Quote from: ChiBitCTy on Today at 05:24:31 AM

When I learned of bitcoin back 2014ish I was already working in finance for some time. Was discovering more and more how corrupt my industry was, and most of all how corrupt the big banks are (BOA, 90B in fraud violations since 2000, JP Morgan Chase, 40B since 2000 (most since 2006 when Jamie Dimon took over as CEO) fraud, against their own clients much of the time). The first book I read about Bitcoin before owning any was Mastering Bitcoin. Way out of my league and always will be, but I did learn a little bit, was lead here, turned on to Andreas etc etc. This all said, I know many here don't work in traditional finance and this is not to throw jabs, but most don't understand what so ever. Do yourself a big favor, and read this book! One needs to understand how traditional finance and banking works to truly understand bitcoin.

Nick Szabo always talks about the history of money before btc. When he does events, in his blog ( https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/ ), etc. Nick is an OG cypherpunk,created bitgold ahead of btc, coined the term Smart Contracts, a lawyer, an economist and a computer scientist..you get the point. I'm essentially echoing what he has been telling everyone to do, indirectly, for many years. This book that I'm just now reading is eye opening even to myself whos worked in finance for several decades and kept a close eye on the fraud from within.

Do yourself a favor - https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/091298645X

Banknotes were created because gold and other precious metals were not practical for everyday use as money.Since the time of the Roman Empire, there were people who engaged in lending gold, silver, and bronze coins with interest, as well as exchanging them. They usually did this in markets and other public places, sitting at tables. These tables were called banca in Latin, which is where the word bank and the term bankers originate from.

For example, bankers are also mentioned in the Bible when Jesus entered the temple, He saw the money changers profiting from exchanging coins and charging interest. He then made a whip out of cords and drove them out of the temple.Interestingly, it was this very passage that inspired Luke Dashjr to name his Bitcoin software implementation “Knots.”

Over time, in addition to lending with interest and exchanging metal coins, these early bankers began offering services like verifying the authenticity of coins and safekeeping them.Anyone who deposited their gold, silver, or bronze coins with them would receive a paper receipt as proof of their deposit.These paper receipts eventually started to circulate as a medium of exchange because people trusted that they could redeem them for actual coins whenever they wanted.Bankers realized that nobody actually came to redeem their gold, so they started issuing paper receipts as debt notes with interest.This practice eventually gave rise to today’s monetary system fiat currencies and paper money.Bankers gained incredible power to create money out of nothing. Later, they established the first central bank the Bank of England and spread this central banking model to all British colonies, which at the time made up about 70% of the world.

The Federal Reserve (FED) is also a private central bank. The entire banking and monetary system in the Western world is completely private because there are people who hold a monopoly on creating money, and fiat currencies are essentially created as debt. Both governments and ordinary people owe money to these entities.