"What is Money?" According to Michael Saylor - WiM Weekly
A weekly rundown of new WiM podcast releases and some food for thought
Amidst the constant noise around Bitcoin price action, rate cuts, ETFs, corporate and nation-state adoption, and political developments, it's easy to lose sight of the defining question of our time in history: “What is Money?”
1) Money is the highest form of energy that humans can channel.
Money is a concentrated form of our collective time and energy, distilled into a universal medium.
2) Money is energy; a monetary system is an energy system.
Just as energy fuels the physical world, money fuels the economic world.
3) A monetary system moves energy through time and space.
Money is the vehicle that carries our energy forward, preserving the fruits of our labor, and ensuring they can be harnessed wherever and whenever they’re needed.
4) The laws of thermodynamics state that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed.
The essence of money is bound by the same immutable laws that govern the physical universe. Just as energy cannot be created from nothing, wealth cannot be conjured out of thin air.
5) When designing a system, engineers understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Engineers design systems with the laws of thermodynamics in mind, but economists do not.
Engineers respect the laws of nature because they have no choice; reality is unforgiving. Economists, on the other hand, often succumb to the illusion that value can be manipulated without consequence.
6) Economists, lawyers, and politicians are in charge of the monetary system and money supply, not engineers. Given that money is energy and a monetary system is an energy network, it may be better for an engineer to be in charge of the monetary system.
7) The creation of Bitcoin was the first time that anyone had figured out how to engineer a monetary system.
8) Satoshi was a multi-faceted engineer who combined several engineering disciplines, computer science, and Austrian economics in his creation of Bitcoin.
9) A system without stability will ultimately collapse. Bitcoin is an appropriately engineered monetary system that follows the laws of thermodynamics.
Bitcoin’s design respects the fundamental laws of the universe.
10) It is critical to standardize the rules of money so that every person plays by the same rules.
Fairness in a monetary system comes from uniformity—one set of rules for all.
11) When the money is broken, the system bleeds several trillions of dollars in value each year.
An unsound monetary system is a leaky vessel, hemorrhaging value as inflation erodes wealth. The trillions lost aren’t just numbers; they represent stolen time and energy from everyone operating within the monetary system.
12) Broken money can persist for some time if the ruler has enough raw power, but over time, the economy in which that money is used will collapse.
Political power can prop up broken money in the short term, but the laws of economics are as relentless as gravity. Sooner or later, a currency divorced from reality will drag the economy down with it.
13) When money works perfectly, it is economic energy. But when it is captured by politics and becomes corrupted, it becomes imperfect energy. Money becomes corrupt when corrupted leaders begin to debase it.
14) The recipe of virtue in a monetary system is to plug it into nature; proof-of-work mining subjects Bitcoin to the virtues of nature. It is a base-layer protocol upon which a civilization can be built.
Proof-of-work aligns Bitcoin with the natural order, ensuring that only those who contribute energy can redeem its value.
h/t to FrankAFetter and Stan Rizzo for their work in compiling and summarizing “The Saylor Series.”
This Week:
WiM506 with Brandon Quittem
“What scares me more than ever is that we have so much debt right now which [makes] this a new type of “Fourth Turning.” In the 1930’s, we did not have this [debt problem]. We spent a lot on social programs [and war] to recover the economy. In this process, we built a lot of capital assets [in America] … Today, we have debt up to our eyeballs, and more debt is going to create a bigger financial [crisis]. We don’t have the room to spend our way out of it … No matter where you are in the world, if you don’t want to go down with your countries ship, you have the choice right now to [buy] some sats for your family.” — Brandon Quittem
Link to full episode: Bitcoin's Role In "The Fourth Turning" with Brandon Quittem (WiM506)
WiM507 with Bitcoin Mechanic
“[Fiat] leads to a competency crisis. I’m not going to become skillful at a game that keeps changing on me. I’m just going to try and climb the ladder and be one of the guys that decides the rules. Then I get to decide who the winner is…[This] leads to the “shitification” of everything.” — Bitcoin Mechanic
The full episode with the Bitcoin Mechanic will go live today (8/23/24) at 3:00pm EST.
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Next Week:
8/27 with Curt Doolittle
Curt Doolittle is a philosopher, social scientist, entrepreneur, and polymath working in epistemology, logic, economics, law, and technology. He is the founder the Natural Law Institute and the Propertarian Institute.
8/30 with Giovanni Santostasi
Giovanni Santostasi is a physicist, neuroscientist, financial analyst, CEO/Director of Research at Quantonomy, and creator of the “Bitcoin Power Law Theory.”
Events on the Horizon:
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So if you aspire to:
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3. Be a man of wisdom
Then this is a great place to start!
The Art of Alpha Retreat: https://www.breedloveevents.com/
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Very very profound. Thank you for compiling this powerful summary of Money.
Thanks!