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Great to hear! That’s where I land, too. I’m trying to formalize my stance but I think there’s potential to refute his criticism of the speculative nature of bitcoin by viewing it through the lens of double effect. So long as one treats bitcoin not as a means to make more fiat but as a tool to store one’s value over time by understanding its inherent advantages over fiat regardless of price action, I think it’s fair game. Especially when one considers the adverse effects of money printing in fueling the capitalist state, funding the government/managerial class’s circumventing of the law, and pushing liberalism anywhere and everywhere. His promotion of pulling investments out of the stock market is admirable but remaining within the dollar economy is a massive elephant in the room. One would think bitcoin is the missing piece for his argument. Nicole Oresme writes about the adverse effects of debasement. It’s the extent of Church related writing I’ve been able to find regarding the nature of money and it seems pro bitcoin’s ethos.

James A Lewis 1y ago

Excellent! I agree, the speculative nature of Bitcoin is, I think, a hiccup, but I don't believe it is the only one. If a new money is to replace an old, there must be some wealth transfer. The danger of speculative wealth building is that one is hoping to get wealthy off of other's expense, and I agree that is avarice, but that isn't a necessary motivational component for being a Bitcoiner.

I know Imam's a fan of precious metals money (coinage and paper notes with embedded metals, like a 1g gold paper meaning there's 1g of gold embedded into it), but it's unusable in a tele-comm age or would require far too much custodianship.

Money, at its essence, is information about who has done what for whom, and we either make the physical world the ledger, and atoms of gold are the tokens, or we will embed the ledger in writing and digital sygnals.

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James A Lewis 1y ago

*signals

Omekau 1y ago

Right and now that you mention it, if it’s framed in the context of moving from one currency to another then his criticism would have to address other global powers before the dollar hegemony. As in, when the global standard went from the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, etc. all before the dollar. Bitcoin is just the next successor with the difference being its nature as a money is fundamentally different from fiat and one we have never seen before.

I also wonder if he’s considered tools like the Satscard or Opendime where bitcoin custodianship can be physically transferred without needing a recorded transaction on the blockchain. Tools like that seem to solidify bitcoin’s ability to function as money outside a purely digital context, in a way it even seems to mimic the experience of holding gold.