#Bitcoin was not designed to be an IOU. It was designed to remove the need for trusted intermediaries in money. When you hold Bitcoin through: – ETFs – custodial exchanges – broker apps – derivatives and paper claims you do not hold Bitcoin. You hold a promise denominated in Bitcoin. That distinction matters. Paper Bitcoin recreates the exact system Bitcoin was built to escape: • custodians control access • regulators control custodians • price discovery moves off-chain • users lose sovereignty If most “Bitcoin ownership” exists as paper claims, then Bitcoin becomes: – easy to freeze – easy to censor – easy to rehypothecate – easy to politically capture The protocol still works. The rules don’t change. But the people stop using it as designed. Bitcoin’s security model assumes: – users self-custody – nodes independently verify – transactions settle on the base layer (or trust-minimised layers) ETFs do none of this. They increase price exposure while reducing network participation. That is why ETFs strengthen fiat markets, not Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not gain strength from number go up. It gains strength from: – self-custody – real settlement – node verification – voluntary use If you don’t run a node, you trust someone else’s rules. If you don’t self-custody, you don’t control your money. If you never transact, you don’t participate in the system. Bitcoin survives paperization. But it does not benefit from it. If Bitcoin is treated only as a speculative asset, it will be absorbed into the system it was meant to replace. If it is used as money, it remains outside that system. The choice is not institutional vs retail. The choice is custody vs sovereignty. Use Bitcoin. Verify Bitcoin. Hold your own keys. That is how Bitcoin stays Bitcoin.

#Bitcoin’s protocol still works. The risk is not in the code. It is in how people use it. Bitcoin is increasingly held through ETFs, custodians, and treasury vehicles. That gives exposure, but it reduces participation. Price discovery moves off-chain. Coins consolidate into regulated pools. Users stop verifying. This does not break Bitcoin. But it weakens its sovereign properties. Bitcoin was designed to be self-custodied money, settled peer-to-peer, enforced by users running nodes. That is what makes the rules hard to change and capture expensive. When convenience replaces verification, enforcement thins. When exposure replaces ownership, sovereignty erodes. Institutions will always prefer paper claims and intermediated control. That is rational for them. It is not neutral for the network. As a Bitcoiner, the responsibility is to be honest about this trade-off. If you want Bitcoin to remain hard money: • Hold your own keys • Run a node if you can • Use Bitcoin as money, not just as a price ticker Bitcoin does not need belief or protection. It needs users who participate. The protocol survives only if sovereignty is practiced, not outsourced.

Credit is not savings. It is a claim created against the future. In modern systems, credit is issued first and funded later. Banks do not lend deposits. They create new money when they issue loans. The borrower receives purchasing power that did not previously exist. The liability is pushed forward in time. This process expands the money supply without increasing real goods or productivity. At small scale, credit coordinates investment. At large scale, it distorts prices. When credit is cheap and abundant: • Asset prices rise before wages • Risk is mispriced • Debt grows faster than income • Consumption is pulled forward • Future output is assumed, not earned This is not growth. It is temporal displacement. The system requires continual expansion to remain solvent. Old debt is serviced by new credit. If expansion slows, defaults appear. If expansion stops, the system contracts. There is no equilibrium. Only acceleration or collapse. Because credit is created without hard limits, it concentrates power in institutions that can issue it. Those closest to issuance benefit first. Those furthest away pay later through inflation and higher taxes. This is why inflation is described as a “mystery.” Its cause is structural. Sound money constrains credit. Fiat money amplifies it. Bitcoin does not prohibit lending. It prohibits credit creation from nothing. Loans must come from saved capital. Risk must be priced. Time preference must be real. This is the difference between money that measures value and money that manufactures claims. One preserves reality. The other replaces it with promises. #Bitcoin #Credit #Finance #CentralBanking

Taxation Was Never Meant to Be Permanent Income tax was introduced as a temporary emergency measure. In the UK, income tax first appeared in 1799 to fund the Napoleonic Wars. It was repealed, reinstated, and only made permanent in 1842. In the US, income tax emerged during the Civil War, was repealed, then reintroduced in 1913, sold as a tax on the wealthy, not the population at large. Before permanent income taxation, societies still functioned. Cities had roads, bridges, ports, universities, water systems, and trade infrastructure, all built without perpetual taxation of labour and savings. So what changed? Modern taxation didn’t expand because governments suddenly became more efficient. It expanded because governments stopped running surplus budgets. Under Keynesian economics, deficits are not a failure, they are a policy tool. When growth slows, governments borrow. When debt compounds, they inflate. When inflation bites, they tax more. Not to improve services, but to keep the system solvent. This is why politicians fail time and time again. They overpromise and underdeliver, not because they are uniquely incompetent, but because the system is structurally designed to fail. You can see the consequences everywhere: Cost of living crises Pension crises Housing affordability breakdowns Declining public services despite rising tax burdens From an Austrian economics perspective, this outcome is inevitable. When money can be created without constraint, fiscal discipline disappears. Taxation becomes a mechanism to offset monetary mismanagement, not a means of funding productive public goods. This is not a left vs right issue. It doesn’t matter who is in power. Until the underlying system changes, until Keynesian assumptions are challenged, politicians will continue to fail, budgets will remain permanently in deficit, and citizens will continue to carry the cost. Broken money produces broken incentives. Broken incentives produce broken governance. History is clear on this. And it’s repeating, again.