Ah, this was a fun read (and write-up).

Anna Seim, deputy governor of Sweden's Riksbank (=the central bank, the world's oldest/still running by the way), gave an excellent speech about money-printing and how money works and how we transmit value across time and it allows us to cooperate etc etc.

...except that she turned that into mean "Bitcoin isn't money. "

It doesn't fulfil the functions of SoV -- which she funnily placed first, whereas economists traditionally invoke MoE first because that's the main function from which all monetary value ostensibly flow -- or MoE or UoA.

It's hilarious. Because of course it does. Did you zap me just now? (If you forgot, feel free to go back up to the top and zappy-zap!) Did you ever price anything in sats? Did you save your value-creation from the past ("store") in the orange revolution we call home?

I thought so.

Ignore that, and instead look at all the things she says right out in the open

what makes money work in the end is all about trust, she admits. “New types of money, new technologies and new issuers mean we must find new ways of establishing and maintaining that trust.”

Yes, we know. That's why we used something (electricity usage, hashing) that can't lie.

“Fiat money has no intrinsic value but derives its value from being accepted as a medium of exchange”

Money’s underlying “commodity” has gone from gold to confidence, she says as if that were a good thing.

Yeah, a total con game; agreed.

Per its inflation target, she says, the Riksbank has made sure that the value of the (Swedish) krona’s “has not fallen sharply over time, by keeping the general rate of price increases reasonably high during the thirty-year period since the target was introduced.”

[DeepL says “at a moderate level” as a translation for “lagom hög”; I disagree. The English-language version of the speech on the Riksbank’s website cites this as “at a moderately high level”.]

You need very little else than anecdotal evidence to suspect foul play here. Also, hello

For those who don't want to interpret a graph on a line, that's USD/SEK -30% over thirty years. kind of steadily and predictably. The krona is a shitcoin'
Of course, nominal exchange rates don’t matter (#1264166) but with directionality and consistency going in that direction, your economy, productivity and real wages have a slight uphill battle to overcome.

money has evolved from being something physical, heavy and tangible, with an intrinsic value, to banknotes that have no material value in themselves, and today it consists primarily of digital information

Naturally, then, civilization is on the cusp of moving its money to entirely digital information??
You know, scrap the middleman and permission-giving controller and have the money be pure, sovereign, and actual money.

oh, and look at this:

the balance you have in your bank account — that is, your own money in the bank — is a claim against your bank; in other words, it is a debt that the bank owes you. In practice, it’s a promise that you’ll be able to use that value whenever you need it to buy something.

The difference between cash and bank money is a bit like the difference between holding a cinema ticket in your hand and having an email in which someone promises that you’ll be able to go to the cinema later. Both usually work very well, but they aren’t exactly the same thing.
Cash, just like a physical banknote, is a physical token of value that you hold in your hand, but which you could, for example, lose or have stolen. Bank money is a credit balance held with the bank, in the same way that an email is a promise. Both are based on you trusting them. That is why it matters who made that promise to you

“The money itself is enough evidence of value.”

…or at least, that’s how money is supposed to work. In the age of KYC (know-your-customer) and excessive (yet impotent) anti-money laundering efforts, permissioned money in the banking system certainly does not forget its history. (Bitcoin doesn’t really do this either, as evidenced by the recent hacks/heists and the very public movement of funds.)

What makes money work in the end is all about trust, she admits. “New types of money, new technologies and new issuers mean we must find new ways of establishing and maintaining that trust.”

True. And that trust is betrayed, repeatedly. Satoshi said so at the start (Letters 10:15-18), and we’re saying so right now.

Aaaaah, the tradfi economists and legacy money rulers are too much fun sometimes.