When Money Dies is a good look at the Fiat fuckery driven interim between WWI and WWII.

WWI was a strange and incestuous European civil war, as all of the leaders all basically all of the major players on both sides of the war were related to the British Royal Family.

Anyways I wrote a review of When Money Dies a while back (inspired by Jimmy once posting that more people should read books and then write reviews / reports on them).

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I totally agree. My only distinction is that I think value stay same is not a real option, so value go up must be the goal. At least once one understands this fact about the nature of money’s relationship to value.

Its tough though, for folks facing economic precarity - “value go down too slow to notice” (fiat) vs “value maybe go up but also maybe go down bigly all at once” (bitcoin) - fiat can be the immediately better choice for the immediate need.

I think about this often. What I’ve concluded is that “Number stay the same” is a fantasy that we are sold (which is then also used to justify currency debasement in pursuit of “stable” prices).

Instead I think we only have a simple choice then - do we want money that gains purchasing power over time or money that loses purchasing power over time?

This is where I’m very unsure, I feel like continuing spiking in the bond market will cause a Bitcoin dump - either because of the inverse relationship on the short term, or more structurally, because an unwind of equities (ie the “AI trade”) will cause liquidations of people and entities that already have significant parallel exposure to Bitcoin. Bitcoin will be with that HAVE to sell, especially once distortions, blow ups, and blowouts can no longer be contained to just M-F trading days…

What also puzzles me is how shitpigs like Coreweave can truck higher, or even just maintain, in the face of 10 year debt rates that are up 10% just on the 1 month and 25% on the year.

Nah bro, 10 year keeps climbing towards 6% (by November, I expect corp media will be talking about “prepare for 7%”) and AI stocks just keep trucking higher. Debt doesn’t matter. In fact, we should do Christmas all year round!

EVERYTHING IS FINE.

I understand the excitement around this line of thinking, but AI is like any other tool, an inert and dead thing. The idea that AI is “smart” or “autonomous” is like say that a calculator is good at math.

Not matter how detailed or seemingly immersive, the map will never be the territory.

Does almost nothing for people making over $100,000 per year as well…