Setting the Stage for a New Renaissance
Are Bitcoin Believers the Northern Italians of Yore?
In 1154, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was working hard to assert his divine right of kingship in northern Italy.
But the citizens of northern Italy were like “Howyadoinz? Oh yeah, God made you king? Get the fuck outta here. Hey yo, Lorenzo, pass me some of that gabagool.”
Residents of these newly formed free cities were recalcitrant to say the least, as most of them had escaped serfdom.
According to the customary law of the Middle Ages, once you’d fled to a city and resided there for more than a year and a day, you were liberated from further service to your feudal lord.
So, the types who lived in these cities were those that had quite a distaste for power-hungry authorities and quite a yearning to establish and preserve their individual rights.
This is why even when Barbarossa laid siege to these cities — which included chopping some residents to pieces, raping local women and burning some of these cities to the ground — the free cities kept bouncing back.
The citizens of these cities had experienced a taste of freedom, and they were seemingly willing to do anything to avoid going back to being serfs.
On May 29, 1176, a battle that helped to determine the future of individual rights — the Battle of Legnano — took place.
Barbarossa himself was attacked in the battle. His troops thought he was dead, and they retreated in panic.
Though Barbarossa survived, he lived the rest of his life in hiding, and neither he nor any of his successors ever tried to attack the free cities of northern Italy again.
Over the next two centuries, northern Italians set the stage for the Renaissance, a period of artistic, financial and cultural flourishing that marked an end to the Middle Ages, a period of serfdom and sadness.
(The above account — minus the part about the gabagool, and maybe the quip about sadness — was paraphrased from the following text: The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor, by William Easterly)
What many don’t know about the Renaissance, though, is that it couldn’t have happened with 1. those rebellious northern Italians standing up for their rights and 2. the advent of double-entry bookkeeping — or a ledger system that openly tracked debits and credits.
Double-entry bookkeeping was a massive step forward in the realm of documenting property rights, which are an integral part to the advancement of societies and human rights.
Feudal lords were able to hold onto power for so long because the serfs that worked under them had no property rights.
Today, we see those attempting to become our neo-feudal lords trying to establish the same dynamic.
But luckily, we now have the most advanced ledger in the history of humanity — the Bitcoin network — to help us fight back.
Bitcoin is a perfect system of property rights. And the asset on the Bitcoin network — bitcoin (BTC) — is leverage in a world central banks are the biggest drivers of financial and economic inequality, as they continue to artificially inflate the value of property by pumping more and more cheap credit (debt) into the system.
But governments, central banks and international institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum don’t like Bitcoin, because they don’t like free people; they like serfs.
And as Bitcoin continues to become less taboo and more of a viable option for those looking to escape oppressive systems, these institutions are starting to get angry.
We’re currently in the throes of stage three of the four stages of revolutionary change that Nicholas Klein, a trade union activist, laid out in 1918:
“First, they ignore you.
Then, they ridicule you.
And then they attack you and want to burn you.
And then they build monuments to you.”
(A quote similar to this is often wrongfully attributed to Mahatma Gandhi.)
The “first, they ignore you” part was Bitcoin from 2009 to about 2015.
Then “then, they ridicule you” part was Bitcoin from 2016 to 2020.
And the “attack you” part started in 2021, and will likely last for a few years, at the very least.
Historians may look back on El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in September 2021 — premature as it may have been — as the beginning of the “then they attack you” phase.
Even as the attacks heat up, though, we’re seeing more and more circular Bitcoin economies develop at local levels:
“Jurisdictions in Honduras, Portugal unveil Bitcoin adoption plans” (The Block)
“Bitcoin Ekasi: Building a Bitcoin economy in a South African township” (Bitcoin Ekasi)
“Bitcoin Lake: Guatemala’s Bitcoin enclave launches” (Bloomberg Línea)
We could think of these circular Bitcoin economies as modern day northern Italian free cities.
You’ll notice that most of these circular economies exist in the global south.
So much of the global south has been exploited on multiple levels for centuries.
One of the ways in which many regions of it are exploited today is abusive financial and monetary policy.
Bitcoin may be a way out for those in the the global south.
I do have some feelings of trepidation about Bitcoin adoption in these regions, as I hope people do not get hurt financially due to the volatility of the asset in fiat terms.
At the same time, I remember the words of Joe Hall, a reporter for CoinTelegraph, who shared something that a Senegalese man once said to him about Bitcoin, which was something to the effect of “I take comfort in the fact that it’s simply something that I know the government can’t take from me.”
He mentions this in the following interview:
Beyond those in the global south, Bitcoin is for those in the developed world who can’t afford property in the real world — like myself.
It’s for those who are tired of being in debt, even though they don’t live excessively — those who are doing their best to remain solvent in a system that’s completely insolvent.
It’s for anyone anywhere in the world that can see the system is rigged against them, and who have some patience and the financial means to hold the asset for at least a few years.
Will Bitcoin ultimately succeed as a way out for all who believe in it? I don’t know.
But I do know that most of the people who find Bitcoin and come to really understand it and believe in it do so when most of their other options have been exhausted.
And once they see its potential, they’re willing to fight for it, the same way that the northern Italians of the 1100s were willing to fight to maintain their freedom, which hinged on their property rights.
However, I don’t think the fight over Bitcoin will be a physical one like it was between the northern Italians and Barbarossa back in the 1100s. Instead, it will surely be a war of information (and legislation), and the Internet will be the battlefield. (Things could actually also get hairy in the real world if BTC holders are eventually labeled enemies of the state.)
Hence, though I descend from southern Italians, I take my cues from my northern Italian brethren of yore when I write about Bitcoin. And I plan to stay in this fight until they start erecting statues the Satoshi Nakamoto, the other cypherpunks who created the earliest iterations of digital “cash”, the Bitcoin developers currently building out the layers atop Bitcoin and all of the network’s fervent supporters out there.
The work that all Bitcoin believers are doing may just be setting the stage for a New Renaissance, one that won’t necessarily be geographically bound and that will include those from all corners of the globe who are tired of being serfs.
What’s up with Bitcoin’s price, man?
I wrote a piece for Mediafeed.org on behalf of Finder this week in which I discussed Bitcoin’s price action and why we could see the price of bitcoin back above $40k — and maybe even between $48,300 and $56,730 — again during this bear market.
I break down the numbers in the piece, which was syndicated here: “Are we in the early stages of a new crypto bull market?” (MSN)
(Nothing in the piece or in this newsletter is financial advice.)
Want your share of the BTC pie?
If all of the BTC in the world were divided evenly between all of the earth’s approximately 8 billion inhabitants, everyone would have just over 250,000 sats (US$56 dollars worth of BTC).
And that, ladies and gents, is all! Big hug and happy weekend/week ahead to you all!
Best,
Frank
Twitter: @frankcorva
Recommended reading: The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek and Bitcoin is Venice, by Allen Farrington & Sacha Meyers
