Bitcoin As Neutral Money

Every major reserve currency in history has been the currency of a powerful nation. The pound during British dominance. The dollar since Bretton Woods. Holding reserve currency means trusting the country that issues it — its monetary policy, its foreign policy, its willingness to weaponise financial access.

Russia trusted dollar reserves in 2022. That trust had a limit.

Gold is the closest thing to neutral money that’s ever existed. No government issues it. No central bank controls it. No sanctions apply to it. That’s why central banks — including those of countries that don’t trust the US — still hold gold. But gold is heavy, expensive to transfer, easy to confiscate at borders, and settling international trade in gold is extremely cumbersome.

Bitcoin takes everything gold does well and fixes everything gold does badly.

No government issues Bitcoin. No central bank controls its supply. The US cannot freeze a nation’s Bitcoin reserves the way it froze Russia’s dollar reserves — not if those reserves are held in self-custody. No sanctions regime can stop a valid Bitcoin transaction from settling.

And unlike gold, Bitcoin moves across borders in seconds, divides perfectly, can be verified on a public blockchain, and can be stored as 24 words in someone’s memory.

The neutrality argument isn’t that all countries will adopt Bitcoin tomorrow. It’s that Bitcoin is the first asset that genuinely satisfies the requirements for neutral settlement — and that requirement has never mattered more than it does right now, as the dollar’s role as the unquestioned reserve currency faces its first serious challenge in fifty years.

Tomorrow: the human right to financial privacy — and what we’ve given up.

— The Daily Bit