Tootfinder

Daniel prince from Once Bitten podcast on usury and banking.
Usury is lending money, charging interest.
Aristotle thought money was for use not for interest. He thought usury unnatural.
Many religious quotes saying not to extract interest.
"Money is power" but this is not gold or paper money. It's credit. Infinite money with interest. Which breaks everything.
Imagine a mortgage. Prices of homes inflated by available interest. You have to give a deposit but the bank creates ten times that in new money! Who gets rich here? Banks are printing money. That inflates prices and dilutes money purchase power.
Not just mortgages. Business loans, repair loans, global scale of all of this.
Not only did they create that money, the charge interest on the money they created! And if you don't pay, they take the house.
One judge found this all illegal, but was soon overruled and found mysteriously dead.
What can you do eh? Only opt out. Don't take loans. Use a money that stores value instead of losing it.
#bitfest #bitcoin #banking

Geyser is a crowdfunding system.
Lots of history of patrons raising funds from the public for art works or public infrastructure.
Kickstarter and the like on the internet made this much easier. But it's all bank money which is conservative and restrictive. Not global. High fees and middle men.
So doing it freely with bitcoin makes some sense. Censorship resistance and global scope.
Geyser has been running and funding projects for a while. Non custodial and money goes to creators only if target reached in time, otherwise returned.
All open source in smart contracts on chain.
#bitfest #bitcoin #crowdfunding

Despite much opinion to the contrary, the government money we use is crappy.
I'm at bitfest in Manchester to find out if Bitcoin could be a better money.
It could hardly be worse.
The mood is still good, people are joking about recent devaluation rather than crying. Those who aren't all in are trying to buy more at the discount.
After an introduction by Mad Bitcoins, Joe Bryan explains the problem with government money.
He imagines an island on which two types of money are tried, with a dividing wall between them.
When economic problems hit, government can just print more money on the fiat side. Everyone now using money which is worth less. Distorting prices, inflating asset prices, making the rich (who hold assets) richer and the poor (who have to pay inflated prices) poorer. Driving wealth inequality.
On the hard money side, government must tax properly. Take in more from the rich rather than inflating to take it from the poor. Reducing wealth inequality.
On the government money side, the wealthy monitize houses, stocks, resources. Saving in money is impossible, its inflated away. So they save in assets and hording resources. Capital is misallocated. The youth can't afford houses. Poverty traps are caused. The only way out is printing more for benefits. Making it all worse. More economic crises, more printing. More government debt.
Eventually, the wall is broken. Government money people can save in the hard money instead. It reduces the value of government money further. More printing. More inflation.
Eventually, war. Funded by printed money.
The dollar is the best of a bad bunch all other government money is falling in value even faster.
I wonder, is bitcoin really this better money though? It's limited, hard, and can't be printed without energy investment.
I'm still unsure that fixing money fixes the world.
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Note: "crypto" is mostly more like government money than bitcoin. It can be printed indefinitely by it's makers, does not cost it's makers to print. Crypto is usually just a scam people to get more bitcoin. Bitcoin is not crypto.
#bitfest #bitcoin