TD₿: Bitcoin is Element Zero (a film) by Ioni Appelberg & Knut Svanholm and narrated by Guy Swann
TL;DR Given Bitcoin's unique properties, it can be thought of as the discovery of a new element to be included on the periodic table.
Hey Bitcoiners,
The practice of alchemy has been around for hundreds of years. The desire for man to create wealth out of thin air without any real work is enticing, to say the least.
Back when gold was the widely accepted money, individuals wasted away their lives trying to create gold using all kinds of experiments, enchantments, and chemical reactions. Of course, all of them failed because gold is an element with unique properties that can’t be replicated...at least not in the physical world.
Because gold can’t be replicated in some roundabout way, a true costliness exists to obtain more of it. You have to expend energy and dig the gold out of the Earth’s crust if you want more of it. This cost of production is what makes gold scarce and a good form of money.
Ironically, if these alchemists had been successful at making gold, they would have made the precious metal less valuable as they flooded the market with more of it. But that probably wouldn’t have stopped them because, in the process of flooding the market, these alchemists would become extremely wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
Today, gold is not the widely accepted form of money anymore, fiat currencies are. One big difference between gold and fiat currencies is there is no cost for central banks and governments to produce more fiat. This allows these insiders to counterfeit money and flood the system with more of it. Therefore, they can be thought of as modern-day alchemists.
In recent years, these modern-day alchemists have gotten extremely wealthy at the expense of the broader population as they flooded the system with fiat. This is the Cantillon Effect in full swing. The further you have been from the money printer, the more this alchemy negatively impacts you.
When the world moved away from gold to fiat currencies, we moved away from the monetary properties that made gold functional money for thousands of years. This has effects way beyond just enriching these central bankers and their friends.
When a group of individuals can create money out of thin air, they distort prices in the economy. A properly functioning price system is how individuals communicate their wants and needs to other people and show what they value. When you have central banks and governments messing with price signals through money printing, it destroys the ability of market participants to understand how to best spend their time and resources.
This has profound consequences that ultimately lead to a massive misallocation of capital and retards economic growth.
Bitcoin is a reaction to this new form of alchemy that steals wealth and destroys price signals in the economy. It recreates and improves upon the monetary properties of gold. Therefore, Bitcoin can be thought of as a newly discovered element with unchanging properties that allows it to serve the function of money better than any element before it.
This video from Ioni Appelberg, based on the writing of Knut Svanholm and narrated by Guy Swann, beautifully digs into this idea of Bitcoin as a new element. (10/05/2022)
Modern-day alchemists have gotten away with printing money to enrich themselves at the expense of many. Bitcoin represents a digital return to sound money principles that will help return stability to prices that these Cantillionaires have distorted for far too long.
Tick tock next block,
Cory Klippsten
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“Money must represent real labor, output, and savings. It must have a true cost of capital. Gold worked because of the limited amount and cost of production. Bitcoin is backed by the same true cost of capital and is even more limited. It's time to Make Money Great Again.” - Mark Moss, Host of the Mark Moss Show
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