Author: jwithrow

Last week we looked at the strange de-banking trend and the history of our money.

In our brief history lesson, we noted how the dollar was not only backed by precious metals for most of its history – it was in fact defined as a specific amount of silver and later gold.

But everything changed in 1971. That’s when President Nixon cut the dollar’s last link to gold.

This thrust the world on a purely fiat monetary system controlled entirely by governments and central banks. Fiat is the Latin word for “let it be done”.

This is what gave rise to the Age of Paper Wealth I highlighted in my book Beyond the Nest Egg. Because the fiat system removed all restrictions on printing money.

It took most governments about a decade to realize this. But once they did, they didn’t look back…

Continue reading “What happened to our money?”

Yesterday we talked about the nature of money… and we noted that we haven’t had sound money for quite some time now.

So today let’s look at a brief monetary history to see how that came to be. This is something that nearly every University in the western world has either ignored or swept under the rug to keep us ignorant – so let’s take a minute to briefly pull the curtain back today.

We’ll look at the history of money from an American perspective. But only because the dollar has served as the world’s reserve currency since 1944.

And we have to start with this – what is a “dollar”?

Continue reading “The History of Our 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.

Continue reading “The Nature of Money”

“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…

Continue reading “How to get de-banked”

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.

Continue reading “The Bitcoin Vision”

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…

Continue reading “Why we should avoid the Bitcoin ETFs…”

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.

Continue reading “The Bitcoin ETF Misdirection”

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.

Continue reading “The Real Goal of the Bitcoin ETFs”

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.

Continue reading “Completing the Water Project”

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:

Continue reading “The Water Project – Phase Two”