Money — the magical power it has on people is almost universal. But whether we earn it, spend it or save it, we hardly ever think about the following questions: What is money? Why does it exist? What will money look like in the future? And why should we think too much about it? Our money works. Day in, day out, we use it without much effort. So what’s the problem?
As August Friedrich von Hayek pointed out, we humans constantly use things we don’t know anything about. For example, you don’t need to know anything about internal combustion engines in order to drive a car. It’s no different with money. We don’t have to think deeply about money in order to use it successfully. This very fact is what makes us such a successful species and indicates how well our market and knowledge society functions.
Given recent developments, more and more people have started pondering the state of today’s money. This is indicative of the fact that strange things are happening in the realm of money.
What the general public is being told right now is that money can be created ad infinitum. With the coronavirus popping the so-called “Everything Bubble,” central banks have been interfering heavily by providing vast amounts of money — in all the different flavors that money or money-like substitutes exist in today’s financial world. On top of that, governments have set up stimulus packages in the trillions of dollars, exceeding anything the world has ever seen by far.
In the wake of the enormous money tsunami unleashed onto economies and societies, people have begun (rightfully) to start asking the question: What has become of money? Is money even worth anything any longer?
A Battle of Devaluation
Others, among them many bitcoiners, are
