Back in the 1930s and 1940s, there were a lot of capital controls, lending restrictions, securities restrictions, etc. And it was for two different but intertwined reasons.

One obvious reason was that, among countries involved in trade wars or shooting wars, they wanted to reduce capital flows to the enemy.

A second reason was that, due to the war, sovereign debts became so high relative to GDP that they had to inflate away the debt, which was a form of default. It wasn't just 6102; it was a broad range of controls. Carmen Reinhart described it well as “creating a captive audience” in an

IMF Working paper:

“High public debt often produces the drama of default and restructuring. But debt is also reduced through financial repression, a tax on bondholders and savers via negative or belowmarket real interest rates. After WWII, capital controls and regulatory restrictions created a captive audience for government debt, limiting tax-base erosion. Financial repression is most successful in liquidating debt when accompanied by inflation. For the advanced economies, real interest rates were negative ½ of the time during 1945–1980. Average annual interest expense savings for a 12—country sample range from about 1 to 5 percent of GDP for the full 1945–1980 period. We suggest that, once again, financial repression may be part of the toolkit deployed to cope with the most recent surge in public debt in advanced economies.”

-IMF Working Paper No. 2015/007

Unfortunately, as most here know, both conditions are once again present in the 2020s. The US/Europe vs Russia/China contest is providing a useful excuse for governments to crack down on privacy, p2p exchange, money transfer, etc. Meanwhile, western governments have a similar sovereign debt problem that ultimately necessitates inflating the debt away.

Some of this Operation Chokepoint 2.0 stuff is just targeting scammy crypto companies and things like that. And the SEC enforcement actions are also going after crypto securities fraud and so forth. For bitcoiners, those things are not particularly relevant.

But under the surface, the bigger risk is all of the ongoing pressure on privacy, p2p, and the free flow of capital, including tighter bank restrictions and debanking.

Somehow I stumbled onto Scott Adams on Twitter and was convinced by his arguments that he was a master persuader and poised to win 🤷‍♂️

He's been losing pretty hard since 2020 tho!

In 2016 I made a bet with a coworker that Trump would win the election. I bought bitcoin with the $300 I won.

I don't know exactly why that's relevant today but I thought I'd share.

I think Bitcoiners may be surprised that no matter how successful Bitcoin becomes, that state-issued currencies will continue to exist, and bitcoin will be more like a world-reserve currency, that central banks hold, and people use as an inflation hedge, and people resort to as freedom money in hostile environments.

This is a very real possibility as to what Bitcoin's future looks like.

Gonna have to re-watch some movies soon:

- The Big Short

- Margin Call

- Matrix

- Fight Club

What else?

Posible doom loop(?):

Crypto leverage unwinding -> crypto contagion -> banking contagion -> regulatory clampdown

🥴

Oh 20k how I’ve missed you…

People have no idea how fragile the monetary system is. NO IDEA.

Sticks & bubble gum DO hold the contraption together, until they don't.

We desperately need robust and antifragile financial infrastructure.

👉bitcoin