This weekend, ICE murdered an innocent person on the streets of Minneapolis.
I, too, felt a deep sense of dread and despair in watching the videos of the event.
This is just one of many recent events that has been petrifying and difficult to process.
My first impulse when I learn about these sorts of happening is to not only get angry but then stew in said anger while doomscrolling social media.
While I allowed myself a little bit of space for that, I quickly pulled myself out of it, because 1.) Despairing isn’t going to change anything and 2.) I prefer to spend my time working with and highlighting the stories of people who hardly have time to despair because they are too busy building a better future.
Before continuing, this isn’t to say that people shouldn’t feel or react however they’d like to what happened in Minneapolis. We all deal with these things differently. Big hug to everyone.
And so, over the weekend, instead of allowing myself to fall into a downward spiral, I put the finishing touches on a piece I’d been looking to publish for a while, a hopeful piece about how a historically disenfranchised group — African women (and women in general) — are making space for themselves to develop on the most inclusive monetary network humanity has ever seen — Bitcoin.
I published said piece this morning:
Fiat Is Violence
Because the U.S. Federal Reserve can print money to no end, the U.S. government can fund all of the war and violence it likes.
We’re seeing this with ICE and Israel right now. We saw it with “forever wars” like Afghanistan and Iraq. We saw it when the U.S. left the gold standard to continue the war effort in Vietnam in 1971.
Imagine the government’s only source of money for war and violence (and surveillance that helps it facilitate war and violence) came from taxes and that it had to let its citizens know exactly what their tax dollars were being spent on.
It might look something like this:
You’ve given x amount of your hard earned cash to Vice President Dick Cheney’s private company Halliburton.
You’ve handed over x percentage of your salary to the bullets Israel is using to kill innocent Gazans.
X amount of your tax dollars are funding untrained personnel to murder everyday Americans in the street.
Sound crazy? Well, it’s not — there’s precedent for it.
This is how things worked in World War I, when U.S. taxpayers would actually receive a receipt from the U.S. government telling them what military items/efforts their tax dollars were spent on.
How quickly we’d revolt if we knew that the fruits of our labor were being spent on war, violence and surveillance for that war and violence that profits companies like Halliburton and Palantir.
It will be much harder for this violence to exist once the world moves to a bitcoin standard.
Bitcoin is transparent and the opposite of infinite — it’s perfectly scarce — which means it can’t fund violence with no end.
It incentivizes people to create value for other people in exchange for it and constrains governments’ ability to fund violence.
And the best part is that it’s incredibly inclusive, as anyone with an internet connection — including African women — can use it and even build on it.
This is why I spend my time teaching African women about Bitcoin and highlighting their work as opposed to wallowing in despair.
I highly recommend that you get involved in this or a similar endeavor, because, my Lord, one of the best ways to counter the feeling of powerlessness that so many of us feel these days is by helping to empower others.
Leave a comment if you’d like to volunteer with Bitcoin Dada. I’ve helped others do so.
One recently taught these ladies a lesson on personal branding in the age of the Internet and they got a lot from the experience personally.
I have a feeling you will, too.
Markets
Silver continues on its tear.
Gold is doing the same, though, in a slightly less parabolic fashion.
In my humble estimation, we’re approaching a local top in both.
I think both will run much higher in the coming years, but I believe we see a major downturn/crash first.
Will that definitely happen? No. It’s just my thesis.
Please do with this information what you will, but do not interpret it as financial advice, as nothing I write in this newsletter is financial advice, nor should it be considered as such.
The price of an asset doesn’t just go up in a straight line without notable corrections.
Plus, when everyone is talking about an asset being on a tear, as they are with silver right now, it’s usually indicative of a local top.
If it isn’t just a local top, then that means we’re probably on the verge of hyperinflation.
Wouldn’t that be fun?
Hyperinflation occurs not just because of excessive money printing, but when people lose faith in the system.
And it seems like many are losing faith in traditional systems at an alarming rate.
So, what does this mean for Bitcoin?
Well, long term, I believe Bitcoin replaces our current monetary system and becomes the base layer of the global financial system, which is why I spend my time advocating for and educating people about it.
Short term, I’m not sure if we see bitcoin run before the downturn I believe is coming. I do think we will see bitcoin trading lower than it is right now during the course of this year, but I’m not sure how low and how soon that all plays out.
So, what I often tell people is to make sure that they wouldn’t panic sell if the value of their bitcoin stack in fiat terms were to be cut in half.
If you feel like you would panic sell in such a situation, then you are likely overexposed. Adjust accordingly. (Again, not financial advice.)
Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re all okay.
These are surely chaotic times, brought to you by broken money.
I believe that things will get better and that Bitcoin and other freedom tech (e.g., Nostr, open-source AI, Bitchat) will be tools we can use to make things better.
So, please don’t despair — join us as we continue to build the tools that will usher in a brighter future.
Best,
Frank
Nostr: npub1dnzzyhmewrzkh862z7z2shwmhh5htx0rvkagepj2fkgst9ptwg3qj4x52h
(Deflationary technology needs non-inflationary money for everyday people to benefit.)