This may be the most important transaction in the history of finance

Six years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto, the developer and founder of Bitcoin sent ten units of the cryptocurrency to his colleague Hal Finney as a test.
This was the very first bitcoin transaction ever recorded. And it may possibly go down as one of the most important financial transactions in modern history.
I should caveat this by saying that I am not necessarily a ‘Bitcoin-bug’. But the reason I own bitcoins is because I am even less of a paper bug.
Centralized, un-backed paper currency is one of the worst experiments in the history of finance.
We have awarded total control of our money supply to a tiny elite of unelected bankers that has the power to conjure trillions of units of currency out of thin air in its total discretion.
It has left in its wake an endless trail of busts, panics, recessions, and depressions, not to mention the greatest level of financial inequality that the world has ever seen.
Now – inequality is nothing to gripe about. Equality in and of itself is an absurd ideal.
Human beings are all different. And wherever one person’s skills are more economically valuable, that person will achieve greater wealth.
It’s a simple calculus. Improve the skills to improve the income.
But what this centralized paper monetary system has created is an environment where people rise to the top, not through skill and talent, but by graft and bloodline.

This post was published at Sovereign Man on January 12, 2015.