We're All Lebanese

Fiat Will Tear Us Apart

The dire financial and economic situation in Lebanon often comes up in the same breath as the dire financial and economic situations in Venezuela, Turkey, Sudan and Argentina.

Centralized power combined with fiat monetary policy has wreaked havoc on the lives of the citizens in these countries. And what’s happening in these jurisdictions is likely a harbinger of what’s to come globally.

In the coming years, we will see the citizens of more and more countries — including the US — facing similar issues, which will lead to further civil unrest.

I discussed this and more with my podcast guest this week — Sooly Kobayashi, a Lebanese Bitcoin educator and consultant who also invests in Bitcoin companies.

If you’re thinking “Oh, Frank, you’re just being ridiculous. We just have to tax the rich more,” please understand two things:

1. You’re wrong. Using the current debt scenario in the US as an example, if you took all the money from the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, etc., it still wouldn’t be close to enough to stave off the debt spiral (when you take on more and more debt to pay off your ever increasing debt) in which we currently find ourselves.

   

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2. When I talk about Bitcoin, I’m not talking about the (re)distribution of money; I’m talking about the nature of it. I’m advocating for fundamentally shifting the way we think about money if we’re to build a world where people’s time and labor can’t be devalued by bureaucrats at the touch of a button.

Sousveillance

This week, Bitwise, one of the 11 financial institutions that issued a spot bitcoin ETF in the US two weeks ago, did something quite interesting.

They published the UTXO that holds the actual bitcoin that backs up the shares of their ETF (Ticker symbol: BITB).

Now, the public can audit the holdings of a major financial product simply by using a block explorer.

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This could be the beginning of more sousveillance.

WHY ARE YOU SO FANCY WITH YOUR FANCY WORDS, FRANK?!?! I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!!!

I hear you.

I had no idea that this term even existed until a few months ago, when the greatest Bitcoin teacher that ever lived — Andreas Antonopoulos —taught it to me via his excellent book, The Internet of Money: Volume 1.

Here’s Antonopoulos describing sousveillance and why it’s important:

"We live in a world where every individual transaction you do through the financial system is catalogued, analyzed, and transmitted to intelligence services all around the world that collaborate, and yet we have no idea what governments do with money.

The financial systems of the powerful are completely opaque. Our transactions are completely visible through this system of surveillance. The world is upside down.

Bitcoin rights it.

One of my favorite words is a French word: sousveillance. It is the opposite of surveillance. Surveillance means to look from above; sousveillance means to look from below.

In their dream of nation-states controlling all of our financial futures, they made one major miscalculation. It's a hell of a lot harder for a few hundred thousand people to watch 7 1/2 billion people. But what do you think happens when 7 1/2 billion of us stare back?

We have a great advantage because the natural balance of the system is one in which individuals can have privacy but the powerful cannot have secrecy anymore. Bitcoin is one of the first steps in that."

With more sousveillance, maybe we can flip the following dynamic.

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Don’t Let Warren Fool You

Senator Warren — authoritarian extraordinaire — was back at it this week discussing how drug cartels use crypto for money laundering.

She mentioned how the Sinaloa cartel laundered almost $1 million (gasp! — the US debt went up by $1 million every two seconds on January 26, 2024) using crypto.

What she forget to mention, though, was how the same cartel used HSBC to launder almost $1 billion.

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(Technically, the Sinaloa Cartel only laundered $881 million through HSBC. Source: US Department of Justice)

If I lived in Massachusetts, I’d vote for anyone — including Satan incarnate — instead this woman.

Read This Book

I’m currently in the middle of this recently published page-turner:

The Genesis Book: The Story of the People and Projects that Inspired Bitcoin, by Aaron Van Wirdum

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It’s hands down one of the top five books on Bitcoin I’ve ever read.

It parallels the rise of the Austrian economics school of thought to the development of computer hacker culture and cryptographic innovation over decades as it tells the story of the economic research and technological breakthroughs that led to Bitcoin’s coming to life.

Truly a great read.

Markets

Let’s take a look at what’s happening in markets…