Dear friend and subscriber,
December is upon us! (cue the Wagner musik!)
I had to scratch the ice off of my windshield today before I took my son to school. The changing of the seasons reminded me of our mortality.
*Sigh*...
Did you know that all Nations die the same?
No, no, this is not some fascination with Edgar Allan Poe and gothic horror, although that is cool in itself :-)
...it's just an undeniable fact — that all Nations die the same.
And it starts with the money, or better said: it is best reflected by the money.
Let's take a super archetypal example and journey back in time, back to Ancient Rome:
You see, a long time ago money did not belong to the state.
And in America we have “this thing” called separation of church and state.
For thousands of years separation of money and state was the default.
CHALLENGE:
Ask your buddies, father, mother, etc. “Should money belong to the state?”
Watch their responses — it will be interesting indeed!
Gold and silver were the default money for a long time, and they did not belong to the state.
As a matter a fact, as nation states confiscated all monies, and issued their own, the people could reject them(!) and it went like this:
In ancient Rome they (the state) started filing off little tiny bits of the coin itself.
These serrations on the edge of the coin were not for blind people, no, no, no: these serrations on the edge of the coin were done to make the gold/silver content less for the same size of coin.
And when they had filed too much, they would just replace the precious metal with a similar looking cheaper metal…
Example:
A 4-gram coin Coin was comprised of 95% Silver at the time of 60 AD.
By 110 AD - 85% Silver
By 170 AD - 75% Silver
By 211 AD - 60% Silver
By 270 AD - 5% Silver
Soon thereafter, the coins were minted in Bronze.
Inflation was a direct reflection of the buying power as the value of the currency declined:
In this way the Roman state could issue 1 unit for less gold/silver, you get it?
It's just the old version of “quantitative easing”, or inflation, or printing money!
In the United States, the same thing happened, just before our time:
The problem is, once you get this ball rolling, it’s impossible to stop.
The government is a gambler who cannot step away from the table:
The resulting actual value of the money (in USD) resembles a death spiral:
The dots on the graph are Bitcoin in USD.
You can read it both ways, either from the middle out = the rise of Bitcoin’s value vs the dollar.
Or from the circumference inwards = The value of the US Dollar vs Bitcoin, i.e. the death spiral of the US dollar!
Here’s another one to make it really clear:
Again in BTC vs USD:
I want to really drive this point home. The inflation we are experiencing today is the result of our government DEVALUING our money! So…
If you can do just ONE thing this weekend, just watch this video, seriously:
Favorite quote:
“I had a million dollars in a bank in Argentina 20 years ago. It was in U.S. dollars. The peso was one to the dollar.
The Argentine government sent a memo to the banks; forcibly converted everybody's dollars to pesos and then forcibly devalued the peso 10 for one.
And I woke up the next morning and had a hundred thousand dollars.
I had a million dollars a day before.
They stole 90 percent of all the currency from everybody in the country overnight on a fax — without a law, without an army.
Now how hard would it be to take all of the property of everybody in the country?
With bitcoin you have to go arrest 60 million people, sweat them all in jail for 90 days.
How do you arrest 60 million people — sweat them in jail for 90 days?
It's like a billion times harder, so bitcoin is property rights properly understood.”
“That's the foundation upon which you build your life, of course, right? Build on granite with steel. So bitcoin is crypto steel.” — Michael Saylor
Dan Held also framed it very succinctly:
YOUR ACTION IS SUPER SIMPLE:
Easiest thing to do now, to protect your wealth, is to just convert your dollars to Bitcoin.
Moving along...
Bitcoin
Forks! Forks! Who wants a fork?
Here is a great graphic about Bitcoin forks:
Friendly Reminder: Everytime a blockchain forks, you get BOTH coins. YES — double your money!
Price action
Introducing my new trading strategy: The Bart Simpson curve! It’s the newest most effective model!
Best Posts of the Week
#1 - This is a great weekend activity! Check out this video of a conscientious citizen battling socialism!
#2 - Gandalf as Satoshi Nakamoto! I choked on my Jack+Coke watching this one! MUST WATCH!
Deep Dive
This is a great deep dive with a lot of VISUALS! Wanna learn about the El Salvador VOLCANO BOND and Bitcoin city? READ THIS!
That’s it for this week my dear END THE FED’ler.
Remember: The simplest way for you to protect your wealth, is to buy Bitcoin!
Sincerely,
Eric
P.S. Did you claim your free copy of the DEAD SIMPLE Bitcoin tracker?