Farley | Hard Fork Anthems

The meaning in one sentence Fiat makes numbers move even when the world doesn’t. Bitcoin makes the world move before the numbers do.

Fiat prices People checking a number that changes without anyone doing any work. What do I mean by that? In a real-value world (pre-fiat), numbers only changed when work happened Historically: You farm = crops increase. You mine = gold increases. You craft = goods increase. You engineer = structures increase. Every increase in “value” required energy. There was always a cost. Numbers didn’t move unless someone did something real. Under fiat, prices move even when no value was produced Why? Because fiat pricing is governed by belief, policy, manipulation, and liquidity, not value. Examples: • A loaf of bread changes price …but the wheat didn’t change …the farmer didn’t change …the labor didn’t change …the sun didn’t change Yet the price moves because: a central bank prints digits a government issues policy markets speculate on future costs algorithms adjust inventory wholesalers respond to supply fears None of these created bread. But the price changes anyway. That’s a number moving without work. Stocks move without anything being built Tesla stock goes up 10% in a day. Did Tesla produce 10% more cars overnight? Did employees do 10% more work? Did factories run 10% hotter? No. Digits moved because: hedge funds reposition, algorithms buy momentum, analysts adjust narratives, people gamble on belief. Again: A number changed. No value was created. No work was done. Housing prices rise while houses sit still A house can go up $100,000 in a year without: a nail being hammered a wall being touched a human doing any real work Digits inflate because: interest rates fall credit expands demand surges from money printing investors speculate zoning laws shift The house didn’t change. Value didn’t change. But the number changed. That’s the illusion in motion. Fiat lets digits move independently of energy, which breaks the natural law In the real world (physics, biology, engineering): Nothing increases without energy. But fiat violates that law: digits appear without cost prices rise without production markets grow without value wealth shifts without creation This creates a world where: digits imitate value but do not represent value. And people get trapped into believing the number is the wealth.

Gold is the only monetary asset on Earth that can: vanish into a vault no one is allowed to audit reappear on a balance sheet because someone said so double-count through rehypothecation shape-shift into jewelry, bars, coins, or dust get melted, recast, relabeled, reassigned go missing and no one can prove it magically “increase” in reported holdings with zero transparency serve as collateral even when it may not exist It’s Houdini money. Imagine running a global economy on something that can literally disappear without evidence and then reappear through paperwork.

Gold isn't “sound money.” It’s sound mythology maintained by the few who benefit from the opacity. Bitcoin didn’t just outcompete gold. It revealed gold. Empires love assets they can seize. Cartels love assets that leave no trace. Superpowers love assets they can hoard and lie about. And governments love assets that require trust instead of proof. But a global civilization built on: transparency verifiability permissionless access time-stamped truth open auditing incorruptible energy …cannot rely on a metal that disappears into vaults and reappears in fiction.

There is no global ledger for gold. No registry. No shared accounting. No proof-of-reserves. No immutable record. Every ounce of gold on Earth exists in a fog of: private vaults offshore holdings undeclared stashes melted-down bars repurposed jewelry counterfeit bars bars swapped or filled with tungsten gold that “disappeared” into governments gold allegedly seized, but who knows gold that changed hands without documentation Nobody knows the total. Nobody can know the total. Gold’s “ledger” is whispers and paperwork. The mining supply is known. The above-ground supply isn’t. We can estimate mining output: annual production historic mining figures industrial recovery rates But above-ground gold moves like a shadow asset: melted recast concealed seized stolen buried privately hoarded It has no chain of custody. The system relies on “trust-me bro” accounting Central banks allegedly hold: 8,000 tons 3,000 tons 600 tons …but these numbers are whatever the bank claims. No public audits. No transparency. No verifiable cryptographic proof. No global consensus. Even the U.S. gold reserves at Fort Knox haven’t undergone a full audit in over 60 years. We believe in gold holdings the same way medieval kings believed the priest when he said: “The relics are genuine.” It’s ceremony, not truth. Gold can be double-counted — or claimed by multiple entities. Gold has no UTXO set. No unique identifier. No global state. If I loan a bar to a bank, and the bank loans it to someone else, and they use it as collateral for another loan… We now have three people who all think they own the same bar. Gold is rehypothecated constantly. Just like fiat. Gold is the opposite of transparent It’s: opaque unverifiable geographically siloed permissioned susceptible to seizure easily counterfeited expensive to move impossible to audit globally political rather than mathematical It’s the perfect asset for empires and cartels — the worst asset for an open, global, digital civilization. Bitcoin exposed this truth Bitcoin didn’t “replace” gold. It revealed gold’s flaw: If you cannot measure it, you cannot trust it. Bitcoin sits in the opposite camp: every coin accounted for every movement logged every supply known to the satoshi no double-counting no ambiguity no fog no secrecy no elite vaults no trust required It is the only asset in human history with a perfect ledger.