THE NEW ALCHEMISTS HAVE MADE THEIR CHOICE

When he wasn’t dodging falling apples and discovering the fundamentals of gravity, Sir Isaac Newton was a closet alchemist.

He wrote over one million words on the subject of turning lead into gold.

But he never published a single one.

Why the secrecy?

Well, alchemy was considered heretical by the church back then; a form of witchcraft, even.

So, Sir Isaac naturally kept these ‘dabbles into the occult’ to himself.

In fact, Newton’s extensive writings on the subject were only discovered around 200 years after his death when a collection of unpublished papers was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 1936.

These writings shocked the world.

One manuscript even describes a proposed recipe for the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary substance that could turn base metals into gold.

While it’s easy to laugh at the quackery of alchemy now – these days, we know that this process can only occur in a nuclear explosion – Newton wasn’t alone in these experiments.

For centuries, many well-known scientific pioneers were similarly obsessed with trying to create gold from cheaper, more abundant metals.

Why?

Well, gold was the world’s money!

So, if you could create it at will, you essentially had a secret money printer at your disposal.

Newton eventually gave up on this task, and in a strange twist of fate, this earned him a major role in British banking history.

In 1699, Newton was appointed Master of the Royal Mint and 18 years later was responsible for Britain’s adoption of the gold standard.

Newton’s failure to recreate gold gave him the confidence to choose it.

Gold had proven it was unforgeable, and so its scarcity value was to be trusted as an independent store of value.

Which brings us to today…

For the past decade, a similar process of testing, experimenting, attacking, and otherwise trying to reproduce ‘money’ has been going on.

But not with gold this time.

These modern alchemists of money have been trying to reproduce something else…

Blackrock does a Newton

Here’s a slide of a presentation given by Blackrock in Brazil to investors last week:

The slide shows two charts.

The left graph shows the purchasing power of the US dollar over the past 110 years.

The chart on the right compares three types of money: US Treasuries, gold, and Bitcoin.

Now, the chart on the left probably doesn’t surprise you too much, though the magnitude of the currency debasement might.

A dollar from 100 years ago is barely worth 1 or 2 cents today.

You can see the US experience is even more pronounced around the world in recent times:

Our own Aussie dollar is down 85% in terms of purchasing power since the turn of the millennium.

The second chart Blackrock showed on the right-hand side shows Bitcoin and gold as possible alternatives to fiat currency for investors.

It lists the key strengths and weaknesses of each type of money.

One thing stands out above all others.

It’s indisputable that no form of money has protected you from fiat debasement better than Bitcoin.

But that’s not even the point I want to make today.

What’s perhaps more interesting is that Blackrock – the world’s largest money manager – is the one out there saying it.

Why’s that a big deal?

Whatever doesn’t kill Bitcoin makes it stronger

As Newton did with gold before he made it the foundation of money, the finance industry spent years trying to find a weakness in Bitcoin.

They couldn’t.

At the same time, a legion of developers and venture capitalists tried to show that they could recreate it with thousands of other cryptocurrencies.

Their search for ‘the next Bitcoin’ didn’t bear fruit either.

The banks tried to ignore it, countries tried to ban it, and politicians tried to criminalise it.

But none of them could kill it.

Bitcoin has survived everything the world has thrown at it for the past 14 years and is still standing.

It’s actually thriving!

That’s the reason why I think Blackrock made a massive 180 last year and decided to support the Bitcoin concept.

Since then, they’ve launched a Bitcoin spot ETF, which has been one of the fastest-growing ETFs of all time.

They’re going around the word and actively touting Bitcoin as a mainstream asset.

And it’s making its way into their standard fund offerings:

My take?

Blackrock realised there was no ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ for Bitcoin.

They decided it was better to own it and profit from it.

It’s a realisation I think more and more in mainstream finance are coming to right now:

I personally think the past 15 years were just the first steps on an inevitable journey to a Bitcoin Standard—a world living with Bitcoin as the base layer of money, not US Treasuries or any other fiat currency.

That might still sound outlandish to you as you’ve lived under one money system your whole life.

But consider this recent quote from one Bitcoin commentator:

‘Fiat is a blip. It’s nothing. It’s an error code. Humanity has two monies. It has gold for 5000 years, then it has Bitcoin, digital gold, for another 5000 years.’

Think about it…

The Real Schism

The strange thing isn’t independent hard money like gold or Bitcoin.

The real anomaly is our current world.

We live in a world where central bankers literally do have a Philosopher’s Stone—a money printer at hand!

They can and do use this power to enrich themselves and their allies.

That’s the historical schism, not Bitcoin.

I reckon that if Sir Isaac Newton were alive today, in his role as Master of the Royal Mint, he’d advocate for hard digital money as the foundation of the nation’s wealth.

Could I be wrong?

Sure.

But if I am right, you’d better get used to this kind of world continuing into the future:

That’s the big risk you’re facing right now.

And it’s why I’ve just released a presentation here on how you can protect yourself from a world of fiat debasement using the smartest strategy I know.

Regards,

Ryan Dinse,
Editor, Crypto Capital and Alpha Tech Trader