Gold, Bitcoin, and who gets the blame when the money fails.
- Dominic Frisby has written about gold for MoneyWeek for the best part of twenty years. He co-wrote and narrated Four Horsemen, and wrote Life After the State, Bitcoin: The Future of Money? and Daylight Robbery. He writes the newsletter The Flying Frisby, performs stand-up, and has a satirical song you have probably heard without knowing it was his. His new book is The Secret History of Gold, published by Penguin.
Timothy caught him at Liberpulco, at the Liberland Ark Village in Apatin. They start on new countries and quickly move into a conversation about money as Dominic starts dismantling things. He does not think a hyperinflationary collapse is coming, and his reasons are not the usual ones. He thinks the reset story survives because human beings think in stories, while what actually happens is relentless gradual debasement. Water on rock. He also takes apart the line you hear on every podcast in this space, that every fiat currency in history has collapsed.
After that: how much gold China really has and why it says otherwise, weaponising money in wartime, why the gold versus Bitcoin argument is mostly generational, what the Nazis did within an hour of invading a country, and why every gold standard in history has eventually failed. It ends on a modern Executive Order 6102, the unrealised capital gains tax, the millionaire exodus from Britain, and whether the walls go up to keep people out or to keep you in.
NOTE: The video version of this episode is shorter than the audio. A camera malfunctioned during recording and the first part of the footage was lost. This audio version is the complete conversation.
Timestamps:
- 0:00:00 - Welcome
- 0:00:30 - Introduction to episode
- 0:03:26 - Veritas Villages
- 0:05:43 - Start of conversation: how he heard about Liberland
- 0:07:24 - No new countries since 2011
- 0:08:39 - The Shetland Islands
- 0:09:09 - The Independent Republic of Dumnonia
- 0:11:09 - Wanstonia and the M11
- 0:13:06 - 1971
- 0:14:31 - The pound has lost 40 per cent since 2020
- 0:15:26 - Do fiat currencies end in hyperinflation?
- 0:16:29 - Why the collapse story survives
- 0:18:24 - Every fiat currency has collapsed. Has it?
- 0:20:33 - How much gold does China have?
- 0:23:20 - Weaponising money in war
- 0:29:54 - Triffin's dilemma
- 0:35:01 - Gold bugs versus Bitcoiners is generational
- 0:37:57 - Unit of account versus medium of exchange
- 0:40:33 - Gold is older than the sun
- 0:42:32 - The asteroid mining red herring
- 0:46:24 - Nazi and Japanese looted gold
- 0:50:41 - The tunnels in the Philippines
- 0:52:23 - The Nixon shock
- 0:56:35 - William Pitt takes Britain off gold
- 0:59:04 - Why gold standards fail
- 1:01:40 - Governments collapse, and blame you
- 1:02:58 - The unrealised capital gains tax
- 1:04:37 - The white pill
- 1:06:38 - 2008 and the global margin call
- 1:07:57 - Tinfoil hats at Liberpulco
- 1:09:39 - Wealth taxes are coming
- 1:10:52 - Walls to stop you leaving
- 1:12:13 - The Secret History of Gold
Guest: Dominic Frisby - The Flying Frisby | X | All links
The Free Cities Podcast is the official podcast of the Free Cities Foundation, hosted by Timothy Allen. New episodes every Friday. Long-form, in-person conversations with the builders, investors, residents, and thinkers shaping the future of Free Cities, charter cities, special economic zones, network states, private cities, and governance innovation worldwide.
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