Power in a social setting is getting others to bend to your will. The power of Bitcoin stems from the fact that it seems to peacefully bend people to its will rather than the other way around.

If you want to know who is in power look out for the tallest buildings.

In every major city center of the world you will find a financial district, often with the tallest buildings in the country. In the last 100 years the power structures behind these buildings have risen and expanded their power by stealing time from productive people through inflation.

Every major building of this size is financed by debt and equity. If you have enough equity to pledge as collateral, you can leverage your power to erect these towers and acquire even more power in the process.

The Current Mess

In a debt-based monetary system, power is maintained by constantly increasing scope and control of what is accepted as collateral, effectively controlling who is given power to leverage their equity and profit from inflation.

Monopoly of the issuance of currency and credit tend to favor insiders and people with easy access to cheap credit below the rate of inflation. State chartered banks, big corporations and wealthy individuals are benefactors in such a system.

Politicians who wish to maintain the illusion of their power are incentivized to hide this truth from the public and support these power structures, or they will soon find themselves stripped of their illusions and kicked out of office. 

Politicians are simply power brokers between the wealthy and the poor. In a social democratic state system, the power structures remain static, while the leaders are changed to accommodate for the survival of the system and its insiders. This is why these power structures are so resilient to change and why the system takes on a life of its own.

If people knew how they are lured into accepting and playing these games, slaving away climbing the corporate and political ladder, the system would start to break down.

Control of information and knowledge is key to maintaining these institutions of power. The leveling of the playing field by easy access to truthful money, information and knowledge through the internet present a great challenge to the power brokers and the ruling class.

Increased collection and leveraging of information and knowledge is necessary to maintain their illusion of power. We see rising levels of politicization, indoctrination, censorship and propaganda as the money and power structures of old begin to crumble.

I believe these desperate attempts by the powers that be only help to highlight the problems the power structures of government and fiat banking are facing. It ends up motivating more and more people to study what the hell is happening and why.

Enter Bitcoin  

With bitcoin we now have a chance to separate money and state, and introduce an objective truth that cannot be easily corrupted at the very core of society. This will bring consequences to fraud and corruption since fraudsters and illusionists can and will be called out by the people, and be taken down by something as simple as a bank run.

With Bitcoin as the primary collateral of the system, Bitcoin banks and custodians are forced to play it safe if they want to stay in business. There will be no more bailouts of over-leveraged institutions.

Without the power to censor their opponents, bail out their friends and buy support with funny money, politicians, academics, and the corporate elite will have to compete on the merit of their ideas and actions.

The invention of the printing press ushered in a renaissance in political economy and philosophy, and led to the development of the nation state and paper money. Similarly, the invention of the internet and its native protocol of money is ushering  in a new renaissance in global governance and political economy.

Bitcoin is the money of the people. With its permissionless, censorship resistant peer-to-peer governance and decentralized distribution of power and control, it will give rise to innovation on the edges. It will support a new breed of globalization and localism, centered around a professional and minimal state and successful entrepreneurs producing real value to society.

People will be forced to take responsibility for themselves and their family.

When people are forced to take responsibility for their own actions, the production of goods and services will have to focus on quality, beauty and durability. People saving in bitcoin will simply refuse to give up their hard earned time savings for junk.

Building On Truth

The impact this will have on the environment is almost unfathomable. Wasteful spending and consumption will go down dramatically. Misallocation of capital will be reduced and buildings and symbols of status will once again be looked upon as pieces of refined art.

The brutalistic headquarters of the inflationists will be transformed into apartment blocks, while modern art and architecture will be valued for their function and beauty, not for their provocative nature.

Food will cease to be poisoned and degraded, and people’s health will improve. People will be more cognizant of how they spend their time and money. Mind-numbing entertainment and political games will lose much of their allure.

Wasteful use of power will be discouraged, and everything will be optimized for perfection. No stone will be left unturned in search of purity and knowledge.

I could go on and on with examples of what this new technology of sound money could bring to fore, but the main idea is to highlight what the power of truth can do to society. 

People have a hard time understanding big numbers and exponential functions. Billions, trillions and quadrillions does not register for what they really are; results of exponential growth. Hyperinflation and collapse is inevitable in a system based on these dilutions.

Bitcoin, with its 21 million hard cap, makes money and value easy to understand. Fraud and rehypothecation will become clear for all to see, and excess use of leverage will be destined for disaster.

Bitcoin Brings Freedom

With Bitcoin, confiscation of wealth through taxation will be difficult. States and local governments will have to rely more on voluntary contributions and not coerced taxation. If your state of choice tries to confiscate your wealth you can simply pack up and move, holding the keys to your Kingdom in your head.

As it stands today, people are forced to invest in real estate, stocks and bonds to keep their savings from being confiscated by inflation. On a Bitcoin standard, there is no need to play these games. The value of real estate, stocks, and bonds would represent the present and future value of cash flow adjusted for decay and the cost of maintenance.

This means that most of the people forced by inflation into an alternative store of value would leave these assets and enter bitcoin. These assets will then have to compete with bitcoin to maintain a price level above their reasonably expected future return.

Real estate will become more affordable and we will see an end to huge bubbles in these asset classes.

The freedom and power of the individual will increase by an order of magnitude and the tyrannies of the old will have a hard time surviving.

This is why many Bitcoiners simply equate Bitcoin to freedom. It gives you power to control your own destiny like no other money in the history of man.

The power of Bitcoin to transform society will come as a shock, and people will say nobody could see this coming. Well, except quite a few visionary early adopters…