I Vote for Bitcoin Everyday

I’m writing this newsletter before I know who won the US presidential election. I wouldn’t be surprised if we still don’t know who the next US president is while you’re reading this because counting ballots is apparently much harder work than it used to be.

The unfortunate reality is that, arguably, the biggest problem we face is one that neither candidate can resolve nor has even expressed much interest in addressing.

Today, we are sitting on nearly $36 trillion of national debt. Last weekend, we added another $104 billion in a single day. The spending is out of control, and the only viable options to address the problem are:

1. Raise taxes. But even if we taxed every billionaire at 100% of their net worth, we’d only fund the government for a few months. And taxing us “little people” is politically untenable, so probably not going to happen. Besides, tax rates don’t directly correlate with tax revenue anyway, so there is no guarantee more taxes will “work.”
2. Cut spending/austerity. We’d need to absolutely crush Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs to start filling to hole. You really think a politician with their legacy and future votes on the line is going to take this chance? Yeah, I doubt it.
3. Default. At some point, the government could admit they are broke, tell all bondholders they will be paid back pennies on the dollar, and we could watch the global economy crash. Again, highly unlikely.
4. Print. The most likely scenario is the government prints money to pay its debt, massively diluting the value of what they are paying out and devaluing the dollar on an inconceivable level. This is the path of least resistance because people are nominally paid what they are owed before they realize they are way underwater in real terms.

In short, it doesn’t much matter who you vote for if your hope is fixing the money and escaping runaway inflation. Short of a miracle, we are all aboard the monetary Titanic, though we might see some chair-rearranging happen before it sinks.

To be clear, I voted. There are issues related to immigration, our nation’s health, and other topics that matter and I believe could be positively influenced with one individual in charge over another. That said, I cast my ballot with limited hope that material progress is made; the DC bureaucracy is a hard machine to overthrow.

My more important vote, one that I cast each day in my work and in my savings, however, is for the life raft that we call Bitcoin.

As I look at our fiscal and monetary mess, there is nothing more financially freeing than participating in a network governed by no one, globally accessible 24/7, and continually growing in adoption. And hey, you can even custody this new form of money with zero counterparty risk.

If you are an American, I hope you voted. At our nation’s founding, there were some incredibly brave people that put their lives on the line to give you that right.

But I also hope you enter 2025 with realistic expectations about what a new administration can achieve. It’s an uphill battle, to say the least.

Regardless, we should be grateful that we live in a world with a beautiful orange “opt out” checkbox at the bottom of our daily ballots and that we can save in freedom money regardless of who takes the helm of our Federal government come January.

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