· 8 min read

How The Bitcoin Standard Can Bring You Financial Freedom

Why do we need a decentralized alternative to central banking? What happened in 1971? Why was the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 a watershed moment that still resonates today?

Why do we need a decentralized alternative to central banking?  What happened in 1971?  Why was the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 a watershed moment that still resonates today?

Dear Reader:

In 2007-2008, the world was on the verge of financial collapse—the most severe worldwide economic crisis since The Great Depression.

How did it happen?

Several years before the 2008 crash, the U.S. government was pushing home ownership as exceedingly desirable—every one must own a home.

Large banks, mostly in the U.S., started lending out subprime mortgages to people who could not afford them, no matter what their credit score (FICO) or income sources were.

The bankers received fat fees to sell these toxic mortgages. If some didn’t sell, they were repackaged and resold as securities.

This practice created a housing bubble in the United States. A bubble that burst with enormous consequences in 2008.

There was wide-spread panic.

A stock market that tanked.

6 million people lost their homes in the U.S.

30 million people lost their jobs around the world.

$5 trillion dollars in pension money, real estate value, 401k, savings, and bonds disappeared.

It was the worst financial crash in modern memory.

To add insult to injury, the Big Banks like CitiGroup, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, Bear Stearns were bailed out by the U.S. government to the tune of $498 Billion.

None of the CEO’s were prosecuted—the people most responsible for the crisis walked free.

But out of this perfect storm of economic mismanagement, and greedy bankers emerged an unlikely hero: Satoshi Nakamoto.

On January 3rd 2009, a new kind of monetary system went online. The mysterious coder inscribed the following message into the genesis block (think of it as the first entry in a database):

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

What Satoshi Nakamoto did on that day created a seismic shift in the history of the human species.

He gave power back to the people by taking it out of the hands of unelected shadowy officials making policies behind closed doors—AKA the central banks that print money.

He secured the new system with the laws of physics by using energy to produce new coins— known as the Proof-of-Work protocol. In other words—no single entity can hack or take over the network because of its decentralized nature.

After helping nurture the project for almost 2 years with other developers on a cryptography forum, he disappeared in 2010 without a trace.

To this day, Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity is still unknown, but what he left behind was a gift to the world.

However, the question remains: why is Bitcoin important?

To answer that question, there is one book you must read—The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedeen Ammous.

On the first page of the first chapter, Saifedeen writes:

In order to understand Bitcoin, one must first understand money, and to understand money, there is no alternative to the study of the function and history of money.

What will you learn by reading this seminal work of economics?

Below is a small sample of topics covered on the history and function of money:

  1. Why the current fiat system ensures perpetual war around the world (p. 145)
  2. Why it’s a myth that the government should control the monetary system (p. 136)
  3. How sound money technology enables timeless art as opposed to disposable art made on a fiat standard (p. 98)
  4. How the giant ancient Rai stones of Yap Island (part of the Federated States of Micronesia) are similar to Bitcoin in function (p. 11)
  5. Why the greatest period of human flouring—the 19th century was known as the La Belle Époque (p. 34)
  6. What the reasons behind monetary inflation are and how the Keynesian model of government spending debases the currency—by design! (p. 81)
  7. How the Bretton Woods Conference that took place after D-Day (1944) still affects us today (p. 53)
  8. Why gold was considered the standard for thousands of years until recently—1971 being a pivotal year (p. 19)
  9. Why Low-Time Preference can lead to greater creative output, abundance and prosperity (p. 73)
  10. How fiat money came to be—paper money that is easy to produce (p. 41)

3 Core Principles At The Heart Of Bitcoin

Bitcoin secures a powerful global network and empowers anyone with a mobile phone and an internet connection. The following three principles keep the integrity and sovereignty of every user intact:

  • Decentralization: There are now 19,492 running the Bitcoin protocol around the world. Each node runs a copy of the public ledger that records every transaction that takes place on the network. What this means to you is that no one can dictate what the monetary policy will be. In other words, the Bitcoin network cannot be manipulated by anyone.

  • Proof-of-work: Somebody running a Bitcoin miner in Singapore, Australia, Britain, Brazil, Canada, or the United States is keeping the network secure. There is no central authority. According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, Bitcoin uses 141-160 terawatt-hours (TWhs) of electricity annually. If you’re wondering if that is a waste of energy, read the passage on page 217.

  • Self-custody: Owning your assets is perhaps the biggest game changer when it comes to measuring your real wealth. Banks can freeze your account, gold can be confiscated. But Bitcoin is permissionless. If you can remember 12-24 words, you can store potentially millions and even billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin in your head. You can move it across borders without any problem. It accessible anywhere there is an Internet service.

What Are People Saying?

The Bitcoin Standard has left a deep impression on those who have read it. Take, for example, the following three testimonials from influential Americans:

Michael Saylor is the Executive Chairman, President, and co-founder of Microstrategy—a software company providing business intelligence and other cloud services. While initially a skeptic, once he began educating himself on Bitcoin, he took his company from $500 million cash-on-hand to over a market cap of over $22 billion (as of July 7th 2024)! Read what he had to say about the book:

This book blew my mind; it is a work of genius. It put together the technical, economic, motivational and related issues around Bitcoin better than anything I’ve seen.

The best compliment I can give this book is that I read it and I decided to buy $425m of bitcoin. It was the most impactful on our way of thinking in Microstrategy and it made us want to invert our balance sheet to base it on a bitcoin standard.

Thomas Massie is a United States Representative of Kentucky. After reading The Bitcoin Standard, Rep. Massie introduced the Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act:

Max Keiser, an out-spoken broadcaster, filmmaker and American-Salvadoran, currently works at the National Bitcoin Office in El-Salvador—which adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. He had this to say about The Bitcoin Standard on Twitter/X:

Why Saving In Fiat Is A Bad Idea

Have you ever wondered what fractional reserve banking is?

Say you deposited $10,000 into your bank account on a Monday. A week later you walk into the bank and ask for $5000 because you want to purchase a second-hand car by cash. The bank can’t give you your money because they no longer have it!

Why?

The bank keeps only a fractional reserve, like 10% of it in your account. The remaining 90% is loaned out to someone else who wants to buy a different car.

The central banking system is why you can’t save money in fiat currencies.

It is why you might even have to take on another job because the value of the dollar keeps collapsing but bills and expenses keep going on.

Without a knowledge of how money is made or its history, you will wonder why your purchasing power keeps going down.

Without education there is mediocrity. A life not lived to its fullest. Chances missed. Opportunities lost.

This is true especially when it comes to an education on money. The prevailing stance in the top universities and colleges is the Keynesian model which advocates for unlimited government spending.

Do you want to trust your money in a bank run by three people?

Or do you want to trust your money in a bank owned collectively by humanity, one which no government, police or covert agency can hack?

A $20 (USD) Investment That Will Bring You Financial Freedom For The Rest Of Your Life

Learning about what money is and how it’s created is a necessary step towards financial freedom and self-sovereignty.

Armed with this knowledge, you will have a much more solid foundation when it comes to making sound financial decisions.

The Bitcoin Standard will explain to you why inflation is theft, and why fiat currencies are all designed to lose value over time.

What better time to start learning about Bitcoin than now?

Let nothing, absolutely nothing, interfere with your sovereignty as an individual.

A change for the better justifies no delay. The most disruptive force in the world right now is happening before your eyes.

Owning Bitcoin now is like buying Manhattan property in the beginning of the 20th Century.

Or the California Gold Rush in the mid 19th century.

It is a system in which you can be sure will remain intact in 50 years, 100 years and even 1000 years from now.

Place your order and start learning about money this very minute, while you’re reading this.

If you already have an Amazon account, use the following paid links based on your location. If you are new to Amazon, all products come with a 30-day money back guarantee and if you sign-up for Prime, you can get 1-2 day delivery.

Taking the action now means more freedom next week, complete independence next year.

Sincerely yours, Jay Khan Logo Jay Khan

P.S. If you prefer to listen to the book while you travel, work-out at the gym, or do chores around the house, you can get it for FREE if you are new to Audible. Just sign-up for a free-trial and download it today!

Otherwise, use the links below to grab your copy and start learning about the most important and liberating technology of the 21st century.

Audible - USD | CAD

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