Zenconomics

The Nature of Money

Yesterday we talked about a strange case of someone getting de-banked… and I asked the question – what’s going on here? Is this a trend?

I suppose time will tell. But I can’t help but think that this is a signal we need to be paying attention to. And it’s a good opportunity to tune in to what’s happening in the world of money and finance.

So today, let’s talk about the nature of money.

Now, I know that may sound a little strange. We all use money every day. We’re familiar with it. But have we really thought about it?

Where does money come from? Why is it valuable?

The short answer is that money is a unit of account that serves as a medium of exchange. But this is an incomplete view.

In order to be viable over long periods of time, money must contain several definitive characteristics. Money must be:

Portable
Divisible
Fungible
Durable

Let’s examine each of these characteristics in more detail.

How to get de-banked

“Well, I just got de-banked.”

I received a call from a gentleman I’ve known a long time over the weekend. He was chuckling as he shared with me his dealings with Wells Fargo last week. He maintained one of his business checking accounts at the bank.

Wells Fargo had sent him a letter back in January. The letter advised him that the bank didn’t believe his mailing address to be legitimate. Then it demanded that he update his mailing address… or else the bank would close his account.

The thing is – the mailing address is legitimate. So he read the letter. Then he updated his address.

But since it happened to be the right address, he simply moved the mailbox number from line two to line one. He figured this would signal to them that they did indeed have the correct address for him – and he thought nothing more of it.

Until last week, that is. He received an email from Wells Fargo alerting him to the fact that they closed his business checking account. Naturally he called the bank’s customer service right away…

The Bitcoin Vision

Yesterday I suggested that we should avoid the new Bitcoin ETFs… because they are antithetical to the big picture underlying Bitcoin.

That big picture is harder to describe. It took me a full year of reading and thinking about Bitcoin before I could see it.

Today I’ll do my best to share it with you. And it starts with this…

We all use space-age technology every single day and think nothing of it.

Text messages fly across the country. We send 2.4 billion emails every single second. Satellites bounce data all across the globe.

Now we can do video chats with each other – just like the old Jetsons cartoon envisioned. We all walk around with a device in our pockets that can access the entire store of accumulated human knowledge instantly, from pretty much anywhere.

And this device can do almost anything we ask it to. It can give us navigational directions. It can send money to a friend. It can play music and movies. There’s an app for almost everything.

If that weren’t enough, we can now buy virtually any item made anywhere in the world online, including food, and it will show up in a box at our door step in short order.

All of this would look like magic to my grandfather who died in 1994.

Yet our core civic institutions are stuck in the Bronze Age. Governments… banks… all of them. They are dinosaurs.

Why we should avoid the Bitcoin ETFs…

We’ve been talking this week about why the new Bitcoin ETFs are a misdirection play.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved them with two ulterior motives in place:

Funnel people into the ETFs so that they don’t buy and self-custody any bitcoins themselves.
Gain more influence over the dollar price of Bitcoin.

Sure, the ETFs will give investors upside exposure to Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin increases in value relative to dollars over time – which I’m quite sure it will – those who own a Bitcoin ETF will make money in dollar terms. They will find themselves with more dollars than they had before.

But the ETFs convey no ownership in the underlying asset – Bitcoin. They are nothing more than a paper claim to Bitcoin’s value priced in dollars.

Now let’s think about this for a minute…

The Bitcoin ETF Misdirection

Yesterday we examined the history of Bitcoin’s public narrative… and I suggested that the new ETFs are a misdirection play. That is to say, there is a hidden agenda underlying the Bitcoin ETFs.

This agenda is why the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was openly hostile towards Bitcoin for years… but suddenly changed its tune. The power structure behind the SEC has two primary goals here.

The first goal is simply to funnel people into the Bitcoin ETFs so that they don’t buy and self-custody any bitcoins themselves.

It’s important to understand that these Bitcoin ETFs are cash-settled. That means investors have no ownership interest in the underlying asset.

And that’s an important point.

Bitcoin is critically important as a reserve asset in and of itself. These ETFs are just vehicles that provide dollar-based price exposure to Bitcoin.

The Real Goal of the Bitcoin ETFs

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) just approved 11 Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). So let’s talk Bitcoin this week…

It’s important to note that the SEC ruthlessly rejected every Bitcoin ETF proposal that crossed its desk over the last decade.

No kidding – the Winklevoss brothers submitted the first Bitcoin ETF application back in 2013. Since then, the SEC denied over 20 separate Bitcoin ETF applications.

So we have to ask – why did the SEC suddenly change course? Why did it go from openly hostile towards Bitcoin to approving not one or two… but 11 Bitcoin ETFs?

Simply put, this is a misdirection play.

To understand why, we have to assess how the narrative around Bitcoin has changed over the years… and why.

Completing the Water Project

Today we’ll look at the last leg of the Uganda Water Project I’ve shared with you this week.

Yesterday we covered Phase Two. And that brings us to Phase Three…

As the project progressed, the contractor noted that, given the chosen well site, it would not be difficult to install a two-way pump and a pipeline system to create several additional access points throughout the village.

Fr. Joseph brought the idea to us, and we agreed that it was a great idea – if it was in budget. The contractor ran his numbers and provided us a quote in Uganda shillings for the equivalent of $4,865 dollars.

Fortunately (for this project), the US dollar strengthened materially against the Uganda shilling from the time we received the initial contract to the time of funding. In other words, our dollars were able to buy more shillings than we originally expected.

Because the contract was quoted in shillings, this effectively reduced the total cost of the project in dollars.

The Water Project – Phase Two

We’re taking a break from money and finance this week to talk about a little non-profit venture.

Yesterday we looked at Phase One of the Uganda Water Project. Today let’s cover Phase Two.

With the borehole drilled and the manual pump/spigot installed, Phase One of the project was completed in October 2023.

We wired $12,000 to Bevar Forex Bureau on December 1, 2023 to begin Phase Two. It consisted of constructing platforms and installing water tanks for storage and additional access.

This image gives us a great feel for what it looks like as you approach the site:

As you drive or walk down this road, you’ll come to one of the well’s primary access points. Here’s a shot from the second phase of construction:

Our Venture into Africa

As I mentioned yesterday, our non-profit foundation just financed a water collection and distribution system in Uganda. What follows is part one of the project’s status update…

Friends,

I’m writing today to provide you with an update on the Uganda Water Project. But first let me express my deepest thanks for your generous support.

Our mission with Foundation for Human Civilization is to create a future that consists of vibrant self-sustaining local communities. And every contribution makes a real difference in the lives of the people we seek to serve.

With that in mind, your support enabled us to completely fund the Uganda Water Project. And we were even able to finance a wonderful extension to the project that wasn’t in our initial budget. More on that in just a few minutes.

As for the logistics…

We funded the project in three phases. We felt this was important to ensure that the work was completed in full and that our team on the ground had ample opportunity to inspect and verify everything.

We partnered with the Kireku-Bugolo Mwera Development Association on the project. Fr. Joseph Ssessaazi served as the local project coordinator for the association.

Time, Energy, and Money

Something of an insight came to me recently.

Like a splinter, I don’t know exactly where it came from… and the idea isn’t fully formed in my mind. It’s just kind of there – poking at me.

So if you’ll permit me, I’d like to explore this idea with you today. But what follows may meander quite a bit more than our usual missives.

The insight is this…

We all are blessed with the energy we need to live. That energy affords us time on this Earth. They are gifts – time and energy. We can’t truly explain them.

What we choose to focus our time and energy on is what will define our values and ultimately our lives.

It’s a simple thing. But if we think about it… it’s quite profound.