218 Comments

Never sell your tools. If you can add value, you can get money.

Expand full comment

How do we separate money from government ?

Expand full comment

The challenge might be to find somehwere to spend cash - Minneapolis iarport restaurants are not included! Si no hay una tarjeta de credito, pasaras hambre!

Expand full comment

Here in Canada, I now know that if I don't agree with T2, I'm labeled a radical.

Expand full comment

I am sure you are right. This what is in stall for all of us: totalitarian state. So we need to win this thing, or we become mouthless money producing feudelistic slaves. They control the money system, so they control us..simple really.

Expand full comment
Mar 6, 2022·edited Mar 6, 2022

Hi Doomberg, I am still able to sell gold to gold brokers, in reasonable amounts in Canada, without showing identification, for cash, which I can then use to pay my transactions. Trade gold for cash. Trade gold for cash. No, I can't eat it or buy groceries with gold, but I can trade it for cash. And I do it all the time.

Expand full comment

I just feel you discount the ability to flee to another county with a cold storage device too greatly. Yes , the government (like canada) is the real problem and dictatorship like that is root of the problem and crypto can not solve that problem , but if i lived in ottawa with a cold storage device in hand , i would walk / sneak across to the US and when i got to Michigan or wherever i would at least have something more than jus the clothes on my back and what i could carry. The rest of my money , cnanadian stocks etc would be stukc in canada with no way to get it out from under the dictator's regime, but i would not be penniless to start my new life in the US. Crypto is not the end all solution, freedom is , but it does give a person a chance not to be dead immigrant in a foreign country.

Expand full comment

One definition of "Money": what you can use to pay your taxes. You will be taxed, if you own property or are in any way participating in the economy. Cash values will be assessed on real-estate, and barter transactions, and if you don't have "money" to pay the tax, the government will seize and sell your property to get it. If you have an employer, they'll pay your wage taxes for you. And if you expect to have public roads, contracts enforced, public safety, public education (or at least, baby-sitting of the neighbor's teens), you should be glad to pay for these services.

Expand full comment

How would we impose sanctions on Russia if we couldn't control the flow of currency? Decentralized currencies might prevent subjugation of citizens by tyrants, but they also prevent the legitimate use of economic sanctions (in place of military force) by genuine democracies. We need the world's reserve currency to be centralized, and we need it to remain the USD.

Expand full comment

Economic sanctions are not legitimate. They are criminal.

Expand full comment

Genuine democracies? You're an idiot.

Expand full comment
Feb 25, 2022·edited Feb 26, 2022

Awesome read as always! I have commented on this before and of course crypto maximalists like all other maximalists fail to differentiate between the world that is and the world as they want it to be. As I have said before, indeed all government fiat currencies are shit but they at least have the state theory of money backing them for better or worse; cryptocurrencies don't even have that. Cryptocurrencies just have your fiat in the network backing them (as ethically and morally superior as the network might be). Not sure why the crypto crowd would systematically underestimate an "opponent" who has a monopoly on power, violence, rules and regulations.

Expand full comment

I'm a Bitcoiner, whatever that precisely might be, maybe some Austrian economics and free-market stuff.

This piece rings true. I think most Bitcoiners underestimate to which extend the 'war' against central power reaches. You basically need a fully decentralized infrastructure, where people host their own digital data, out of reach of governments. Companies like start9 are focusing on this.

But indeed, the gray zone between going over onto a Bitcoin infrastructure and the artery/vessel system of centralized fiat, with it's dominant position, liquidity, pricing mechanisms, capital markets, etc. is going to be extremely tricky to manouvre through.

It will take a long time, but if more countries embrace Bitcoin as a formal currency, this will help since these countries then grant access to liquidity, capital markets, fiat currencies, etc. This is why El Salvador is already feeling the heat from big institutions like the IMF.

It's gonna be a long and windy road.

Expand full comment

"If I should come to Sparta, I will lay waste to all and enslave you all." - Philip II of Macedon

"If" - The Spartans

Expand full comment

"Just." Laconic. I like that.

Expand full comment

Gold force-purchased by the U. S. government was melted down. (It could not be seized under the 5th Amendment). So how well did it work? Let's just say there would be no pre-1933 coins if everyone had turned in their gold. And as emigres around the world will tell you, what facilitates flight can also save your life.

Expand full comment

Never let a good crisis go to waste. The pandemic has vastly accelerated the abolition of cash and then we are truly stuffed!

Expand full comment