“It’s a challenge to change people perception of money.” -Stefan Molyneux
The Texas Bitcoin was held in Austin, Texas on March 5-6 with some notable guest speakers and Bitcoin ‘personalities’ as Andreas Antonopolous and Ravi Iyengar just to name a few.
Among these participants was Stefan Molyneux, the host of Freedomain Radio, who delivered a light-hearted yet poignant talk on the psychology behind money and it’s universal effect on society, government, and the way we think about money in general.
Bitcoin as a threat
Stefan started off by outlining the general problem with currencies. Since money is essentially the infrastructure of society, any attempts to change the monetary status quo is usually perceived as a direct threat by a lot of people.
When monetary systems collapse, services shut down, people can go hungry, lose their homes, and even die. Stefan cited such historic upheavals as the Khmer Rouge and the Russian revolution, which occurred as a direct result of changes to money.
“People hear that Bitcoin is messing with money and they view this as a terrifying scenario because they know how fragile the entire monetary ecosystem is that keeps them literally alive.”
Debt war chest
“The matrix is money,” says Stefan, “money keeps the rich rich and the poor poor.” He cites two of the biggest faults in the current fiat monetary system: inflation and debt. Debt, in particular, is what allows people to afford a lot of a lot of indulgences, the biggest of which is war.
Old habits die hard
Bitcoin challenges wealthy people’s sense of entitlement because it levels the playing field -it doesn’t favor any one side in politics or otherwise as it is a protocol. Stefan states that Bitcoin has the potential to “release the entrepreneurial energies” of people with less money.
More importantly, it gives the lay person access to markets that they can not access currently. For example, one would have to shell out about US$3 million dollars for an IPO whereas Bitcoin can reduce that to nothing.
People associate money with statism, the Federal Reserve, paper money, and the government. Bitcoin challenges those perception since it is, as Stefan beautifully puts it, “a neutral arbiter for the exchange of disparate values.” Hence, the exchange of goods and value is driven by principles rather than by a drive to hedge against the the loss of value of money i.e. inflation.
Therefore, a lot of spending comes as a result from people’s fear that their money is expected to lose value over time, which stimulates people to invest it into real estate, stocks, etc.
“It’s painful how much of life we have to devote to protect ourselves from the Invisible thieves of the federal reserve,” says Stefan.
Hostile takeover?
In a response to a question from the audience regarding the potential takeover of Bitcoin technology by the current establishment, Stefan pointed out that it is a valid point of concern. Without a doubt, predatory capitalism won’t sit by the wayside as the increasingly lucrative opportunities offered by cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin gain popularity.
These so-called vulture-capitalists will attempt to hedge their bets by appealing to state regulatory agencies to socialize the costs while privatizing profits, masking it as a preventative measure against another Mt. Gox type crash.
Stefan sees this as an inevitable battle that will play out in the near future as crypto-currency enters the consciousness of the masses.