(Me in front of the Atlanta Fed)
The Monetary Reformation of the 21st century is well underway. Bitcoin Cash (decentralized based coins including Bitcoin) and Altcoins are creating an infrasture of safety, trust and hope that is slowly eating away at the state granted monetary monopoly of the Federal Reserve System.
Still the Federal Reserve system and Central Banking in general, aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Depending on what sources you use, the banking system owns up to half of all assets in the world. Just the top 23 banks own over $50 trillion in assets and thats out of the $250 trillion in total assets that exists in the world.
They are powerful. They are wealthy. But can it sustain its dominace in the age of Bitcoin Cash?
The Catholic Church up until 1517 was just as powerful or even more so than the Federal Reserve is today. That was until a revolutionary idea converged with a rapidly advancing technology, which combined together allowed individuals the ability to choose their brand of spiritual salvation and shattered a seemingly unbreakable monopoly.
Martin Luther went after the Catholic Church in 1517. He accused it of being secretive, corrupt, manipulative and exploitive. (Does thst sound like our financial system?) At first he wanted just to reform it, but they responded like all powerful hierarchical institutions do when someome challenges their power and revenue, they refuse to change and instead set out to desrory its challengers.
His message was that an indivual didn’t need a spiritual master or religious middlemen in order to find paradise. This radical idea changed the world forever and it was spread thanks to the printing press which was beocmeing more and more widespread at the time.
An idea that can meet the needs of people better and can be spread to the masses through advancing technology, can overcome and challenge even the most entrenched powerful entities, and that includes The Federal Reserve System.
The Federal Reserce System today is very much set up like the Catholic Church was before 1517.
1. Both enjoy state monopolies
2. Both support the existing establishment
3. Both are secretive – Congress has yet to pass a law to audit the Fed
4. Both are insanely wealthy – The Fed claims $3.3 trillion as their assets – Some report up to $5 trillion
5. Both have a leader who when she or he speaks, billions listen and they adjust their behavior accordingly
6. Both fomment war – without the Fed and Cental banking wars of aggression would be impossible to fund – the citizens wouldn’t pay the taxes necessary to directly fund a war
7. Both have a franchisee system – The Federal Reserve has districts and the private banks are merely franchisees within their system
8. Both promise to lead individuals and nations to paradise – in this world or the next
9. Both sell trust, safety and hope
10. Both get rich by acting as middlemen
We don’t need the Federal Reserve any longer. Some could argue that we never did. It was established so that the government could borrow unlimited funds while ensuring the private banks grew rich.
It was promised to end the business boom and bust cycle, to keep unemployment low and to make prices stable. It’s failed at all of those and has impoverished families with inflation and encouraged malinvestments which inevitably lead to terrible crashes. During these crashes the banks are bailed out and they reposess real estate and grow increasingly wealthy.
We can say that the new religion of today is the worship of the state.
The Federal Government has become a god to many and it has granted the divine right of printing money and controlling it, to the Federal Reserve and its franchisees.
Both the Federal Reserve and the Catholic Church before 1517 were the sole sellers of faith, trust and hope in their domains. But when Martin Luther exposed the behavior of those who were behind the sales pitch of salavation of the day, the people left the Church in droves. Today it has a fraction of its former power.
Bitcoin Cash and the decentralized blockchain is a new perveyor of trust, safety and hope. But it provides this service in a much different way. Instead of having a representative of god or a Fed Chairman and the supporting cast of priests and bankers, who all claim to be a part of the one true faith and claim to have all the answers plus the magical ability to produce paradise, Bitcoin Cash simply allows the individuals to hold and to exchange value without needing to trust or know one another.
Decentralized Crypto currencies have the ability to totally eliminate the need for state sponsored money. This is a radical idea today but so was the seperatiom of church and state for nearly all of human history.
Those who are believers of this new financial faith just have to stay the course in order to spread the idea that the state shouldn’t be in the business of creating and controlling money and we have no need of a central bank. This seems like a crazy idea but crazy ideas have a way of sticking if they help people live more fulfilled lives.
Martin Luther’s courage and tenacity sparked the revolution that led to the now very commonly accepted belief, that there should be a separation of church and state. But up until that time the accepted wisdom was that for a nation to prosper it needed to enforce by blade and by bullet one true religion.
The monetary masters and the money middlemen are no longer necessary in the financial world. Over time individuals will come to realize this. When we are selling Bitcoin Cash and other cryptos we are selling a superior form of financial faith and if we are persistent and passionate enough, the Monetary Reformation of the 21st century will go down in the history books as one that will have changed the world in even more dramatic ways then the one lead by Luther.
If the state can’t dictate your eternal salvation and it can’t dictate your brand of financial faith, what other aspects of the state religion will people start to question? I believe that once people get accustomed to using crypto they’ll also begin to question if we need the state educating our children, preventing us from ingesting certain plants and substances and if the US should have 800 military bases as well as killing people with impunity across the globe.
Think about how many Christian sects there are and how many humanist based philosophies and other religions we have to choose from today – that’s where we are heading with money. The Catholic Church tried to kill all the heretics and aethists when their strangle hold on spirituality was challenged. And they failed. Peoples eyes were opened by Martin Luther’s message and all the ones since him who’ve preached that a person is sovereign over their own salvation. The more the establishment tried to suppress the opposition the more they confirmed the idea, that they were a corrupt and oppressive entity which had other ulterior motives and really didn’t care about the people they had in spiritual slavery.
Competing currencies, like competing spiritual ideologies is a good thing. The more freedom of competition we have in currenices, the more they’ll be new incredible innovations, an increase ability of individuals to accumulate wealth and to create more direct trading connections with others around the world, which will lead to a more peaceful and prosperous planet for all. When individuals gain power the established centralized authorities lose it.
Powerful entities like the Catholic Church before 1517 seemed like it would continue in its privelged place as the sole faith for millions. Five Hundred years latter people have more choices today then ever. But the Catholic Church still exists and has 110 billiion in assets.
The faith in the Federal Reserve System is lessening but like the Catholic Church which is stll around today, I believe Central Banking, and in particular the Federal Reserve will be around for decades or even centuries from now, but in a much diminished position.
When Ron Paul’s book “End the Fed” came out I was all ready for a revolution and wanted to lead the charge to shut the Fed down. But that movement faded. Why? At the time, I like others were angry but anger isn’t enough to sustain a new faith, you must have a superior alternative to the established order, and you must be able to sell trust, safety and hope in a better way than it does.
Now with Bitcoin Cash we don’t have to use political power to shut down the U.S. Central Bank to end its ability to harm individuals in this country and around the world. Everytime we use crypto, every time we explain how the propents, politicians and priests of the Federal Reserve Faith have unleashed hell upon individuals, and everytime we tell others about our superior financial faith thats based on Bitcoin Cash and crypto in general, we are creating a more free, peaceful and prosperous world. This new world is sustained and grown not by tearing down the existing establishment but instead we are using the existing infrastructure to build something even better.
The Federal Reserce is a type of financial faith and so is crypto. Right now Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin are the two biggest sects of the upstart religion. The biggest difference between the current state enforced financial faith and the crypto based financial faith is based on voluntarism.
The Federal Reserve system is maintained through force like the Catholic Church used to be. People want to chart their own path to paradise whether its in this world or the next.
Bitcoin Cash and the new financial faith built upon cryptography and decentralized blockchains can help individuals do just that. In order to sell crypto to others we need to realize that most people dont care about the technincal aspects or even the political implications, they only care about how adopting this new faith will make them feel and in order to switch sides they need to believe that if they do accept it they’ll feel better than they currently do.
The Catholic Church when it started was persecuted and almost destroyed. Then a few hundred years later it was given a state mandate which helped it remain wealthy and powerful for over a thousand years. Five hundred years after Martin Luther, it still exists but its faced with hundreds if not thousands of competitors.
The Federal Reserve has only heen around for a little over a hundred years. The Monetary Reformation of the 21st century started when Bitcoin went live in 2009. Look how far weve come since then. This new financial faith was ignored, then it was laughed at and now it’s emerging from the phase of persecution. The next phase is mass adoption.
Keep the faith brothers and sisters. The world can beocme a more free, prosperous and peaceful place but only if those who have the better ideas are willing to totally commit to the new faith and spread it to the four corners of the world.
Brad Miller