Bankers, governments, and other trusted centralized organizations require society to be steeped in runaway inflation. These fiduciary cartels thrive when they manipulate the money supply and cause drastic shifts in prices within the market economy they lord over. They believe the money supply must be regulated and controlled for the economy to function optimally, lest society collapses as a result of too little currency injection.
Also read: Bitcoin Could Progress the Fourth Industrial Revolution Says Wealth Manager
Luckily, bitcoin solves the dilemma of needing a trusted third party to control the money supply. Before delving further into why this is the case, everyone must possess a proper and clear grasp of inflation and deflation as economic concepts.
Inflation and Deflation Explained
Inflation refers to the rise of the cost of goods and services in a market environment and the decrease of the purchasing power of the prescribed currency.
Investopedia defined inflation,
Inflation is the rate at which the general level of prices for goods and services is rising and, consequently, the purchasing power of currency is falling. Central banks attempt to limit inflation in order to keep the economy running smoothly.
Conversely, deflation is the decline in the cost of goods and service resulting from contraction of a money supply within an economic environment. Deflation generally causes an increase of the purchasing power of a currency within circulation. According to some economists, excess deflation can cause market actors to horde money. However, inflation tends to be the more troubling and nefarious problem.
For example, if a currency is heavily inflated, and you travel to the local supermarket to buy groceries, you may notice an upswing in the price of bread. This price “inflation” could be the result of the grocer arbitrarily altering the price, but more likely it occurred as a result of an inflated currency. In other words, too much printing and distribution of the currency would have devalued its purchasing power and caused bread to appear more expensive. In reality, the bread likely has had the same value as always, but the decreased value of the circulated currency provided the illusion that the bread was more expensive.
With a basic understanding of deflation and inflation clearly in mind, it would seem obvious that central money manipulators are needed to keep the economy grounded in a state of equilibrium, where money is created with integrity and circulated for the betterment of society. However, there are several reasons why having a small trusted group of elites control society’s wealth is impractical, unneeded, and dangerous…and has only instigated economic woes.
The Problem of Central Money Manipulation by Fiduciary Cartels
In some places, governments and central authorities have caused such extreme runaway inflation that a currency has lost all of its value and become worthless.
Recent examples include Venezuela and Greece. Mass currency devaluation through inflation likely also occurred in the United States, which led to the Great Depression. The Austrian economists suggested that creation of the Federal Reserve bank and its manipulation of the currency supply directly caused the depression, among other, more recent economic catastrophes.
A Mises article on Greece captured the effects of credit expansion and money manipulation, then the subsequent runaway inflation:
When currencies collapse, price inflation usually picks up. More units of the currency must be offered to acquire goods and services. What had started with credit expansion and distortions in the real economy, then, may well end up with high price inflation rates and currency reform.
Another reason to avoid allowing a handful people control currency in a centralized manner is because it provides a subtle way for those individuals to “steal” value from everyone. Whenever central authorities inflate the currency supply, as mentioned, it causes the value or purchasing power of the currency to decline. This value is basically lost or “stolen” from the people.
In other words, one group caused another group to lose their property’s value. In most places, this activity by another name is called “destruction of property” or “theft.” However, currency devaluation is such an esoteric and ingenious form of theft or destruction that it goes unnoticed and unexamined by the majority of the population.
A last major reason to reject central suppliers of money is more obvious and terrifying. When a small group of people have direct access to the wealth supply of whole economies, what prevents them from electronically keying that wealth into their own personal accounts? What stops them from making themselves richer and the rest of the world poorer? What stops them from taking that wealth and using it to start wars or harm people in the name of national defense or protection?
The short answer to these questions is nothing. Nothing stops them. These individuals can fill their coffers at a whim, and control the rise and fall of whole country’s by arbitrarily inflating and deflating a currency as they see fit…and the result of allowing this kind of trust to be placed in the hands of these elite few have been absolutely devastating. It has led to mass warfare, mass exploitation of the population, and in some cases to runaway inflation, mass starvation and death.
Thank goodness the solution to these problems is here. It is called bitcoin.
Bitcoin Solves the Problem of Runaway Inflation, while Abolishing the Need for Centralized Trust
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that is automated by a consensus network algorithm. This algorithm, which was predetermined by creator Satoshi Nakamoto, has a set supply of bitcoins that will be distributed over the long term. This number is currently set to 21 million units of bitcoin.
This mathematically encoded number of bitcoin means that no central group or fiduciary cartel can control the currency. In other words, they cannot inflate or deflate a currency to the detriment of the population. In this sense, bitcoin is naturally deflationary or disinflationary. This denotes Bitcoin has utility in the sense that it neither inflates or deflates on a whim or caprice. No human actor can make changes to the protocol without achieving consensus.
In this regard, users of bitcoin have hedged themselves against control, against the small groups of trusted elites who can manage the flow or circulation of money across a population. When a currency like bitcoin is protected from artificial manipulation, it prevents people from using the creation and control of money to exploit and defraud others. It is the solution to the problem of runaway inflation and all forms of monetary control.
Some people think that bitcoin is naturally inflationary as a result of its algorithm. It is true the protocol specifies the minting of new coins via mining, but this is not the same as arbitrary inflation that causes ungodly increases in price of goods and services. The protocol was built to create coins in such a way that both heightens the value of bitcoin and does not allow for the market to be flooded. It is enough to keep the market humming, yet not overburdened.
Bitcoin, then, is the most obvious solution to stopping the fiduciary cartels and other central entities from lording over everyone and causing massive undue harm to millions. It prevents runaway inflation. It stops theft through that inflation. It thwarts loss of monetary value caused by unscrupulous actors. It kills the evil of greed. It is the economic panacea par excellence. Time to open a bitcoin wallet and take the power back.