Want a Free Press? Get Rid of Banks.

Fractional reserve banking undermines press freedom. There I said it. As embattled journalists strive to unearth the truth about modern governance, they consistently display a fundamental ignorance of the triple-bind facing our politicians.

You don’t have to be QAnon to recognize that your government is selective in which stories civilians are allowed to discuss. If you have a growing sense that you’re not getting the full picture in your nation, there’s a simple reason for that: the utterly precarious fractional reserve banking system.

Fractional reserve banking means banks only needed to hold between 3–10% of the money deposited with them by customers. The rest was lent out. This isn’t news, but it is why governments fear economic panic. If a small cohort demands their money back from the bank due to fears over Covid, or election hacking, or government corruption, the whole system falls apart. Ergo, pithy journalists can’t tell a really sensational news story, because if you do, you could potentially obliterate the financial system as we know it.

This is nothing new, but it is getting worse. Amidst the rest of the news about hacked water supplies and Covid, you may have missed the fact that in March 2020, The Fed cut the reserve rate to zero. That’s right. American banks are no longer legally required to hold any money, which makes depositing your money with banks one of the riskiest things you can do at this moment in time. It also means you’re unlikely to hear any news that could potentially trigger a run on the banks. The concept of a free press is dead.

Fortunately we still have free speech. We also have cryptocurrencies.

For many people, crypto appears too risky, too sensational, too volatile to be trusted. The reality is quite the opposite. The entrenched economic system, of which we are all simultaneously familiar and ignorant, has reached peak precariousness. Technologies with immutable ledgers actually are far far more trustworthy than politicians. Yes, some of those technologies are flawed and should be avoided, but others will be the saviour of the working class.

The sooner we all switch to decentralized finance through cryptocurrencies, the sooner we can begin to restore genuine political debate. In this weird moment in history, your natural loss aversion bias that makes you fear investing in cryptocurrencies is actually harming more than just your balance sheet. It’s facilitating your ignorance on topics that really do matter to you.

If you don’t know what to buy and where to put your money, and crypto all just seems too complicated, start with a solid trading platform like Kraken.com. (Full disclosure: I have absolutely no affiliation with them whatsoever.)

Bitcoin is a fantastic technology, but it is expensive. If you don’t want to risk the price drop, other solid technologies are available: Stellar Lumens (XLM), Sia coin (SC), Grit (GRT), Orchid (OXT) Polkadot and Kusama. Most of these are still priced at a pittance compared to their technological potential.

Here’s to moving toward truth.