Kim's blog

I happened to come across this news that inspired this post post. The core point here isn't so much Bitcoin, but rather understanding what money actually is, specifically, the fact that it has to fulfill the three basic functions every economics student knows:

1. unit of account, i.e. book money

2. medium of exchange, i.e. peer-to-peer payments or face-to-face cash exchange

3. store of value, i.e. setting money aside that can later be used for purchases or investments at a future date

But these are actually just a single function: being a tool for universal barter, meaning that all participants in an economic system accept in exchange for any good or service they intend to trade. The “store of value” concept is a bit of a red herring because it only works, and meets a real need, if the economy using that currency is functioning. In that case, the money saved today will allow for purchases or investments tomorrow, effectively “preserving” value, but it will only do so if the economy works and within the parameters of how it works (read: inflation). Furthermore, the distinction between a unit of account and a medium of exchange no longer makes sense in a digitized world, because face-to-face payments are electronic anyway; therefore, they are book money, not physical currency minted as metal objects or slips of paper.

Teaching this in school, IF this ends up being the El Salvador Bitcoin 2.0 curriculum, because right now I can't find it, I only see the news, is an excellent and REVOLUTIONARY thing. As a basic concept, it's actually pretty easy to explain even to children. Explaining why banking economics is a scam is also easy, even if you leave out all the significant layers of complexity regarding how banks and central banks operate. For anyone curious, I suggest this short clip from an old Colombian movie https://youtu.be/WpGhcDg7IJ4. It's not accurate in the details today, because money creation is largely in the hands of private banks through the fractional reserve system, not the central bank, which creates it against government bonds only for what the State requests and has a fairly complex interbank mechanism for dealing with the private banks below it, but in essence, it's still true.

If they also teach (and I doubt they will) the FORMAL, theoretical purpose of taxes, vs. taxation as theft, which is de facto what's happening in the West today, well, they'll raise generations that won't be so easily manipulated in financial terms, and that would be a first in centuries, maybe ever.

In other words, the potential and scope of this initiative are HUGE, and El Salvador, once a Socialist country devastated by a CIA coup, could reborn as a powerhouse that might truly become a little oasis of prosperity, despite its lack of defensibility and climate issues.

Today, those outside the crypto world don't know it, but the high cost of hardware, first video cards, then RAM, now NVMEs and storage in general, for the first time in IT history and only since a few years because until few years ago prices held steady or dropped, and the current crypto bear market, largely triggered by Wall Street (a Wall Street on its last swan song before World War III to save itself), are signs of how much ground crypto is gaining even among those who have ignored it until now, and how worried the banks are about losing control of the real economy, their lifeblood for sucking us all dry.

Bitcoin has many flaws, though not the ones most people think. But as of today, it has emerged and is holding its ground; it's big enough that it won't be easy to take down. That's why, on one hand, war is being waged against it, while on the other, Lightning transactions are exploding alongside Nostr, which is timidly starting to spread, creating the economic web that until now had failed (and still hasn't quite managed) to emerge. The underlying dream isn't as “easy” or “vast” as described by those who put it down in black and white, but it's holding up. The IT obsolescence of current society, which is dominated by banks and has sat above politics since at least WWII, rising with the betrayal of the French Revolution at its birth, is truly heading toward its sunset, along with its limits and its scandals of funds illegally frozen for those disliked by the establishment. They won't go without causing casualties, but this really is their final swan song.

I therefore invite any reader who has made it this far to reflect on this and get informed. It's too late to get in and become a millionaire with very little, meaning with low risk and a low barrier to entry, but it's not too late to still own some; it can still be done. Those who do will be much better off than those who keep sleeping, even if no one is going to be doing well in the storm we're already in, which is nothing compared to what almost certainly awaits us.