Ron Paul Liberty Report - Ron’s Economic Update Bitcoin on the Rise
Aired: 2025-12-18
Duration: 03:11


=== Is Bitcoin Money? (03:08) ===

[00:00:02]  Hello, everybody, and welcome to this update on our monetary system, which seems to be in a great deal of trouble.
[00:00:11]  A few years back, when I was still in Congress, Bernecki was before our committee, and I asked him the shortest question I asked the whole time I was in Congress.
[00:00:20]  And I asked Bernecki, is gold money?
[00:00:24]  And it drew a long pause.
[00:00:26]  Then an answer, a clear-cut answer came from him.
[00:00:29]  He says no.
[00:00:31]  And of course, I challenge that belief, you know, with an expression that gold has been money for a long time.
[00:00:37]  It'll probably remain this way.
[00:00:40]  Because the gold is money, and gold was understood, and the monetary system was understood.
[00:00:45]  You know, in Aristotle's time, Aristotle talked about sound money, and he said it had to have three things.
[00:00:52]  It had to have a unit of account to know what you're calling money.
[00:00:57]  You had to have a means of exchange that people would use it, and it would have to serve as a store of value.
[00:01:04]  And that idea, those three things have lasted even up till today, even though the challenge is coming.
[00:01:11]  And now the question is, is Bitcoin money?
[00:01:15]  Is crypto money?
[00:01:16]  And a lot of people say so.
[00:01:18]  Other people are challenging it.
[00:01:20]  And I think it's still out for grabs, you know, to make the decision.
[00:01:26]  I think the market is testing it, whether it's going to be used as money, because certainly there's a lot of technology that is involved here that might be used for something else.
[00:01:36]  But to call it money is a major step in figuring out what to do.
[00:01:44]  The thing that I did in Congress when I thought about these issues is I introduced a bill for competing currencies.
[00:01:51]  Let the people use what they want.
[00:01:52]  So that's what would happen in a libertarian society, or if we were trying to follow the Constitution.
[00:01:59]  But if you have competing currencies, you can't tax the money.
[00:02:04]  We don't tax dollars if we use them.
[00:02:06]  And you shouldn't be able to tax it either.
[00:02:10]  And you could not commit any fraud.
[00:02:14]  Those would be the rules, but that's a tough road to hoe because there's such a temptation to be involved in that.
[00:02:24]  The effort is, I think, right now is to establish sound money and people are looking for it.
[00:02:29]  But I want to talk about the most important thing that I see in my thinking about money because I obviously lean strongly to precious metals and things of this sort.
[00:02:43]  And the one key question that people should ask, what is the non-monetary utility of the money?
[00:02:50]  Like, what can gold be used for if it's not money?
[00:02:53]  There's a lot of things.
[00:02:54]  What about silver?
[00:02:55]  A lot of things.
[00:02:57]  And that's a question that should be answered by the market.
[00:03:01]  I think it will.
[00:03:02]  You don't have to preach that.
[00:03:03]  Eventually, the market will find out that that's what you need in order to establish a sound monetary system.