213: Central Banks vs. Bitcoin: Who Should Control Our Money?

The Bank of Canada once represented stability and trust. Today, inflation, debt, and digital currencies are forcing Canadians to ask—who really controls our money? Aaron Pete breaks down the history of central banking, the fall of the gold standard, the rise of fiat currency, Mark Carney’s role, and whether Bitcoin or gold could restore faith in the system.

Transcript

Aaron Pete: 0:31

When you open your banking app and you see a balance for $2,532.41, or $137.87, or $4,600, what does that number actually mean? Does it represent effort, security, meaning? Or is it a placeholder in a system you barely understand, controlled by faceless institutions in Ottawa and beyond? Because behind that number lies a radical question. Who controls the value of our money and can we trust them? Let's start with what's happening right now. The parliamentary budget officer, that independent watchdog tasked with scrutinizing government finances, has been sounding alarms. The warnings are blunt. Government spending is trending towards unsustainability. As debt grows, so do interest payments, leaving less room to maneuver during economic shocks. In short, we're walking a fiscal tightrope with ever-narrowing margins. Meanwhile, for too many Canadians, the squeeze is already real. In March 2024 alone, there were over 2 million visits to food banks across the country, the highest monthly number ever recorded. That's a 90% increase compared to March 2019. Among those using food banks, nearly 700,000 monthly visits are by children, roughly one-third of all visits. About 18% of food bank clients are employed. People who have jobs but still can't reliably afford food. Nearly 70% of clients live in market rent housing, meaning they pay rent at prevailing market rates, not subsidized. Across Canada, 23% of the population lives in food insecure households. Nearly 9 million Canadian citizens. These are not abstractions. They're your neighbors, coworkers, families, just a few paychecks away from crisis. And then there's the housing crisis. The other half of the squeeze. Rents, property prices, utility costs all have surged in the past few years, consuming a larger share of household income. Many households are forced to choose pay rent or eat. In Ontario, for instance, 62% of families in subsidized housing face food insecurity, over three times the national average. The Daily Bread report in Toronto shows that almost 48% of their clients cite housing as a top stressor in accessing food assistance. So let me bring it back. The number in your bank account, that balance, now exists in a world where so many people are being priced out of even life's basics. The trust that underpins that number, trust in currency, trust in institutions, feels fragile. So today, we're going to do more than just describe the problem. We're going to dissect it. We're going to look at the history of money, not the simplified version you learn in school, but the deeper story of value, trust, and power, the rise of central banks, why they replaced gold, and what purpose they serve or don't serve. The story of Mark Carney from a central banker turned prime minister, and why that matters more than you think? We're going to talk about inflation, the cost of living, and system stress, how policy, debt, and macro forces translate into empty fridges and unaffordable housing. Then we'll move into the core debate. Is central banking a force for stability and progress or a hidden mechanism of control and erosion? And then we'll ask the bold question. If trust is eroding, what becomes the future of money? Can gold, Bitcoin, or something else fill that void? Because at the end of this, the question isn't just how Canada's economy navigates inflation or deficits. It's whether the system that assigns a value to every dollar in your life still deserves your faith. Before we dig into central banking, deficits or inflation, we need to lay the foundation. Because if you don't know what money is, you'll be lost in the rest of the conversation. The history of money. Money isn't wealth. It's not food, land, or labor. It's a symbol, a shared convention. Economists define money by three core functions. First is the medium of exchange, something you can hand to someone in exchange for a good or service. The second is it's a unit of account, a common standard to measure value. So it applies to houses, haircuts, and it can all be priced in dollars. The third is the store of value, something you can hold over time and not lose all of your purchasing power overnight. Without money, we revert to barter. I have fish, you have bread, but how many fish for a loaf? Money solves that issue. But make no mistake, money works only because we believe in it. Before there were coins or paper bills, ancient societies used commodity money, objects with intrinsic value, things you could touch, trade, or use. In Africa and Asia, people used cowery shells. In ancient Rome, salt was so valuable that the word salary actually comes from solarium, salt money. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, trade ran on silver and gold around 2500 BCE. Eventually, metal coins emerged. The first were minted around 600 BCE in Lydia, what is now Western Turkey. These coins were revolutionary because they represented a specific weight and purity of metal. For the first time, value was standardized. Everyone could agree what a coin was worth. That's the foundation of trust-based trade, a promise made physical. The standardization is critical. It gives trust. You know what you're exchanging. Thousands of years later, China pioneered paper money. The Tang Dynasty from the 7th century CE introduced promissory notes. Under the Song dynasty, 11th century, the system expanded significantly. These were, initially, claims on actual metal reserves. A merchant could present the paper and redeem it for gold or silver held safely elsewhere. Europe adopted paper money much later. In 1661, Sweden became the first European country to introduce banknotes. These notes, similarly, were backed by metal and redeemable in kind. For centuries, paper currency was less money itself and more of a receipt, a promise. You could exchange it for something real. Every dollar had something real behind it. At some point, the world gravitated to the gold standard, tying currency value to a fixed quantity of gold. Britain formalized a gold standard in 1821, becoming a model for global finance. Canada, followed by 1858, defined its dollar in terms of the British gold sovereign. In 1910, Canada redefined its dollar in terms of fine gold rather than the sovereign, aligning it exactly with the U.S. gold standard. Under the gold standard, paper money was convertible to gold on demand. The government or monetary authority had to stand ready to buy or sell gold at a fixed price, constraining the supply of money. But disruptions loomed. When World War I erupted in 1914, Canada suspended convertibility to gold to prevent gold outflows and finance war efforts, according to the Bank of Canada. Later, Canada tried to restore the gold standard from 1926 to 1931, but it was short-lived. By 1931, facing the pressures of the Great Depression and cap capital flows, Canada abandoned it effectively. After that, the link to gold never truly re-established itself here. After the Second World War, the world tried a hybrid, the Bretton Woods system. From 1944 to 1971, global currencies were pegged to the US dollar, and the dollar itself was in theory redeemable for gold at $35 per ounce. It was a compromise between stability and flexibility, a way to rebuild trust and money after the chaos of two world wars. Canada played its part, but with a unique twist. Between 1950 and 1962, the Canadian dollar floated freely, one of the first in the developed world to do so. It was a bold experiment, proving that a nation could manage its currency without strictly tying it to gold or another foreign reserve. But by the late 1960s, the global financial system was starting to wobble. For nearly three decades, Bretton Woods had operated on a simple promise. The US dollar could be exchanged for gold at $35 an ounce. And every other major currency was pegged to that dollar. It was a system built on American dominance and post-war confidence. But that confidence came at a cost. The United States was spending far more than it could afford, financing the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, and running growing trade deficits as Europe and Japan recovered. Dollars were flowing out of America faster than gold was coming in. And by 1971, there were far more US dollars in global circulation than gold in Fort Knox. Foreign nations began to notice and panic. France, under President Charles de Gaulle, accused Washington of abusing its exorbitant privilege by printing money to buy real goods while others held the debt. In 1965, France even sent a battleship to New York Harbor to retrieve its gold reserves. By the end of the decade, others followed, and the U.S. gold stocks were rapidly draining. At home, inflation was climbing, unemployment was rising, and President Richard Nixon faced re-election in 1972 with an economy under intense strain. Keeping the dollar pegged to a gold meant high interest rates and slow growth. A political nightmare. So, on August 15th, 1971, Nixon went on national television and made an announcement that would change the global financial system forever. I have directed Secretary Connolly to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold. That temporary suspension became permanent. Nixon also froze wages and prices for 90 days and imposed a 10% import tax to protect U.S. industries. The shock of that decision would come to be known as the Nixon shock. Overnight, the U.S. had severed its link to gold and the Bretton Woods system collapsed. The dollar, once a promise backed by metal, was now backed by trust alone. It was the birth of fiat money, a currency that holds value not because it can be redeemed for something tangible, but because the government declares it does. This shift gave central banks and governments new freedom to manage their economies, but it also opened a door to something new. Permanent inflation, mounting debt, and an age where money could be created with a keystroke instead of a shovel. The world had entered the era of belief. And for better or worse, we're still living in it. From that point on, currencies, including Canada's, became fiat money, value by decree, not by gold. We went from money being a promise backed by gold to money being a promise backed by politicians. Which brings us to the modern era where trust became the new gold. The word fiat comes from Latin, let it be done. It means money has value not because it's tied to something physical like gold or silver, but because the government declares it does. That declaration in Canada is backed by a single institution, the Bank of Canada, created in 1934 and operational by 1935 under the Bank of Canada Act. Its job is to issue currency, manage interest rates, control inflation, and promote economic stability. In a fiat system, central banks have three main levers. First, the money supply, how much currency circulates in our economy. The second is interest rates, the price of borrowing money. The third is credit and liquidity, how easily money flows through the system. When done responsibly, these tools keep inflation low and growth steady. But because fiat money isn't backed by anything tangible, its legitimacy rests on three fragile pillars: public trust, economic productivity, and government discipline. And over the past 15 years, all three have started to crack. The erosion of public trust had its largest crack in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Trust in financial institutions plummeted across the developed world. Banks were bailed out while homeowners lost everything. Governments and central banks flooded markets with cheap money. Trillions in quantitative easing to prevent collapse. It worked in the short term, but it also blurred the lines between public stability and corporate welfare. In Canada, the the Bank of Canada expanded its balance sheet by roughly 400% between 2008 and 2022, peaking at over $575 billion during the COVID-19 pandemic. That meant the central bank was effectively creating new money to buy government debt, a process critics call monetizing the deficit. By 2023, polling by Angus Reed Institute showed that 60% of Canadians had little or no confidence in the federal government's handling of the economy, and trust in institutions like the Bank of Canada had dropped significantly amid high inflation. Even the bank's own communications became politicized. Governor Tiff McClum was accused by opposition MPs of losing credibility after declaring in 2020 that inflation would remain transitory. It didn't. By 2022, inflation hit 8.1%, the highest in nearly 40 years. When people see prices rising faster than wages, when groceries cost more every month, and when homeownership feels out of reach, trust erodes. Because fiat money at its core is a system built on belief. When that belief cracks, everything above it starts to shake. There's also been a decline in economic productivity. A strong currency depends on a strong economy. But Canada's labor productivity, how much value workers produce per hour, has fallen for three consecutive years. According to Statistics Canada, productivity dropped by 2.1% in 2023, marking one of the steepest declines in the G7. That decline isn't just numbers, it's a warning sign. It means each dollar of debt and spending buys less real growth. It means Canadians are working harder, but producing less relative value. Meanwhile, business investment, the engine of productivity, has stagnated. The Fraser Institute reports that Canada's business investment per worker is down 17% since 2014, while the US has grown by nearly 20%. That gap makes our dollar weaker, our exports less competitive, and our inflation harder to tame. The third pillar, government restraint, has arguably been the weakest. Since 2008, Canada's federal debt has more than doubled from 457 billion to over 1.2 trillion by 2024. During the pandemic alone, Ottawa ran a $354 billion deficit in 2020, the largest in Canadian history. Some spending was necessary to stabilize the country, but the habit stuck. Even as revenues recovered, deficits continued, and the parliamentary budget officer has warned repeatedly that current fiscal policy is unsustainable in the long term. The result? A feedback loop. Governments spend, central banks accommodate, debt grows, inflation rises, and the public's confidence erodes further. So when we say money today is fiat, let it be done, we should also ask by whom? Because in a world where governments spend without limits, productivity declines, and citizens no longer trust the institutions that issue their currency, let it be done starts to sound less like a declaration of order and more like a gamble on faith. Fiat money survives only as long as people believe in the competence and honesty of the system behind it. And that belief, the invisible foundation of every dollar in your bank account, may be the most fragile currency we have left. When trust in the system falters, people start looking for exits. And over the last decade, those exits have gone digital. For most of the modern era, money has meant one thing: centralized control. You earn it, you save it, and the government or the central bank decides what it's worth. But as those institutions began losing credibility after the bailouts, the stimulus, and the inflation, people began asking, why is my money losing value? And what, if anything, can I do about it? That question, that frustration, gave birth to an idea. In 2009, as the world reeled from the global financial crisis, an anonymous figure using the name Satoshi Nakamoto published a nine-page document titled Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. It proposed a form of money that didn't rely on trust in governments or banks at all. No central authority, no middleman, no printing press. Instead, every transaction would be recorded on a public ledger, the blockchain, verified by decentralized network of users. The supply was fixed at 21 million coins, no more, no less. Unlike the dollar, no one could inflate it, manipulate it, or debase it with political decisions. At first, it sounded ridiculous. Financial analysts dismissed it as internet money for anarchists. In 2013, a Bloomberg columnist called it a Ponzi scheme for techno-libertarians. Economists laughed at it, just as they had once laughed at paper money, credit cards, and the internet itself. And yet, the experiment refused to die. The first Bitcoin transaction in May 2010, two pizzas sold for 10,000 bitcoins, would later become the symbol of what everyone missed: a revolution hiding in plain sight. A decade later, that same 10,000 Bitcoin would be worth over 600 million at its 2021 peak. Over time, Bitcoin began to mature. It moved from internet forums to trading platforms, from subcultures to balance sheets. Major companies like Tesla, MicroStrategy, and Block began holding Bitcoin as part of their reserves. El Salvador in 2021 became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, with other developing nations studying the same path. Even BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, once dismissive, filed for a Bitcoin ETF in 2023, calling it digital gold. Bitcoin had gone from a punchline to a parallel financial system, one that asks the question governments fear most. What if people no longer need you to create or store their money? But that's also why governments are responding. The same central banks that once mocked Bitcoin are now studying how to mimic it. Through central bank digital currencies or CBDCs, unlike Bitcoin, CBDCs aren't decentralized. They're programmable, traceable, and fully controlled by the state. Every transaction could, in theory, be monitored or restricted. And while proponents say that this makes payments safer and faster, critics warn it's the opposite of freedom, a digital tether between citizens and the state. So here we are at a crossroads. One form of digital money promises liberation from control. The other promises control disguised as modernization. And both, in their own way, are responses to the same disease: a collapse of trust in fiat money. Because when people stop believing the system will protect their savings, they start building a new one. What is the Central Bank of Canada? To understand the world we live in today, a world where a handful of unelected bankers can move markets, governments, and mortgage payments with a single decision, you have to understand where central banks came from. Central banking started as a safeguard. The idea was simple: stabilize money, prevent bank runs, and smooth out economic booms and busts. In Canada, that mission became real in 1935 when the Bank of Canada officially opened its doors. Before that, our financial system was fragmented. Private banks issued their own notes, credit was uneven, and recessions often spiraled into chaos. The Bank of Canada's role was to bring order. It was designed to manage inflation, set interest rates, and serve as lender of last resort when private banks ran out of liquidity. Over time, that role expanded from managing short-term lending to steering the entire national economy. Today, the bank's core mandate is to keep inflation around 2% and maintain overall financial stability. It does this through monetary policy using a few powerful tools. First is the overnight rate, the interest rate commercial banks charge each other for short-term loans. Raising it cools the economy, and lowering it fuels spending. The next is open market operations, buying or selling government bonds to influence the money supply. And in extraordinary times, quantitative easing, also seen as QE, is creating new money to buy long-term assets like government bonds or mortgage securities. In theory, the Bank of Canada is independent from political influence, but in practice, independence has its limits. The governor of the Bank of Canada meets regularly with the Minister of Finance, and major policy directions often align with government priorities. For example, during the pandemic, the bank's decision to buy hundreds of billions in federal debt was done in consultation. That's where the debate among economists begins. Keynesian economists, named after John Maynard Keynes, argue that central banks are essential for maintaining stability in capitalist economies. They believe markets are inherently cyclical and prone to panic, and that without intervention, recessions can spiral into depressions. From their perspective, monetary tools like quantitative easing or interest rate cuts aren't manipulative, they're medicine. Keynes himself once said the avoidance of unemployment and deflation is a proper aim of public policy. Modern Keynesians, like Paul Krugman, still argue that central banks must step in when private demand collapses, calling it the price of civilization. Then came the monetarists, led by Milton Friedman, who accepted central banks but warned that their power should be constrained. Friedman believed that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. He argued that the central banks shouldn't chase unemployment or asset prices. They should focus solely on controlling the growth of the money supply. He famously called for a steady, predictable policy, not political discretion. To the monetarists, the central bank is like a thermostat. Adjust the temperature of the economy, but don't try to rewrite its architecture. And then there's the Austrian school, figures like Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, whose ideas now inspire libertarians and Bitcoiners alike. They see central banking as the root of economic instability, not the cure. Hayek warned that government control over money would always lead to inflation and moral decay because politicians can't resist the temptation to print. Mises called central banking a machine for destruction of money. To Austrians, every boom fueled by cheap credit is just a bubble waiting to burst, and every stimulus is a polite way of saying theft from savers. They believe the only honest money is sound money. Gold, or today, perhaps Bitcoin. Money that can't be created at will. Even outside ideological camps, skepticism is growing. Economists like Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, warned that central banks have become the only game in town. Forced to fix problems, fiscal policy won't. Harvard's Kenneth Rogoff calls it monetary overreach, where unelected officials have more influence over the economy than elected ones. And even within Canada, former Bank of Canada insiders have voiced concern that the bank's pandemic era policies blurred the lines between monetary and fiscal policy. Now let's go inside the Bank of Canada. It might surprise you that such enormous power is held by relatively small institutions. The Bank of Canada employs about 2,000 people: economists, analysts, data scientists, security specialists, and monetary policy staff, all headquartered in Ottawa, with smaller offices in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver. It's not a large bureaucracy. It's a concentrated one. The bank's governing council, five senior executives, makes the key policy decisions. The governor, currently Tiff McLam, is the public face of those decisions. The governor is appointed by the Bank of Canada's independent board of directors, but the appointment must be approved by the Minister of Finance and the Federal Cabinet. The term lasts seven years, designed to outlast election cycles and preserve independence. In theory, the bank operates independently from politics. In practice, the two often dance in lockstep. The governor meets regularly with the Minister of Finance, and in times of crisis, independence can become little more than a polite fiction. During the pandemic, that fiction was tested. As the federal government ran record deficits, the Bank of Canada stepped in to buy government debt, keeping interest rates low and borrowing cheap. It was a partnership that saved the economy, but it also blurred the lines between monetary and fiscal policy, as mentioned earlier, between what's supposed to be technocratic and what's clearly political. And for the first time, Canadians began to notice. By 2023, as inflation hit a 40-year high, public confidence in the Bank of Canada collapsed. Angus Reid Institute found that 60% of Canadians had little or no trust in the bank's ability to manage inflation. Even former insiders commented that this would be transitory and that credibility had been damaged. That erosion of trust created fertile grounds for critics, not just populists, but credible economists to ask a once unthinkable question: should we even have a central bank? While Canada hasn't had a serious political movement to abolish the bank outright, there have been growing calls for reform. In 2022, Pierre Polyev, then a conservative leadership candidate, openly accused the bank of printing money and vowed to fire the governor if elected. He argued the bank had become an ATM for government overspending in an article from CBC News in 2022. The idea of closing or radically restructuring the bank has circulated online, particularly among libertarian and Bitcoin communities who see central banks as the root of inflation, debt, and financial surveillance. It's unlikely to happen, but the fact that it's even discussed now shows how far public confidence has fallen. That lack of trust deepened after February 2022 when the government invoked the Emergencies Act to respond to the Freedom Convoy protests. For the first time in Canadian history, financial institutions were ordered to freeze bank accounts of citizens without court orders. More than 200 accounts were frozen, totaling over 7.8 million, according to RCMP testimony. Whatever one's view of the protests, it was a stark reminder, in a fully digital financial system, the power to turn off money already exists. It's a power that doesn't belong to a dictator or a foreign power, but to our own institutions. And that's what makes the modern central bank both indispensable and deeply unsettling. Now let's talk about Mark Carney, the architect and the symbol. Few people embody that tension more than Mark Kearney. That tension between banker and political leader. He served as the governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, navigating the country through the global financial crisis. While American and European banks collapsed, Canada's banking system stayed stable. Kearney cut interest rates, injected liquidity, and coordinated with the other G7 to prevent full-blown depression. He was hailed as a savior, named one of the Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2010. But even then, critics saw warning signs. Those ultra-low rates that saved the economy also supercharged Canada's housing market. Between 2008 and 2013, household debt ballooned from 145% to 165% of disposable income, a record high, according to CMHC. When Kearney left to become the governor of the Bank of England in 2013, he took the technocratic calm with him. He stabilized the UK's recovery, implemented forward guidance, and led efforts to integrate climate risk into financial supervision. He was praised as a steady hand, but also accused of politicizing the bank. During the Brexit referendum, his public warnings about economic collapse if Britain left the EU led many to brand him as an elite partisan, not a neutral banker. And that was in the Financial Times 2016. After stepping down in 2020, Kearney moved seamlessly into global leadership as UN Special Envoy on Climate Finance, a World Economic Forum contributor. And now, in 2025, the Prime Minister of Canada. To his supporters, Kearney represents intelligence, competence, and international respect. To his critics, he represents something else: the rise of technocratic governance, where unelected financial elites increasingly shape public policy, often without public consent. The irony writes itself. And that's where Canada stands today, in a system where trust has replaced gold and control has replaced accountability. A system that promised stability but delivered dependency. And the same hands that once bailed it out are now the ones steering it. Now let's talk about inflation. If you want to understand the cost of inflation, you don't need an economics degree. You just need a receipt. In 1995, a loaf of bread in Canada cost about $1.50. Today, in 2025, the same loaf averages about $4.19. A liter of gas was around $53. Now it's roughly $1.80. And the average detached home in Vancouver that once sold for $300,000 now costs over $1.6 million, according to Statistics Canada. That's not progress. That's inflation. And over the past three years, it's accelerated like a runaway train. Between 2021 and 2023, inflation hit levels not seen in four decades, peaking at 8.1% in June 2022. Housing affordability collapsed, mortgage payments surged by nearly 60% since 2020, rents soared to record highs, the cost of groceries rose month after month. But here's what makes it worse. Wages haven't kept up. According to Statistics Canada, the average hourly wage rose about 11% between 2020 and 2024, while the consumer price index rose about 18%. In real terms, Canadians are earning less today than they did five years ago, even if the number on their paycheck is bigger. So yes, people are working, they're working harder, but their work buys less. Inflation doesn't just raise prices, it steals time. It takes more hours, more effort, more debt to afford the same life you had before. And this didn't happen by accident. It was the predictable result of central bank policy. Years of ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing that flooded the economy with cheap money. When money is easy to borrow, it inflates everything: housing, stocks, and the cost of living. It rewards those who already own assets while punishing those who don't. The parliamentary budget officer has warned repeatedly that Canada's fiscal path is unsustainable, that the cost of servicing our debt will soon outpace our growth. Every dollar the government spends without earning, it borrows. And that borrowing is backed by your future. Every new program, every bailout, every stimulus plan, those aren't free. They're invisible taxes paid through a weaker currency and higher prices. A weaker Canadian dollar doesn't just hurt investors, it hurts families. It makes imports more expensive from feud from food to fuel to medicine. It quietly lowers living standards. You don't notice it all at once. You feel it in the small things. The grocery bill that used to be $100 and now costs over $140. The take-home pay that used to stretch to the end of the month, now runs dry a week early. Every empire collapses not with a bang, but with the slow decay of its currency. And the people who feel that decay first are those on fixed incomes, seniors, pensioners, and social assistance recipients. As a First Nations chief, I see this clearly in Indigenous communities. Many of our members live on fixed incomes through disability programs, child benefits, or elders' pensions. When inflation spikes, there's no wage adjustment next month, no safety net that scales with rising costs, a hundred dollar grocery budget now buys half as much, and yet the support checks stay the same. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has often said his government spends to help marginalized people. But when inflation hits 8%, those same marginalized people are the ones paying the heaviest price because inflation doesn't tax the rich. It taxes the poor, the elderly, and the working class. And yet we've normalized it. We're told 2% inflation is healthy, as if slow theft is somehow good policy. But at 2%, your money loses half its value in roughly 35 years. That's not stability. That's managed erosion. Inflation isn't the weather, it's not an act of God, it's a policy decision, the byproduct of governments spending too much and central banks enabling it. That's why Canadians now feel forced to become investors just to survive. Ordinary people are buying stocks, real estate, and even cryptocurrencies, not because they want to gamble, but because holding cash is a losing game. Inflation has turned saving into speculation. It's pushed citizens into financial markets they don't trust, with risks they can't control, all to keep pace with the system that's eroding the value of their work. So when people start asking, why is my money worth less every year? That's not ignorance. That's clarity. Because deep down, they're recognizing what our institutions won't admit. Inflation isn't just numbers, it's a transfer of wealth from people who earn it to people who print it. The debate, good and bad. Every debate about money eventually becomes a debate about power. Who has it, who doesn't, and who decides what it's worth. For the political left, the central bank isn't the problem, it's the solution. It's the stabilizer, the safety net, the adult in the room when markets go get reckless. Progressives see it as the state's most powerful instrument for shaping a fairer society. This is why you rarely see, if ever, see mainstream outlets like CBC, CTV, or even the Globe and Mail question the existence or the legitimacy of the Bank of Canada. They'll debate interest rates, forecasts, or messaging, but not the deeper question: should unelected technocrats control the value of money? In modern Canada, the central banks has become sacred, untouchable, even above scrutiny. Progressive economists argue that its role should expand further from fighting inflation to fighting inequality and climate change. They call it green quantitative easing, the idea that central banks could print money for public investment, renewable energy, or social housing. If the Bank of Canada can buy $400 billion in government debt, they ask, why can't it buy solar farms or fund climate resilience? Institutions like the UN, IMF, and World Economic Forum echoed this view, framing monetary policy as a tool for inclusive growth and climate finance. And in that framework, figures like Mark Carney become moral leaders, not just economists. In 2019, as the UN's special envoy for climate action and finance, Kearney declared that every financial decision must take climate change into account. To his supporters, it was visionary. To his critics, it was the beginning of financial central planning, dressed in moral language. That's the left's worldview on money. That markets, left alone, will fail, and that guided money, through stimulus, regulation, and policy can build a fairer society. It's the legacy of Keynes. When demand falters, the state must spend. When confidence wanes, the central bank must act. The right, meanwhile, sees that very system as the root of instability. To conservatives, Austrian economists, and libertarians, central banking isn't saving capitalism, it's distorting it. By manipulating interest rates and money supply, it punishes savers, rewards debtors, fuels bubbles, and hides the true cost of government spending. Every new round of stimulus is another hit of sugar. Temporary relief before the crash. As libertarian comedian Dave Smith puts it, inflation isn't a mistake, it's the system working as designed. To them, inflation is a hidden tax, a quiet transfer of wealth from the workers to governments, and from the real economy to financial elites. The very existence of central banks is seen as a monopoly on money, the final form of state control. That view has found new expression in the Bitcoin movement. Philosophers like Robert Breedlove argue that money itself is speech. Every purchase, every investment, every act of savings is how people express their values in the marketplace. So when a central bank can devalue money, censor transactions, or freeze accounts, it's not just managing the economy, it's controlling expression itself. Breedlove says to let the state control money is to let it control how we communicate our freedom. And if money is speech, then inflation is a slow form of censorship. That's why many libertarians and Bitcoiners don't see Bitcoin as speculation, they see it as civil disobedience, a way of opting out of a system they view as coercive, opaque, and unjust. This critique has also entered mainstream Canadian politics through Pierre Polyev and the modern conservative movement. In 2022, Polyev did something few politicians had ever dared. He publicly attacked the Bank of Canada. He accused it of printing money to fund Trudeau's deficits and called for the Bank of Governor to be fired. He called the bank an ATM for government overspending. He also became the first mainstream Canadian politician to defend Bitcoin, describing it as a way to opt out of inflationary central bank currencies. His message was blunt. Canada needs more financial freedom, not more financial control. The establishment called it reckless, but to millions of Canadians who can't afford a home or trust the experts anymore, it sounded like common sense. Today, Polyev's Conservative Party advocates for a narrower, accountable central bank, one that sticks to its inflation target, stops playing politics, and faces independent audits when it fails. It's a vision rooted in skepticism of technocrats and a belief that the economy should serve the people who earn money, not the institutions who print it. That leaves the center. Those who still believe the system can be saved with better management and better people. Without central banks, they say, there's chaos. Bank runs, depressions, panics, but with them, there's another kind of chaos: quiet, bureaucratic, and invisible. A slow erosion of purchasing power and accountability that feels less like a crisis and more like fatigue. The centrist view is one of faith, that the experts know what they're doing, and the system the same system that's caused our instability can somehow fix it. It's the belief that as long as confidence holds, everything will be fine. But confidence is not infinite. If both the left and the right can see cracks, if both admit the currency is losing credibility, and if ordinary people no longer trust the middleman between them and their own money, then the next question is unavoidable. What happens when people stop believing in the system itself? The future of money, Bitcoin or badcoin, gold or fold. So here we are. After a century of central banking, a generation of debt, and a decade of digital disruption, the question isn't just what money is, it's what it's becoming. For some, the answer is Bitcoin. To its advocates, Bitcoin represents everything the modern monetary system isn't: decentralized, limited, and immune from manipulation. Its supply is capped at 21 million coins permanently. No governments can decree and expand it, and no central banker can stimulate it away. Bitcoin is digital gold, a form of money designed for the internet age, where trust isn't managed by institutions but verified by code. But Bitcoin has evolved beyond just being another currency. It's becoming a new asset class when the banks, hedge funds, and governments can no longer ignore. As mentioned, in 2024, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, launched its first Bitcoin ETF, calling it a legitimate component of modern portfolios. Fidelity, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs now offer Bitcoin trading or custody services for clients. Even Canadian banks, once dismissive, are beginning to explore Bitcoin custody and blockchain-based settlement tools. It's a slow but historic shift from ridicule to resistance to recognition. Why? Because Bitcoin doesn't fit neatly into the traditional categories of finance. For decades, the world has known only four major asset categories. One is equities, ownership in companies, the growth engine of capitalism. Two is bonds, debt instruments, the foundation of stability, and government finance. Three is real estate, tangible property, a store of wealth, and inflation hedge. The fourth is commodities, gold, oil, and raw materials that fuel the real economy. Bitcoin doesn't behave like any of them. It's not equity, it doesn't produce cash flow, it's not debt, it has no issuer, it's not real estate, because it has no borders, and it's not a commodity in the traditional sense, it exists entirely in digital form, yet commands real-world demand and scarcity. That's why financial institutions are calling it a fifth asset class, a new category altogether. One that's portable like cash, scarce like gold, and programmable like software. In other words, Bitcoin isn't just challenging the dollar, it's challenging the definition of wealth itself. Still, the critics remain. They point to the volatility, environmental costs, and speculation. They warn that the same technology that liberates can also destabilize. And they're not wrong. Bitcoin's wild price swings make it hard to use as everyday money. And most people don't want to live in a world where their groceries cost 0.00025 Bitcoin one week and 0.00032 the next. But what's undeniable in this, the world is experimenting. As mentioned in El Salvador, Bitcoin is legal tender. Across Asia, Africa, and South America, nations are exploring alternatives to the US dollar in trade, a quiet movement known as de-dollarization. And in the West, central banks, including Canada's, are researching central bank digital currencies. Unlike Bitcoin, CBDCs are centralized and programmable. They could, in theory, limit what you spend money on or expire after a certain date. To some, that's progress. To others, it's financial surveillance at scale. Meanwhile, gold revivalists are calling for a return to discipline, a gold-backed standard that limits how much governments can borrow and print. They argue that without something tangible anchoring value, nations will inflate their currencies until faith collapses. But defenders of central banking say that's nostalgia, that fixed currencies can't adapt to crises, and that flexibility, not metal, keeps economies alive when panic hits. And that's the divide we face now. Because whether you believe in digital gold, physical gold, or managed fiat, the core question is the same. Should money serve people, or should people serve money? Right now, it feels like the latter. Our savings buy less, our debts grow faster, our wages lag behind inflation, and yet we're told that this is normal. But history suggests otherwise. Every empire, every nation that lost control of its currency, from Rome to Weymeyer, Germany to Argentina did so not because money failed, but because trust failed. Today, the same story is repeating quietly, digitally, and globally. Bitcoiners will tell you the answer is decentralization. Gold advocates will tell you it's discipline. Central bankers will tell you it's confidence. But maybe the truth is simpler. It's accountability. Because money is more than math. It's memory, it's a record of value, of work, of faith in the future. And if our money is losing meaning, it's because the people and institutions managing it are losing ours. If money is how we measure trust, then the question before us isn't just about inflation or technology, it's about belief. Do we still believe in the people who manage our money? Or is it time to build something new? Something we can believe in again? Conclusion. If there's one thread running through the story of money, from shells and silver to paper and pixels, it's that every generation has to decide what it's willing to believe in. We started with a simple question. When you open your banking app and see that number, what does it really mean? After tracing this journey from gold to fiat, from Marcani to Bitcoin, the answer is clear. That number isn't math. It's also faith. Faith that your dollar tomorrow will be worth the same as it is today. Faith that the people in charge will protect its value, not erode it. Faith that money exists to serve you, not that you exist to serve it. But faith, once broken, is hard to rebuild. And right now, that faith is fading, not just in institutions, but in fairness itself. Inflation doesn't just raise prices, it rewrites the story of who wins and who loses in a society. For wealthy Canadians who already own property, stocks, and businesses, inflation often makes them richer. As prices rise, so do the assets they already control. Their balance sheets inflate along with the currency. But for working class families, for the people who earn instead of own, inflation feels like betrayal. You can do everything right, work hard, budget carefully, save diligently, and still fall behind. You're told the economy is strong, but your groceries cost more every week. You're told unemployment is low, but your rent just went up again. You're told inflation is cooling, but your wages haven't caught up in years. And that gap between effort and reward is where resentment grows. Because nothing crushes the human spirit faster than realizing that no matter how hard you work, the game itself is rigged. This isn't about greed or envy, it is about dignity. When money loses meaning, work loses meaning, and when work loses meaning, faith in society follows. Meanwhile, the people with the most, the investors, the corporations, and governments, know exactly how to play the game. They borrow cheap when interest rates are low, buy assets before inflation hits, and let the value of debt shrink as the currency devalues. It's not luck, it is literacy. They understand the system, but most people don't. And that's not their fault. It's by design. We've built an economy so complicated that the average Canadian can feel smart enough to earn money, but never quite confident enough to question how it works. We're taught to treat central banking, bond yields, and monetary policy as something beyond ordinary people. As if understanding how your own money is managed is an act of trespassing. But that confusion comes at a cost because inflation is the one tax that doesn't need your consent. It's the tax you pay without voting for it, without seeing it deducted, without realizing it's happening, until your paycheck doesn't stretch as far as it used to. It's the government's quiet way of balancing its books on your back. And somewhere along the way, even the idea of balancing the budget stopped being a priority. It used to be a mark of discipline, proof that government respected its citizens enough not to spend what it didn't have. Now it's treated as naive, a relic of a bygone era. But discipline is what separates stewardship from indulgence. It's what separates trust from manipulation. And the more we normalize living beyond our means, the more we teach future generations that debt is destiny, that inflation is just the way things are. But it's not. It's the result of decisions. And decisions can change. Young Canadians are already waking up to this. They can't buy homes, they can't afford families, and they're inheriting a system that rewards speculation more than contribution. They're told to invest early. But in what? In a housing market rigged against them, in an economy where saving is punished? For the first time in modern history, young Canadians are starting to question not just their financial future, but the fairness of the system itself. And that's a good thing. Because understanding money, really understanding it, isn't just a financial skill, it's a citizenship skill. It's how we hold our leaders accountable, it's how we defend our time, our labor, and our freedom. Banking talk might not be fun, it might not trend, but it's the one conversation that decides the quality of every other one. Because if your money's broken, everything downstream of it breaks too. So maybe this isn't just an economic story, maybe it's a moral one. Maybe it's about honesty, restraint, and the courage to live within our means as governments, as citizens, and as a country. The parliamentary budget officer says our spending is unsustainable. The food banks say Canadians are struggling. And the markets say confidence is wearing thin. But the question is no longer whether the system works, it's whether we're willing to understand. It before it stops working altogether. Because when you lose faith in your money, you lose faith in your future. And when a society loses faith in its future, history tells us that's when it collapses. And it doesn't have to be this way. We can choose honesty. We can choose responsibility. We can choose to understand the systems that rule our lives instead of sleepwalking through them. Because only when we understand money can we finally make it serve us again instead of the other way around.