. This is not a pricing model. It is a description of supply mechanics. Hard money does not depend on restraint. It depends on constraint. Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow is enforced by rules, not promises. That makes it the first digitally native form of hard money with predictable scarcity. Over time, assets with stable supply are used to preserve value. Assets with elastic supply are used to spend. That pattern has repeated throughout history. Bitcoin fits the former category by design. #Bitcoin #HardMoney #Money #Economics #Inflation #Finance

The Bank of England cutting rates to 3.75% is not a sign of strength. It is a response to economic contraction, not confidence. Rate cuts happen for two reasons: either productivity is accelerating, or demand is weakening. This is the latter. Falling inflation here is not driven by abundance or efficiency. It is driven by slowing consumption, tightening household budgets, and a fragile economy that cannot tolerate higher borrowing costs. The so-called “mortgage war” confirms this. Banks are not cutting rates out of generosity — they are competing for scarce creditworthy borrowers. When lending demand weakens, price competition follows. Yes, lower rates may reduce monthly payments in nominal terms. But history shows what usually comes next: house prices reprice upward, absorbing the benefit. Cheaper money does not make housing more affordable. It makes housing more expensive in larger units of debased currency. An average £270 monthly saving sounds meaningful — until prices rise 5–10% and first-time buyers are pushed further out. Lower rates help existing asset holders first. That is the Cantillon effect, not prosperity. This is the deeper pattern: • Rates rise → households strain • Rates fall → assets inflate • Purchasing power continues to erode in both cases Monetary easing is not a solution. It is a delay mechanism. Real recovery does not come from cheaper credit. It comes from sound money, productivity, and capital formation without distortion. When central banks cut rates during contraction, they are not fixing the system. They are signalling that it can no longer function without intervention. That is not stability. It is dependency. https://www.perplexity.ai/page/bank-of-england-cuts-rates-as-jhJuKhX8Su2x0X.F8ELx5g #UK #UKEconomy #BankOfEngland #Economy

Money is not a social construct decided by vote. It is a tool that emerges through use. Across history, societies have repeatedly discovered that certain properties are required for money to function over time: scarcity, durability, divisibility, verifiability, and resistance to manipulation. The forms of money that lacked these properties were eventually abandoned. The ones that possessed them endured. Gold became money not because it was declared so, but because it was difficult to produce, easy to verify, and could not be created at will. These constraints mattered. They limited the ability of rulers to dilute value and forced economic growth to come from productivity rather than monetary expansion. Fiat currency began as a claim on hard money. Over time, that constraint was removed. In 1971, money became fully elastic, issued by policy rather than bound by scarcity. From that point on, money ceased to function as a reliable store of value and became a tool for managing debt, growth targets, and short-term stability. The consequences are structural, not accidental: purchasing power erosion, asset inflation, rising debt, and increasing reliance on financialisation rather than production. Bitcoin was not designed to optimise payments, speculation, or short-term returns. It was designed to reintroduce monetary discipline in a digital world. Its supply is fixed. Its issuance is predictable. Its rules are enforced by a network, not by discretion or authority. This makes Bitcoin different from currencies, equities, or commodities. It is a monetary system governed by rules rather than trust. Bitcoin does not promise economic equality or volatility-free markets. It simply restores a property money once had: the inability to be debased. Throughout history, harder forms of money have eventually replaced softer ones, not through force or persuasion, but through reliability over time. Bitcoin represents the first digitally native attempt at hard money. It is not a rebellion against the system. It is a response to the limits of the current one. Understanding Bitcoin begins with understanding money. #Bitcoin #Money #HistoryOfMoney #Economics #Finance

#Bitcoin is widely misunderstood because it is evaluated using the wrong framework. Most financial advisors and wealth managers analyse Bitcoin as if it were an equity, a commodity, or a speculative risk asset. It is none of those. Bitcoin is a monetary system. Equities are claims on future cash flows. Commodities are inputs to production. Currencies are liabilities issued by states and managed through policy. Bitcoin is different. It has no issuer, no balance sheet, no management team, and no cash flow because money is not supposed to produce yield. Its function is to store value, measure value, and transfer value without reliance on trust or discretion. This is where the confusion starts. When advisors ask: – “Where is the income?” – “What’s the intrinsic value?” – “How does it compound?” They are asking questions appropriate for businesses, not for money. Bitcoin’s value comes from its rules: – Fixed supply – Predictable issuance – Verifiable scarcity – Censorship resistance These properties remove dilution risk and counterparty risk. Over time, that matters more than narratives, models, or opinions. Bitcoin does not replace productive assets. It replaces the measuring stick used to evaluate them. Until Bitcoin is understood as money rather than an investment product, it will continue to be misunderstood — even by professionals paid to allocate capital. That misunderstanding is not a flaw in Bitcoin. It is evidence that the transition is still early.

When direct ownership is restricted, capital seeks substitutes. Large institutions and sovereign funds operate within regulatory and custodial limits that often prevent them from holding spot Bitcoin. In those conditions, exposure shifts to proxies that fit existing frameworks. Equity vehicles become stand-ins for an asset they cannot yet hold directly. MicroStrategy has filled this role by converting its balance sheet into a large Bitcoin position wrapped in a publicly traded structure. For institutions, this offers liquidity, reporting standards, and regulatory familiarity. The trade-off is that exposure now includes equity risk, management decisions, and capital structure, none of which exist with direct ownership. This behaviour does not reflect preference for proxies. It reflects constraint. When access to the underlying asset is limited, intermediated exposure becomes the next best option. As a result, demand concentrates in vehicles that can be traded within current rules, even if those vehicles introduce additional risks. Allegations of manipulation around proxy instruments highlight the difference between holding Bitcoin and holding claims on Bitcoin exposure. Equities can be influenced by sentiment, leverage, and market structure. Bitcoin itself cannot be diluted, rehypothecated, or altered through commentary. The proxy absorbs those dynamics. The asset does not. Over time, these pressures tend to resolve in one direction. Either access to spot ownership expands, or reliance on proxies grows more fragile. History suggests that capital ultimately moves toward the asset with fewer intermediaries and fewer points of failure. Bitcoin was designed to remove the need for proxies. Until that access is widely available at institutional scale, substitutes will continue to form. Their existence is not a signal of preference. It is evidence of demand constrained by structure.

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Norway's sovereign wealth fund takes $1.18B MicroStrategy stake

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Gold’s sharp move reflects a familiar response to monetary conditions. When interest rates are reduced and the currency weakens, assets with limited supply tend to reprice upward. The rise is not a statement about growth. It is a statement about confidence in the unit of account. The increase in jobless claims reinforces this dynamic. As labour markets soften, central banks face pressure to ease even when inflation remains elevated. The result is a narrow policy range where rates are lowered to support activity, while currency strength is sacrificed in the process. Gold responds because it has no issuer and no counterparty risk. Powell’s emphasis on waiting reflects this constraint. Further cuts risk inflation persistence. Holding steady risks deeper economic slowdown. Markets interpret this uncertainty as a reason to seek assets that are not managed through discretion. Bitcoin was designed for the same environment. Gold preserves value by physical scarcity. Bitcoin preserves value by verifiable digital scarcity. Both respond when monetary policy becomes reactive rather than rule-based. The difference is that Bitcoin’s supply is not only limited, it is fully predictable. Movements in gold and Bitcoin are often described as price rallies. In practice, they are measurements of currency weakness. When the denominator changes, assets that cannot be expanded adjust accordingly. This is not a signal about short-term direction. It is a reminder that when policy must balance inflation, employment and debt simultaneously, confidence shifts toward money that does not require intervention to function.

Headline revenue growth does not necessarily indicate real growth. When the unit of account weakens, nominal figures rise even if underlying output does not. A seven percent increase measured in a depreciating currency can coexist with flat or declining real profitability. Rising labour, energy and input costs suggest that margins are under pressure. In that environment, higher revenues often reflect price increases rather than higher volumes or productivity gains. The business may be working harder to stand still. This distinction matters. Real growth comes from producing more value with the same or fewer resources. Nominal growth can be achieved by adjusting prices in response to currency debasement. The latter creates the appearance of progress while purchasing power erodes. Bitcoin exposes this difference. When measured in a unit with fixed supply, growth must be real. Revenues cannot rise unless more value is created. This is why comparisons made solely in fiat terms increasingly mislead. The problem is not the business. It is the measuring stick. https://www.perplexity.ai/page/burger-king-uk-revenue-climbs-R9MglHqWRQKPNhou23NSTQ

Claims that Bitcoin’s four-year cycle is ending reflect changes in market composition rather than changes in the protocol. The halving schedule remains fixed. Issuance still declines at predictable intervals. What has changed is the type of participant interacting with that supply. Earlier cycles were dominated by marginal buyers and sellers with limited balance sheets. Large price swings followed because liquidity was thin and leverage was unstable. As institutional participation increases, more capital absorbs volatility. Spot ETFs and custodial products introduce steady inflows that smooth short-term dislocations, but they do not alter the underlying scarcity. This does not mean cycles disappear. It means they express differently. The amplitude may compress, and the timing may drift, but the cause remains the same. New supply continues to fall while demand adjusts. Markets still reprice scarcity over time. They simply do so through deeper pools of capital and longer decision horizons. Price targets and declarations of cycle death are attempts to simplify a complex adaptive system. Bitcoin does not follow narratives. It follows incentives. When supply is fixed and issuance is known, participants eventually adjust their behaviour around those constraints. Whether volatility is high or low in a given period does not change that process. Institutional adoption changes who holds Bitcoin and how it trades. It does not change why it exists. The halving remains a structural feature, not a trading signal. As the market matures, focus naturally shifts away from short-term patterns and toward the long-term implications of fixed supply in a system that continues to grow. Bitcoin does not need cycles to function. It only requires that the rules remain enforceable. The rest is market discovery. https://www.perplexity.ai/page/wood-says-bitcoin-s-four-year-6r6bPS2WRIqcROxGR0Uopg

Michael Burry’s remarks point to a recurring feature of modern banking systems. When reserves decline and liquidity must be restored through central bank asset purchases, it indicates that stability depends on continuous intervention rather than balance sheet strength. Banks that require trillions in excess reserves are not demonstrating resilience. They are demonstrating sensitivity to funding conditions. The Federal Reserve’s decision to purchase short-term Treasury securities to replenish reserves follows a familiar pattern. Liquidity is withdrawn during tightening phases, stress appears in funding markets, and balance sheet expansion resumes to prevent dislocation. Each cycle leaves the system larger and more dependent on central bank support than before. This is not temporary. It becomes structural. The growth of the Fed’s balance sheet from under one trillion dollars before 2008 to nearly seven trillion today reflects this trajectory. After each crisis, the level of reserves required to maintain stability increases. What is described as “ample” today would have been considered excessive in earlier periods. The definition shifts because the system adapts to higher leverage and lower tolerance for volatility. Bitcoin was designed in response to this fragility. It does not rely on reserves, lenders of last resort, or discretionary liquidity injections. Settlement does not depend on confidence in counterparties remaining solvent overnight. The supply cannot be expanded to backstop losses or smooth funding gaps. Participants either hold valid coins or they do not. In fiat banking systems, stability is achieved through balance sheet growth and policy intervention. In Bitcoin, stability is achieved through fixed rules and independent verification. One system requires constant maintenance to avoid failure. The other operates continuously without adjustment. Warnings about fragility are not predictions of imminent collapse. They are observations about incentives. When survival depends on permanent expansion of central bank balance sheets, the monetary base becomes a tool for crisis management rather than a stable foundation. Bitcoin exists to remove that dependency. https://www.perplexity.ai/page/big-short-investor-michael-bur-eTlWTnBXTka_nFRazhHM4A

The rise in UK youth unemployment reflects long-standing structural pressures rather than a short-term fluctuation. When employer costs increase faster than productivity, hiring becomes more difficult. Recent changes to National Insurance and minimum wage rules have added several thousand pounds to the cost of employing a young worker. In an economy already experiencing weak growth, these additional burdens reduce opportunities at the margin. The result is predictable: fewer entry-level jobs and a larger share of young people not participating in the workforce. The broader data reinforces this trend. Youth unemployment has risen from 11 percent to 15.3 percent in three years, the fastest deterioration in the G7. Nearly one million people aged 16 to 24 are now classified as NEET. At the same time, automation has reduced demand for junior roles in technology sectors by nearly twenty percent. When economic conditions weaken, firms automate earlier in the employment pipeline and hire later in the cycle. These adjustments are a consequence of incentives, not policy statements. Underlying these symptoms is a monetary system that makes long-term planning difficult. When money loses purchasing power over time, governments rely on increasing taxation, higher borrowing and continual intervention to maintain services. These pressures fall disproportionately on younger workers, who face rising living costs and fewer opportunities to acquire skills. Employers respond by limiting new hires and reducing training investment. The cycle reinforces itself. Bitcoin was created to avoid these distortions. A monetary base with fixed supply does not require continual expansion of taxes or credit. It removes the inflationary pressure that erodes wages and forces households and firms into short-term decisions. In an economy built on predictable money, saving becomes viable, investment horizons lengthen and employment grows from productivity rather than from stimulus. Youth unemployment on this scale signals deeper issues in the foundation of the system. Adjustments to tax rates or wage rules may influence outcomes temporarily, but they do not address the cause. A more stable economic environment arises when the currency itself does not require perpetual manipulation to sustain activity.