U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) made waves with Bitcoiners final month after introducing a invoice to abolish the Federal Reserve. Because it seems, that invoice was impressed by a well-known ebook about Bitcoin that outlined the evils of central banking.
In a Thursday podcast look discussing the invoice with writer Tom Woods, Massie stated he “realized some issues” after listening to The Bitcoin Normal audiobook by Saifedean Ammous—concluding it was “well beyond time” to convey again laws to finish the Fed.
“The primary 80% of it isn’t about Bitcoin, it’s about cash, it’s about ‘what’s cash?’” the congressman defined. “He has to put that down earlier than you possibly can clarify what Bitcoin is, as a result of you possibly can’t assume that everybody is aware of what cash was.”
The 2018 ebook proposed that Bitcoin might change into the world’s most dominant cash due to its superior financial properties—notably its shortage, which is enforced by a most provide of 21 million cash. Ammous additionally connects a sequence of social ills in latest a long time to the USA’ abandonment of the gold normal in 1971, together with diminished family financial savings and inflated housing and asset costs.
Massie’s “Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act” touched on most of the similar factors, declaring that “retirees see their financial savings evaporate” underneath the Fed’s insurance policies, which “profit the rich and related.”
Massie had co-sponsored a invoice with the identical identify again in 2013, which was initially launched by former Libertarian congressman Ron Paul in 1999.
Whereas that invoice acquired minimal assist from simply two co-sponsors eleven years in the past, Massie contends that every one of Ron Paul’s predictions have performed out since that point: excessive inflation, trillions of {dollars} printed, and a “lack of religion” in authorities establishments.
To his shock, Massie stated, his 2024 invoice acquired two dozen co-sponsors, all Republican.
The net Bitcoin neighborhood additionally gave Massie their unflinching assist. On Thursday, Massie started an alternate with Ammous on Twitter over how they turned towards centralized administration of the financial system, each citing economics professors.
It was my economics professor Joe Stiglitz who did that for me, earlier than I might even regarded into the Austrians!
— Saifedean Ammous (@saifedean) June 13, 2024
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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