Bitcoin on the Ballot - WiM Weekly

A weekly summary of new WiM podcast releases and some food for thought

Jun 07, 2024

“I will support the right to self-custody to the nation’s 50 million crypto holders. I say this with your vote. I will keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from your Bitcoin, and I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency.”—Donald Trump

The future of money is now the central topic of the 2024 US presidential election. Regardless of the outcome in November, technology is empowering individuals and making them more sovereign. The State is the sole social apparatus which may legally employ coercion, compulsion, and violence. In its limited and best implementations, The State’s monopoly on force is used exclusively to protect the life, liberty, and property of its constituent individuals. When left unaccountable to the preferences of its constituents, The State often rigidifies into an arbitrary and tyrannical organization bent on total social control. Herein lies the power of Bitcoin and cryptography: the tools which let citizens blind The State to their identities, their patterns of actions, and the purchasing power under their control. Paradoxically, as a monetary technology that is agnostic to the politics of human affairs, Bitcoin is the most politically disruptive innovation in human history. Bitcoin is an apolitical solution to this present stage of human evolution; one characterized by zero-faith in The State, an ideal exquisitely expressed by the bloodless revolution of Bitcoin’s monetization.

This Week:

WiM474 with Mel Mattison

“Keynes warned the United States delegates that you do not want to have the US dollar as the reserve currency. It will basically be the end of you because the only way that's going to work, to have a single country as the reserve currency, is that country by definition is going to have to export dollars to fund the global economy. There’s going to be an artificial strength to your currency. This artificial strength will eventually hollow out your manufacturing because your labor costs will be too high and you're going to be able to buy goods cheaply around the world. You're going to be forced into a situation of constantly running a current account deficit. Meaning, a constant trade deficit with the rest of the world who demands these dollars. The only way you're going to create those dollars is through debt, and you're going to wind up in a debt spiral.”—Mel Mattison

Triffin's Paradox reveals a conflict in the global monetary system: the country issuing the world's reserve currency must run deficits to meet international demand, which ultimately undermines confidence in that currency. This situation creates tension between short-term economic policies and long-term financial stability. As a result, reliance on a single national currency for global reserves leads to inherent instability and economic crises.

Link to full episode: Exposing the Deep Economic State with Mel Mattison (WiM474)

WiM475 with Luke de Wolf

“You have to live within the bounds of order. But, if order becomes too stifling, then it has to be regenerated and overthrown...You can’t live completely without order [because] nature is cruel and will consume everything. It’s why nature, or chaos, has that second level to it: “The Dragon,” which is going to consume everything eventually…At the center is the hero, mediating between the two. And you can be that hero. But you have to undertake it voluntarily and with full understanding of what the responsibility is. Adopting Bitcoin on its own without taking up that mantle of responsibility and being the hero in your own life…it’s not going to actually work for you.”—Luke de Wolf

Link to full episode: Heroic Adaptation | 'Maps of Meaning' Series | Episode 9 (WiM475)

WiM476 with Richard Dawkins

“In animal behavior, there are two ways in which you can expect cooperation: kinship and reciprocation. Reciprocation is very common and it can occur between different species, between different kingdoms, and between members of the same species. You scratch my back today, and I’ll scratch yours tomorrow. Symbiosis. The cooperative relationship between a fungus and an algae making a lichen…In humans, that would take the form of barter where a [black]smith can make a spear and a hunter, [who] needs a spear to catch meat, then pays the smith with the meat that he catches. Barter is obviously a primitive way of formalizing reciprocation. Later on, money came in as a token of barter.”—Richard Dawkins

The full episode with Richard Dawkins will go live today (6/7/24) at 3:00pm EST.

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Upcoming Episodes:

6/8 with Johnathan Bi

Johnathan Bi is the co-founder of Opto Investments and a philosopher focusing on the great books of the West, human nature, and Rene Girard’s mimetic theory.

6/10 with Hajo Smit

Hajo Smit is a serial entrepreneur, journalist, copywriter, marketeer, professional licensed paragliding tandem pilot, and expert on (winter) tourism, climate (MSc), environment, health, and Bitcoin.

6/12 with Luke de Wolf

Luke de Wolf is a cyber security consultant, Bitcoin advocate, and host of the Freedom Footprint Show with Knut Svanholm. We continue our multi-episode series deep dive into Jordan Peterson’s first book, Maps of Meaning, this time trying to answer the question: Is Bitcoin the Philosopher’s Stone?