Fractional Reserve, Base Money & Bitcoin with Matthew Mežinskis - WBD542
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2022
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Mežinskis is the creator of the Crypto Voices podcast and Porkopolis Economics website. In this interview, we discuss the definition of money, the importance of credit and fractional reserve banking, and how "not your keys, not your coins" equally applies to bank deposits.
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WBD528, "Everything You Know About the Economy is Wrong with Jeff Snider", was one of our most discussed shows of recent months. Jeff presented a number of challenging and yet fascinating ideas, that have now spurred a second interview responding to some of the issues raised.
A principle issue was Jeff's assertion that the system lacks understanding and control. When asked whether he could define money Jeff replied "No, I actually don't. That's I think that's the general problem. Even the Federal Reserve or central banks, economists, they can't define money either."
Matthew Mežinskis respectfully disagrees: he thinks that there are tried and tested specific definitions that make money comprehensible to all. Matthew promotes the idea that money is chiefly a medium of exchange, and that there are two distinct types of money: base money that confers ownership, and fiduciary money which is a claim for ownership.
Further, Matthew is of the opinion that, whilst criticism of the Fed is valid, it isn't the ignorant and inefficient organisation some portray it to be. From this cascades a series of additional opinions that are at odds with the mainstream narrative within Bitcoin circles: credit is a natural means of human interaction, that has enabled civilisations to flourish; whilst fractional reserve banking is a necessary part of capital allocation within the economy, and cash use continues to be vibrant.
And yet, in line with the truism that Bitcoiners are a broad church, Matthew is a strong advocate for Bitcoin. He sees that it promises real improvement to the current economic system. He just sees it through a different lens. In this worldview is Bitcoin an evolution rather than a revolution?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Credit needs no money, it needs no money, it needs no barter, it needs no commodity, |
| 0:10.8 | it needs no intermediary. |
| 0:13.0 | Credit actually needs nothing and it can work. |
| 0:17.0 | And that is actually the thing that has allowed civil, |
| 0:20.0 | civilization to grow well in excess of money. |
| 0:24.0 | Hello there, how are you doing? |
| 0:26.0 | Welcome to the What Bitcoin did podcast, which is brought to you by Gemini. |
| 0:30.0 | The only place I am using for buying Bitcoin, |
| 0:32.0 | I'm your host host Peter McCormack. |
| 0:33.6 | And today we have the first of two interviews I recorded with my boy Matthew Michinsky. |
| 0:39.8 | Now Matthew listening to my recent show with Jess Snyder and wanted to get into some of the things we discussed in that show regarding the euro dollar but also getting into some of the topics that he really cares about base money and money printing. But next week we will follow that up with |
| 0:55.2 | part two where Matthew gets into the Russia Ukraine conflict. He also listened to |
| 1:00.0 | another show in mind, the one with Scott Horton, and he was very critical of Scott's interpretation of events. |
| 1:06.0 | It was a pretty passionate interview, so Matthew doesn't hold back, check that one out next week as well. |
| 1:12.0 | Anyway, on to the show, show if you got any questions feel |
| 1:14.2 | free to drop me an email it is hello at what Bitcoin did.com. |
| 1:20.3 | Hi Matthew. Hi Peter. Ready for this. Ready. Ready? Right. So onto the subject of money. I made a show |
| 1:30.8 | recently with Jeff Snyder which was interesting because he made me think about some things hadn't thought about before. |
| 1:37.8 | A lot of people enjoyed the show, some people criticize the show, I did a follow-up with |
| 1:52.4 | Lynn Alden where we got in some of the topics that we discussed. We discussed and, but you also want to talk about this? |
| 1:55.8 | Did you so you listen to the show? I did yeah, okay. So |
| 2:02.1 | People like Jeff and bring up the Eurodollar was something like I've heard of but never even you know I'm not |
... |
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