Why Do Governments Fear Bitcoin? Because They Print Money on a Massive Scale

Originally published on December 16, 2020, on Seznam in Czech. Republished here as part of the archive.

Over 20 percent of all U.S. dollars in circulation were printed this year.
Economic elites are hiding behind a version of the fairy tale “Little Pot, Cook!”—or modern monetary theory—and claim that money printing can continue forever. If you don’t believe it, read Stephanie Kelton’s book The Deficit Myth. We’re not interested in what Venezuela thinks, and the result doesn’t surprise us. But that a government controlling the global reserve currency and 80 percent of all trade transactions thinks this way certainly does.

What would Gérard Debreu, Nobel laureate for his work on general equilibrium theory, supply and demand, say about this? He might ask how we like flying in a plane whose designers ignored the laws of aerodynamics. And then he might pose the question: Wouldn’t it be better if experts designed planes instead of political elites?

The long-term and fundamental distrust of the cypherpunk community toward the world of state currencies culminated 12 years ago in the greatest innovation we’ve ever seen in the financial sector. The world discovered digital programmable gold. Bitcoin emerged outside financial institutions, universities, and research institutes, and even entirely outside the economic sphere.

When Currency Is Built by Engineers

Thanks to this, the same engineering practices were used in the design and construction of Bitcoin as when building a house or an airplane. Mathematics and critical thinking. More than 30 years of hypotheses, experiments, and failures. For the first time in history, mathematicians, cryptographers, and software engineers took on the design of money technology, not politicians, kings, or sultans.

It’s no surprise, then, that many smart and powerful people and institutions have long tried to attack, stop, ridicule Bitcoin on technical, economic, and finally legislative levels. There are legions of them. This has been going on for twelve years and leads nowhere.

Only now are the first significant deserters appearing among the biggest players in the financial world. Why?
Because more and more people are stopping believing that money can be printed indefinitely and are starting to think that it’s perhaps better to trust mathematics than politicians and central banks.

Bitcoin is such a different form of money that the vast majority of people don’t understand it and just repeat society’s majority views. Yet it’s probably never been more important to form your own opinion.
For the generation entering economic life, this could be an absolutely fundamental opportunity. The Titanic analogy is a worn-out cliché, but Bitcoin is exactly that lifeboat that everyone can decide whether to board or not.

We need to cultivate public discussion. It’s not possible to use arguments from ignorance against a technology that has been working completely reliably for 12 years. Unacceptable. The proofs have been done. Show me a bank that hasn’t had a planned outage in 12 years. It doesn’t exist. Objections must be based on real knowledge, facts, and not a bunch of repeated half-truths and worn-out media stories.

A Unique Way to Store Value

Bitcoin certainly isn’t without risks, but it represents a huge leap forward in money technology and offers a unique way to preserve wealth. The world of finance will never be the same, and the view of money will change forever.
A cryptographically secured, decentralized protocol won’t allow more than 21 million bitcoins to be created. It won’t allow your bitcoin to be spent twice and guarantees that if you hold the key, no one can deprive you of it. It’s independent of governments and banks, without the risk of inflation, confiscation, and censorship, and offers true economic freedom to all people everywhere in the world.

This is one of those rare moments when you want to invest your own time, energy, and effort. Study and understand the basic theses and what role Bitcoin can play in your future. No one will do it for you. The establishment will discourage you, claiming they’re protecting you. They’re not. They’re protecting themselves and endangering you.

In a few years, Bitcoin might be taught in all schools, its creator Satoshi Nakamoto will be a popular exam question, and “Little Pot, Cook!” will return to children’s libraries. Or maybe not.

It’s up to us whether we create such a future and whether the freedom and financial sovereignty that Bitcoin offers are worth the effort and risk it represents today.
If you conclude that it’s not for you, that’s fine. But if out of laziness to think and lack of courage you go with the majority, you might be making your biggest mistake.