#Fraudcoin is a benign virus. On average I have shipped out 7 copies of the Norwegian edition per day for half a year. Per capita that equals 420 copies per day in the US market. This is a big surprise to me, considering it's a book about 1000 years with inflation as a policy.
I don't yet understand how to use nostr. It feels like I have been walking my whole life in the desert, then suddenly the open ocean stretches out in front of me, and I desperately start looking for something I can use to make a boat and a paddle with.
The big picture in today's geopolitics is that the US and its closest allies increasingly play the Coercion Game while the BRICS+ countries increasingly test out the Co-operation Game. It's ironic, because the US has never been in a worse economic position to wage wars.
Bitcoin economics is a positive-sum game where the rules are the same for everybody.
This system rewards co-operation.
Fiat economics is a negative-sum game where the cards are stacked against 99% of the people.
This system rewards fraud, theft and extortion.
We have a number that describes this pretty good, and it' 6,5.
As in 6,5% less value per year.
It reflects the approximate average annual expansion of the supply of USD and EUR, which is about 7%.
For other currencies these numbers are higher.
Now, try to beat 6,5% per year by investing in stocks. Remember to subtract capital gains tax and all of the other costs you have when you invest. Including the value of your time working with the investments.
It's nearly impossible for ordinary people.
Nothing beats the money printer.
The only thing that the government and the financial system fear more with the Bitcoin community than it's collective brain and heart, is that Bitcoin makes the value of lying drop like a stone, probably even faster than the nation states' own manipulated currencies.
Thx for your feedback and kind words. I understand that some people see money as weapons, like JL. This might be due to the fact that politically controlled money is a weapon. Bitcoin is, however, purely defensive and non-violent. It has a very interesting architecture, which I describe with what I think are more relevant analogies in an ongoing book project that I'm working on.
I also understand that many people who support Bitcoin are happy when they see that a person working for the govt supports the technology. I suspect, however, that in some cases this reflects a curious need that many have today, where they appreciate it a lot if they get the blessing from mother state.
Furthermore, I read and hear that JL see private ownership as a result of egotism, pretty much like many economist explain how the market economy works. I don't support this understanding. Private markets are first of all a function of large scale co-operation in a positive-sum game, where the biggest winners understand others' needs and how to cater to them better than other. The competition element is much more in the background.
I should have chosen my words more wisely when I criticized @JasonPLowery on Twitter. It wasn’t conducive, and I regret it. He blocked me, and I can understand why.
I apologize, and if some of you are in contact with JL, you may forward this note to him.
I criticized him for supporting the idea that the Fed should print money to buy bitcoin (see picture). I’ll explain why below.
I also fell in the same trap as I sometimes criticize others for, because I questioned his motives for writing the book. That was just plainly stupid of me, and I have deleted the tweet.
JL seems to believe that the Fed can do good, and that today’s monetary system was created because «physics» dictated that a system with central banks had to be adopted. (The What is Money? Podcast, The Jason Lowery Series, ep. 5, 46:42 – 47:15).
This argument seems to be founded on the same understanding of our current system as his argument that the Fed should print money to buy bitcoin.
But seeing central banks as a potential force for good runs contrary to our experience of why central banks were created, what they do and why.
It’s also contrary to my personal understanding of why we ended up with a global fiat standard.
In my view it happened because monopolizing and manipulation of the money supply, with inflation, deflation and channelization of money, is and has always been a policy, for approximately 2,500 years.
This policy has IMO always aimed at benefitting the few at the cost of the rest of humanity. Which is exactly what it does too. As time goes, it results in most people owning nothing and being miserable.
If physics (low transport speed, the need for physical storage) played a role in the demise of gold as money, it was IMO because it was used as a rhetorical argument in the political discussion.
The fundamental objective was always to ensure more government control of money, not to make the monetary system more efficient.
The «physics argument» is the same argument that I often hear people come up with, as they say that «gold lost the competition against fiat», because fiat moves faster than gold, and money needs to move fast in the modern age.
The problem with this argument is that gold became centralized in central banks as part of a deliberate policy that also included mandatory fractional reserve banking, setting up obligatory banking cartels, public licensing of banks and a regulatory regime fully captured by the financial sector.
In other words, it wasn’t an issue of «competition» or «physics». It was all about politics and coercion.
Without political intervention, gold would most likely have been decentralized and stored by private entities such as banks and warehouses scattered across the globe.
Paper receipts, digital receipts, and IOUs would have circulated as currencies, and today at speed of light.
Before aviation, gold would in a private monetary system probably have been transported by ships as an add-on service to their standard freight services and exchanged at the high seas and in harbors.
A lot of gold would probably have spent most of its time on the oceans and in harbors instead of onshore. In the aviation age airplanes and airports would have performed the same service.
The natural limitation of gold would have meant that small amounts of gold would have become extremely valuable over time, driving down transport, storage and settlement costs immensely.
Technological innovation in transport and security services would have had the same effect. In short, settlement costs and other transaction costs would have become lower and lower over time relative to any given amount of gold.
Such a decentralized system, combined with IOU’s could have been quite efficient, although not nearly as efficient as a system based on Bitcoin.
It would probably have been more resilient against competition from new forms of money, but also more accomodative to Bitcoin, compared to today’s monetary system.
It might be that JL believes holding bitcoin will transform central banks’ incentives, that it will make them do more good and less evil. Although the idea is enticing, I am somewhat skeptical.
The reason is that I think such a policy likely would go hand in hand with a regulatory war against ownership and mining of bitcoin. Although it wouldn’t be successful in the long run, it could seriously delay private adoption of bitcoin.
In the meantime, the governments and the financial elites would also take the opportunity to use money printing to acquire as big a share of the real economy as possible, which was what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The result is that one percent of the population today control half of global wealth. This control acts as a “claim on bitcoin” and other forms of money, just as much as money is a claim on economic goods and services.
Therefore, I fear that even though JL may have the best of intentions, his proposals might produce a very different outcome than the one he wishes for.
I started this tweet apologizing to JL for the wording in my criticism and that I attacked his motives. And I’ve explained why I have questions and why I disagree with him.
I don’t expect that the two of us ever are going to have a discussion on these topics. Regardless of this, I must nonetheless consider reading his book book. As an intelligent guy wrote in a group chat today:
«It’s nonetheless useful to understand other peoples’ understanding of what Bitcoin is. Everybody has had different life experiences. And having a broad framework to describe Bitcoin to beginners is positive».
Wise words. I will try not to forget them.
Worried about the dollar and the ongoing currency war?
Glenn Diesen, Professor, University of South-Eastern Norway, Department of Business, History and Social Sciences, has this to say about my book:
"Fraudcoin is an excellent book exploring the role of inflation on politics and world history. Inflation is largely a political decision that impacts all aspects of society and can bring down mighty empires, yet there is little debate about why inflation occurs and the immense repercussions. This book is an important contribution toward educating the public that the destructive power of inflation is not an unfortunate act of nature, but the result of reckless policy"
Solutions
Bitcoin is mindblowing
It's shocking how engraved it seems to be in many peoples DNA, that they believe it's best for society to have weaponized money.
At least for some of them it must have something to do with believing that whatever we lose, the state or "society" will give back to us in another form. If they knew that the most wealthy people became richer and the poorest became poorer, they might have thought otherwise.
I also suspect that it's possible to make more of them understand that 2 (% inflation, the Fed's mandate) is in fact 7 (% inflation), because 2 represents only consumer goods and services, while 7 (the average rate og annual expansion of the money supply) represents the loss of value in relation to everything that money can buy.
So my mantra is: "You got it wrong, 2 is in fact 7." Otherwise it doesn't make sense to talk about money as a "universal medium of exchange".
Saying that 2 is the right answer, is like saying "2 is the relevant number for you, because you are and must forever be a consumer. 7 is therefore irrelevant for you. Your are one of those 2-people. You aren't one of us."
I think it's possible to work out something along these lines. To penetrate that mental block that most people have.
The reason why Bitcoin shines is because it absorbs all of the energy from the Fiat bonfire.
With the exception of one chapter where selected contributors will share some of their personal thoughts on Bitcoin, we finalized the complete draft of the manuscript for the new book this evening 🥳. Next up, external proofreading, while @mrpixelparanoia makes illustrations.
Powerful message
Why is the Norwegian krone in a freefall?
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I use bitcoin because I want peaceful global revolution
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I hope many of you go to Bergen and enjoy this legendary spectacle, and tell me your stories about it afterwards ❤️. I am so sorry I cannot attend. I spent some of my best years in Bergen in the 90s, smack in the middle of the techno/rave era. I am definitely going next year.
https://twitter.com/EuroDale/status/1632772575213371400?t=4rjaAC2rqKo1Sga5qlQeyg&s=19
They're scared to death by the signalling effect. "What will my neighbour say?😲"