The lights in the vault hundreds of meters down below Fort Knox flickered in the dark. The walls cool, golden, 261 million ounces glinting under sterile lamps, “Fifty years of mild inflation,” the night watchman murmured, “compounded into a $900 billion mausoleum of nothingness.” Those bars, once deemed the bedrock of sovereign power, felt hollow tonight. A Bezos, a Musk and a Zuke, the U.S. Treasury had amassed the wealth equivalent of just three of its wealthiest citizens. It was a snooze fest, a black op, perhaps.
Beyond the gilt, rows of silicon racks blinked with emerald LEDs. Each pulse marked another Bitcoin, 576,230 and counting, (micro)strategy’s digital embers defying time, piled high beside the Treasury’s gold. A sick joke, perhaps. The acid capitalist, for it was he masquerading as the night watchman, envisioned a swap: every last golden Treasury brick for 7.7 million coins, at $112 000 apiece. In that instant, the vault transformed from a shrine of the past into glinting modern cathedral, resplendent in sovereign power and status.
Gold. The acid man wailed, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, right? The yellow metal would bow to code. He traced a finger along the nearest rack: “Gold preserved purchasing power, but so did art, classic cars and equities, jeez, the latter even posted a positive risk premium.” But sovereign gold? Pure vanity.
He recalled the domino of historical currency collapses but couldn’t shake his mind off the macro events nearer to the present. His vista took him from Rome to Ankara; modern nations with vaults brimming with gold, amongst the greatest gold collections ever amassed, and yet one nation had lost its seignorage to a currency union, and the other was paying between 44% and 50% on overnight cash lending and borrowing. Gold, right, what is it good for?
This bragging of bullion, he thought, was nonsense. And with digital gold, with the bitcoin seemingly set to trade pari passu with its bulkier cousin, a relentless trend that could send its total capitalization nearer the $20 trillion afforded gold, the acid guy was impatient.
True power, the power of tomorrow, lay in code. Swap all the bricks into bitcoin immediately he implored no one in particular. If he was right, and the coins traded nearer a million dollars each, that sovereign stash would come to have real significance. Ten trillion dollars of significance; or half the monetary base of the United States, more than half of all the U.S. notes and bonds presently in circulation. Damn, that evoked power and surety.
Chief Psyhconaut
Join the Acid Trip
I aim to be your bogey man challenging every assumption, guiding you through the uncharted depths of macro consciousness.
Follow now for fearless exploration.
Hugh
Share this post