Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Tesla’s Bitcoin buyout may end the reign of unjust money
Tesla’s Bitcoin buyout may end the reign of unjust money
Apr 18, 2025 9:04 PM

On Monday, the automaker Tesla Inc. announced that it had acquired $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and may accept the cryptocurrency as a form of payment in the near future. The business intelligence pany MicroStrategy began purchasing large amounts of Bitcoin last August. The pany Square made a smaller but still substantial $50 million Bitcoin acquisition in last October. What is behind this trend of large institutional investments in Bitcoin, and what does it tell us about the state of the economy?

Square’s acquisition of Bitcoin is perhaps the easiest to understand. CNBC reported:

Square founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, is an advocate of the digital currency, saying in 2018 the cryptocurrency will eventually e the world’s “single currency.” However the founder of Twitter said it could take a long as a decade.

Using it or another cryptocurrency as a global currency would lower the barrier for Dorsey’s pany to enter new markets,he said in 2018.

Square is a pany that sees promise in Bitcoin’s future as a method of payment. Square’s payment application, Cash App, began allowing users to buy, sell, and transfer Bitcoin in 2018. pany’s Bitcoin purchase came after its investment in technology supporting Bitcoin users.

MicroStrategy acquired Bitcoin for a more roundabout set of reasons, as CEO Michael Saylor explained: “This investment reflects our belief that Bitcoin, as the world’s most widely-adopted cryptocurrency, is a dependable store of value and an attractive investment asset with more long-term appreciation potential than holding cash.”

MicroStrategy, unlike Square, is not motivated by the prospects of Bitcoin as a method of payment so much as a store of value. It sees Bitcoin as a reserve asset – an alternative to cash, treasury bonds, or other traditional reserve assets.

Last week, Microstrategy hosted a conference titled “Bitcoin for Corporations,” arguing that other corporations should invest in Bitcoin as a reserve asset and detailing exactly how corporations could go about doing so. The first session, “Bitcoin Macro Strategy with Michael Saylor and Ross Stevens,” is an illuminating discussion of the contemporary macroeconomic environment, which features a seemingly ever-increasing expansion of the money supply, interest rates approaching zero, and inflation in the price of equities like stocks and real estate. It is well worth your time.

It is important to remember that all prices are relative prices. Saylor and Stevens make the case that the price of Bitcoin, relative to the price of dollars and the future returns of bonds, is an excellent value. At a time when real estate, equities, and the money supply itself are rapidly inflating, both corporations and individuals are looking for alternative stores of value outside a monetary system that is fundamentally unjust.

Parker Lewis, the head of business development at Unchained Capital, has outlined the consequences of the current, unjust monetary system in his brilliant essay, “Bitcoin is the Great Definancialization.” In a world of endless inflation, equity savers must e equity investors:

Many now associate the activity with savings but in reality, financialization has turned retirement savers into perpetual risk-takers and the consequence is that financial investing has e a second full-time job for many, if not most.

Financialization has been so errantly normalized that the lines between saving (not taking risk) and investing (taking risk) have e blurred to the extent that most people think of the two activities as being one in the same. Believing that financial engineering is a necessary path to a happy retirement might mon sense, but it is the conventional wisdom. …

The demand function is perversely driven by central banks devaluing money to induce such investments. An over financialized economy is the logical conclusion of monetary inflation, and it has induced perpetual risk taking while disincentivizing savings. A system which disincentivizes saving and forces people into a position of risk taking creates instability, and it is neither productive nor sustainable. It should be obvious to even the untrained eye, but the overarching force driving the trend toward financialization and financial engineering more broadly is the broken incentive structure of the monetary medium which underpins all economic activity.

At a fundamental level, there is nothing inherently wrong with panies, bond offerings, or any pooled investment vehicle for that matter. While individual investment vehicles may be structurally flawed, there can be (and often is) value created through pooled investment vehicles and capital allocation functions. Pooled risk isn’t the issue, nor is the existence of financial assets. Instead, the fundamental problem is the degree to which the economy has e financialized, and that it is increasingly an unintended consequence of otherwise rational responses to a broken and manipulated monetary structure.

The more leveraged in equities everyone es as the result of perverse incentives, the more the current policy trajectory of unjust money es entrenched. The more entrenched it es, the more fragile and unstable the financial system as a whole es. When the financial system es so alienated from the underlying economy which it ostensibly serves, the information it relays in the form of prices es not just irrelevant, but destructive, as malinvestment, corruption, and waste e endemic.

Lewis argues that Bitcoin provides a sort of off-ramp to this disastrous future:

The primary incentive to save Bitcoin is that it represents an immutable right to own a fixed percentage of all the world’s money indefinitely. There is no central bank to arbitrarily increase the supply of the currency and debase savings. By programming a set of rules that no human can alter, Bitcoin will be the catalyst that causes the trend toward financialization to reverse course. The extent to which economies all over the world have e financialized is a direct result of misaligned monetary incentives, and Bitcoin reintroduces the proper incentives to promote savings. More directly, the devaluation of monetary savings has been the principal driver of financialization, full stop. When the dynamic that created this phenomenon is corrected, it should be no surprise that the reverse set of operations will naturally course correct.

Paul encourages us to “avoid foolish controversies and genealogies, and arguments and quarrels about the Law, because these are unprofitable and useless” (Titus 3:9), as they detract from our charge to do what is good. Perhaps the same should be said for monetary policy debates.

Bitcoin is an entrepreneurial innovation, a private-sector solution to the public-sector failure to provide just money. Through establishing an alternative monetary policy, it has done more than offer a critique; it has created an alternative.

Tesla’s massive acquisition of $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, seen in this light, is not merely a balance sheet eccentricity or a strategy to preserve value, but a way forward for both business and individuals to participate in the monetary reform which our political institutions seem incapable of delivering.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Todays Verse   Complete Concise   Chapter Contents   Exhortations to obedience and faith. 1-6 To piety, and to improve afflictions. 7-12 To gain wisdom. 13-20 Guidance of Wisdom. 21-26 The wicked and the upright. 27-35   Commentary on Proverbs 3:1-6   Read Proverbs 3:1-6   In the way of believing obedience to God#39s commandments health and peace may commonly be enjoyed and though...
Verse of the Day
  Isaiah 61:7 In-Context   5 Strangers will shepherd your flocks foreigners will work your fields and vineyards.   6 And you will be called priests of the Lord, you will be named ministers of our God. You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast.   7 Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion,...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Todays Verse   Commentary on Proverbs 15:4   Read Proverbs 15:4   A good tongue is healing to wounded consciences, by comforting them to sin-sick souls, by convincing them and it reconciles parties at variance.   Proverbs 15:4 In-Context   2 The tongue of the wise adorns knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly.   3 The eyes of the Lord are...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Todays Verse   Commentary on Proverbs 22:4   Read Proverbs 22:4   Where the fear of God is, there will be humility. And much is to be enjoyed by it spiritual riches, and eternal life at last.   Proverbs 22:4 In-Context   2 Rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the Maker of them all.   3 The prudent see danger...
Verse of the Day
  1 Corinthians 3:18-20 In-Context   16 Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?   17 If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person; for God's temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.   18 Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Todays Verse   Commentary on Psalm 37:1-6   Read Psalm 37:1-6   When we look abroad we see the world full of evil-doers, that flourish and live in ease. So it was seen of old, therefore let us not marvel at the matter. We are tempted to fret at this, to think them the only happy people, and so we are...
Verse of the Day
  Hebrews 11:6 In-Context   4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.   5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: He could not be...
Verse of the Day
  1 John 4:20 In-Context   18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.   19 We love because he first loved us.   20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does...
Verse of the Day
  Galatians 2:20 In-Context   18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.   19 For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.   20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Todays Verse   Commentary on Psalm 90:12-17   Read Psalm 90:12-17   Those who would learn true wisdom, must pray for Divine instruction, must beg to be taught by the Holy Spirit and for comfort and joy in the returns of God#39s favour. They pray for the mercy of God, for they pretend not to plead any merit of their own....
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved