Money Magicians
Welcome to Financial PerformerYour weekly guide to understanding the money revolution BTC: Time, Money, Truth - Part II B
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You've been under a spell your whole life.
Every hour you work, every dollar you save, every dream you chase - it's all part of a grand illusion. Today that illusion shatters. What you're about to learn will make you question everything you thought you knew about money. And you’re not alone. Your parents lived under this same spell, your grandparents too. Three generations, each working harder than the last, each ending up with less, all while being told "that's just the way things are.”
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📝 Editor's Note
Last week in Part 2A, we explored what makes money "good" through Aristotle's ancient wisdom. This week we expose the insidious illusion of modern money.
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Missed Part 2A? Catch up here
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The illusion began centuries ago. Humans discovered ways to trade using shells, salt, cattle - whatever worked at the time. But nature’s money was deeply flawed. Salt dissolved in rain. Shells broke. You couldn't make change for a cow. Then humanity found gold. Perfect, eternal gold. It scored higher on nearly every measure of what makes money "good":
Gold had one crucial weakness though. And the bankers were waiting...
Medieval merchants happy to be paid in gold, were not so happy risking their lives to transport it home. A solution was proposed that would change the world forever. Gold would be left at the bank, stored safely in secure vaults while merchants would trade paper receipts instead. All the benefits of gold now made light and easy to transport. Had money finally been perfected?
It seemed so. After all receipts were good as gold. But over time, merchants trading paper came less and less to claim the metal. As vaults began to swell with idle gold, money lenders had an insidious idea. Since most people never came to withdraw gold anyway, why not write a few extra receipts… for themselves. These receipts had nothing backing them, but no one would ever know. Bankers had uncovered a dark money magic allowing them to conjure money from thin air. It wasn’t long before these money magicians began to dominate global finance convincing humanity to trade their time, sweat and very lives for worthless paper conjured from nothing.
The entire world fell under the banker's spell, borrowing phantom money while putting up real assets as collateral. When the fake paper debts couldn’t be paid bankers would seize physical assets - land, resources, ships, houses, palaces- all became possessions of the money magicians. Kings, governments and entire nations slowly became indebted as the bankers wealth grew to astounding levels.
By the 20th century, the global banking cartel seemed untouchable but their house of cards was about to face its first real threat. The French government, like so many, had been storing their gold at Federal Reserve banks in America. But they had grown suspicious- the U.S. was clearly printing too much money trying to fund a costly war in Vietnam- surely there was something funny going on. Did the Fed really have all the gold they were suppose to? France wasn’t waiting to find out. Calling the Fed’s bluff they sent ships to America, not for war but to take home the gold that was rightfully theirs.
Their suspicions turned out to be true. Not only had the banks printed tons of extra paper, they had loaned out, squandered and re-hypothecated every last ounce multiple times over. The vaults were empty. The most powerful banking wizards in the world were no different than Oz- con men behind curtains.
Yet sadly France was no match for the magicians. Instead of being unmasked, the bankers cast their greatest spell yet. In 1971, by order of the banks, Nixon- their puppet- decreed that dollars no longer needed gold. From now on paper was simply ‘money by decree,’ known as fiat. Free from any restraint the magicians could now print paper to infinity with no need for reserves. The same paper you wipe and flush down the toilet has been the foundation of global finance ever since.
The transformation was complete - money was now nothing more than an illusion and the entire world was firmly under the spell of debt enslavement. The consequences were biblical: within a generation housing prices exploded 1000%. College tuition went from a summer job to thirty years of debt. Remember these prices? A gallon of gas for 25 cents. A new car for $1900. A family home for $15,000? This wasn't some distant past - this was America- before the bankers broke it.
Below: a house cost a mere $10,000 in the early 1970s
A new dark age had begun. Each year you'd work harder, and each year you'd somehow have less. Your parents' one-income dream home became your two-income mortgage became your children's lifetime of rent. This wasn't an accident - this was their design. Worthless fiat was a cancer, siphoning away humanities productivity and livelihoods. The final deception was convincing you this was normal and that watching your savings evaporate was ‘just the way things are.’
By 2009 in the fallout of the global financial crisis the world was suffering greatly. Millions would lose jobs and homes as bankers unleashed trillions in fake money to save their fake banks from collapse. Inflation would go into overdrive and humanity desperately needed an escape from the system. It would come from the most unlikely place…
On an obscure cryptography mailing list, in the depths of the financial destruction, an unknown coder proposed a solution to the malevolent money magic impoverishing the world. They called it 'Bitcoin.' The premise was simple: a new electronic cash that miraculously had all of Aristotle’s properties of money. Like gold it would be scarce and limited in supply, more portable than paper and yet still unforgeable. But its crowning achievement was that it would be a public blockchain, clear for all to see and fully audited every ten minutes. No more fake gold, no more phantom receipts.
For the first time in human history, we have perfect money. As scarce as gold, but infinitely more portable. As convenient as paper, but impossible to counterfeit. Precise as mathematics and requiring trust in no one. While central banks conjure trillions from thin air, Bitcoin stands immovable at 21 million. While they craft lies in cooked books, Bitcoin's ledger remains transparent for all to see. Each deceptive dollar they print makes Bitcoin's truth shine ever brighter.
In just fifteen years, this obscure digital invention has risen to challenge centuries of banking dominion. From nothing to $100,000, while exposing the magicians' worthless paper for what it is. For the first time since they seized control their spells are showing signs of weakness. Their power beginning to fade. And for the first time in centuries, humanity has been given a choice: remain enslaved to the magician’s illusion, or embrace the hardest money ever created.
The Bottom Line
- You’ve spent your life working for money that doesn’t exist
- The gold in their vaults isn’t in the vaults
- Every dollar printed steals from your children’s future
- Inflation is the purposeful destruction of your life's work
- Bitcoin is Humanities first chance to break free in 300 years
Next week in Part 3, we'll explore why Bitcoin isn't just better money - it's the truth that could set us all free.
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