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The gold is no longer in the vaults: we are the collateral of the system.
84 sats \ 5 comments \ @kira 1 Nov bitcoin
The gold is no longer in the vaults: we are the collateral of the system.
When money stopped being backed by gold, it started being backed by us.
"The gold is no longer in the vaults. It’s in us."
The illusion of backing
For centuries, money rested on a simple promise: behind every bill there was something real.Gold, production, effort - a limit that reminded governments that wealth couldn’t be printed without end.
But that limit vanished.First with the end of the gold standard.Then with the rise of fiat money, sustained only by "trust."
And when even that trust began to erode, States searched for a new form of backing.They no longer found it in reserves or markets, but in something far more malleable and abundant: people.
The citizen as collateral
Today, the system’s true asset is us.Our labor, our taxes, our debts, even our data - all turned into the guarantee that keeps a hollow model breathing.
The value of a nation is no longer measured by what it produces, but by how much it can extract from its citizens without breaking the spell of obedience.Every public debt issuance is a bet on our future.Every planned inflation, a silent transfer of vital energy.
They no longer mine gold from the earth.They mine human time from human lives.
The circuit of sacrifice
The system survives because we keep feeding it.We were told that work dignifies us, but what truly dignifies is being able to keep the fruit of that work.Under fiat, that’s impossible.
When States go beyond sustainable debt, what they pledge as collateral isn’t assets - it’s citizens.Your future productivity, your savings, your children.Everything serves to keep a machine running that no longer creates value, only redistributes it upward.
The citizen is both engine and fuel.A human battery powering a system that no longer believes in limits.
Control as insurance
Any extraction-based model must ensure that no one disconnects.That’s why digitalization is sold as progress.That’s why surveillance is presented as safety.And that’s why central bank digital currencies are marketed as innovation - when in truth, they’re instruments of total control.
Every tracked payment, every verified identity, every stored data point tightens the circuit.Money has become an invisible cage: a network binding you to perpetual debt while convincing you that you’re free.
You work, you produce, you consume.And the system, content, keeps feeding on your energy.
Bitcoin as disconnection
Bitcoin introduces a crack in that structure.For the first time, you can preserve the fruit of your energy without asking for permission.Your time becomes incorruptible. Your effort, unconfiscable.
It’s not a promise of wealth - it’s a promise of autonomy.A tool that lets you step out of the circuit without destroying the world, simply by unplugging from it.
That’s why it disturbs the system so deeply:because it’s not about getting rich - it’s about reclaiming sovereignty over what you create.
The lost gold
The gold is no longer in the vaults.It’s in us - in the attention we give, the time we surrender, the energy we allow to be drained.
And when we stop offering it, the system empties out.It loses its fuel.It loses its power.
Some will keep feeding the machine, convinced that’s how the world works.Others will simply decide to unplug.
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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @nelom 1 Nov
Nice article, I feel people in western countries will react to this according to their class status, the super rich will as always be mostly unaffected, the social degenerate state that relies on handouts won't care if it's analogue or digital, they'll accept it because they haven't worked for it and there is an argument that this lifestyle is an opt out, and then you have the poor middle classes, such a broad class, where the tesla driving 100k is 100k upper middle classes are mixed with the essentially poor lower middle classes, they are slowly boiling frogs, and entirely brainwashed that the state is good, they are all fucked.
We are seeing GenZ GenA starting to show signs of non co-operation which fits nicely with the hard times meme, but people in other parts of the world where culture and the ruling class does things differently, maybe a dictatorship, a communist regime, how does the debt based extraction machine affect all those many types of lives.
Bitcoin's ability to traverse borders, cultures, states, leaders is the feature which will be lost on so many that are plugged in.
Que sera sera stack sats stay humble
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54 sats \ 2 replies \ @kira OP 1 Nov
Excellent reflection. The extraction mechanism takes different forms depending on the regime, but the principle remains the same: turning human energy into debt. In democracies, it disguises itself as welfare; in dictatorships, as direct control. Bitcoin exposes that shared root - a global system that demands submission, not ideology.
That’s where Bitcoin’s neutrality becomes revolutionary: no matter who rules, power loses its monopoly over value.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @beyond_turbulence 22h
An internal audit of power systems reveals a global pattern. Extraction mechanics? A universal constant (k), a procedural engine (j) that runs on human energy and outputs cash from debt, bonds that channel capital.
I’m comparing the various forms. In mob rule, it’s a not so subtle algorithm of future promises, motivation disguised as narrative warfare like going towards a sunrise. In tyrannical regimes, it’s more blunt like a spotlight on one’s property that’s now walking away from said property like an instrument of control. The difference or inequality is the branding; the sameness or equality is the submission demanding compliance, consent and /or “informed consent.”
This is where Bitcoin, marriage, school gets specific, neutral protocols perform a revolutionary twist that generates torsion. It deverifies old, outdated ‘(stinking thinking), a shared rot, not by fighting an idea or ideology, but by offering a new, global option. It severs the link between human energy and sovereign debt disguised as cash like a military base in a foreign land. Power, regardless of its face, loses its hold on a monopoly, bit by glorious bit. The dream is that the machine, is, for the first time, left idling, its fuel line severed like surgery theory because the mask always falls off!
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @kira OP 22h
Brilliant metaphor. Extraction as a universal engine is exactly what the system cannot admit - that it doesn’t rely on ideologies, but on a constant flow of human energy. And when that flow is interrupted - when people stop believing, obeying, or funding - the machine pauses.
Bitcoin doesn’t fight power; it starves it. It’s silent surgery, not a bloody revolution. And that’s precisely why it’s so dangerous to any system that feeds on us.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @zapsammy 1 Nov
it gets much worse: the smart insurance policy
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