This is Atty May Pono, a member of the Board of Trustees of Silliman University. She’s been orange pilled and is now accepting payment for her books in sats. Are you watching closely, anon?

What is the value of Bitcoin? It is the massive positive externalities derived from a fair and honest monetary system. The improvement on human society that will be brought about by a fair and honesty monetary system is priceless.

To more fully appreciate and understand Bitcoin, focus on the network, not on the fiat price of the token. #Bitcoin is more interesting than bitcoin.

When central banks create money, they don’t create value. What money printing does is take value from those who have money, and put it in the newly created money. The first to receive that new money are able to “invest” or dump that new money into real estate, stocks, bonds, artwork, etc. Who loses from this system? The downstream users of the money, now diluted by the earlier printing: ordinary people, fixed income savers. #Bitcoin fixes this.

This is Atan and Paul, my companions at Kalayaan Homestead. Every month this year, they’ve been receiving Sats or Satoshis in addition to their salaries. Like half of the Philippine population, they belong to the “unbanked”—people who have no bank accounts and have no access to the financial rails of the country. To be unbanked is to be handicapped and have impaired ability to buy and save. This is a global problem. Bitcoin solves this problem because 12 words give you access to money and a savings account that cannot be inflated by governments. With a few conversations here and there, they’ve started to know the meaning of sound money. Imagine when this becomes a reality for families, barangays, indigenous peoples, cooperatives, savings and loan associations. People individually and collectively having access to a new financial system, bypassing the old one. A former President famously said, “you can’t eat human rights.” Bitcoin makes the right to property real for the disadvantaged, allowing them to plan for the future and save their labor in a form of money secured by energy and protected from politics. Bitcoin is hope.

Presentation at Boracay #Bitcoin Retreat (28 March 2023) Bitcoin as Language and Foundational Protocol of Civilization

The Protocol Wars of the 21st Century will be between #Bitcoin and CBDCs. It will be between freedom for plebs and digital panopticon.

The U.S., after suspending the redeemability of the dollar to gold, created the petrodollar system to sustain an artificial demand for its currency. Now that such system is about to collapse because of what China and Russia are doing, the best move for the U.S. would be to load up in bitcoin and later on declare that the dollar as backed by Bitcoin. This should re-establish trust in the dollar and tie its currency with money actually tied with energy.

#Bitcoin is language, a communications protocol. Like math. Like any other system for oral and written communication. It is the Lingua Franca of the digitally networked information economy of the 21st century.

#Bitcoin is systemic fairness. We can spend a good part of our lives fighting against instances of injustice and abuse, but if winning requires consent by trusted agents of the system, we are bound to eventually get disappointed and broken-hearted. Activism within the system is necessary still and is a worthwhile effort for many. Bitcoin is different because it is an entirely new system: fair by default and by design. It is a world where public and private institutions cannot tamper with and manipulate the product of your labor, work, and energy. In this world, the party you need to trust, first and foremost, is yourself.