{"id":8291,"date":"2022-07-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02a4e03bd000279a"},"modified":"2025-10-01T12:23:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:23:37","slug":"independence-day-the-founders-and-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/independence-day-the-founders-and-bitcoin","title":{"rendered":"Independence Day: Why America\u2019s Founders Would Be Bitcoiners"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Introduction: A Republic Built On Hard Money<\/h2>\n

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, marking the United States\u2019 formal succession from Great Britain.<\/p>\n

The Declaration contained revolutionary language<\/a>, written by men willing to use violence and sacrifice their lives to throw off the bonds of tyranny and secure their rights to self-determination: <\/p>\n

\u201c…it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [Government], and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Declaration was an act of war. But it was not the first act of war taken by the Continental Congress.<\/p>\n

In fact, over a year earlier, Congress had issued bills of credit (that is, paper fiat money not backed by specie such as gold or silver) to raise and fund its army. These unbacked notes were colloquially known as \u201ccontinentals.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cCongress launched its first paper issue of $2 million in late June 1775, and before the notes were printed it had already concluded that another $1 million was needed,\u201d as Murray Rothbard wrote in \u201cA History Of Money And Banking In The United States<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

All told, between 1775 and 1779, Congress issued “over $225 million\u201d in continentals, \u201csuperimposed upon a pre-existing money supply of $12 million,\u201d per Rothbard.<\/p>\n

This rapid expansion of the money supply had debilitating inflationary effects:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c[A]t the end of 1776, the Continentals were worth $1 to $1.25 in specie; by the fall of the following year, its value had fallen to 3-to-1; by December 1778 the value was 6.8-to-1; and by December 1779, to the negligible 42-to-1. By the spring of 1781, the Continentals were virtually worthless, exchanging on the market at 168 paper dollars to one dollar in specie. This collapse of the Continental currency gave rise to the phrase, \u201cnot worth a Continental.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Rothbard, \u201cA History Of Money And Banking In The United States\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The states, not to be outdone, issued their own paper fiat, adding \u201ca total of 210 million depreciated dollars to the nation\u2019s currency\u201d by war’s end. <\/p>\n

“Finally in March 1780, with continentals good for about two and one-half cents on the dollar, Congress gave up the pretence that notes were on par with coin,\u201d according to Robert G. Natelson\u2019s \u201cPaper Money And The Original Understanding Of The Coinage Clause.\u201d <\/p>\n

Congress stopped issuing paper altogether, and essentially announced a default.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the state of Revolutionary monetary affairs, James Madison explained<\/a> that paper fiat had been a necessary evil:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBeing engaged in a necessary war without specie to defray the expence, or to support paper emissions for that purpose redeemable on demand, and being at the same time unable to borrow, no resource was left, but to emit bills of credit to be redeemed in future. The inferiority of these bills to specie was therefore incident to the very nature of them. If they had been exchangeable on demand for specie, they would have been equivalent to it; as they were not exchangeable on demand, they were inferior to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Founders knew fiat money was inferior to hard money like gold and silver specie, but without a sufficient supply of specie on the continent, and engaged in a war for their new country\u2019s very existence, they were left with no choice but to run the money printer. The forced easy-money monetary policy of the Revolutionary era, and its resulting hyperinflation, would profoundly influence the Founders when drafting what was to become the U.S. Constitution. <\/p>\n

Indeed, the Founders enshrined their preference for hard money in the various monetary clauses of the Constitution. It may come as a surprise to many that the Constitution does not authorize the Federal government to issue paper fiat money.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Constitution specifically provides that gold and silver coins will be the money of the United States and arguably prohibits the issuance of paper money,\u201d as Ali Khan put it in \u201cThe Evolution Of Money: A Story Of Constitutional Nullification<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

That is a power that the Supreme Court subsequently conferred upon Congress<\/a> despite the lack of any textual support. And the states are expressly forbidden<\/a> from declaring anything but gold and silver legal tender. <\/p>\n

The Founders\u2019 primary monetary goal was to limit government\u2019s influence over money, and thereby avoid the economic and societal ills that such influence creates. They understood that commodity money was superior to paper fiat because it was immune to political interference (with gold being the \u201cpreeminen[t]\u201d money due to its \u201cgreater rarity<\/a>\u201d). <\/p>\n

Had the technology existed at the time, therefore, the Founders would have been Bitcoiners. <\/p>\n

This may seem a bold, unprovable claim. But by examining the history of money during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, and, crucially, the Founders\u2019 own understanding of the Constitution\u2019s prohibitions on fiat, a credible argument can be made that Bitcoin would find itself next to “gold and silver” as Constitutional money, had the technology existed at the founding of the United States. <\/p>\n

Fiat Money And Economic Chaos In The Colonial And Confederation Eras<\/h2>\n

The Revolutionary era was not America\u2019s first experience with fiat money. The Colonial era was marked by repeated episodes of paper fiat emissions by the colonies, which led to inflation and economic hardship.<\/p>\n

The colonies lacked specie, being on the other side of the world from the economies of Europe, and so at first, the colonial markets used money substitutes<\/a> such as agricultural commodities like tobacco, rice, wheat, beef, pork, fish, corn and beaver skins. Collectible monies such as wampum (shell beads) also served as money for trade with Native Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But commodity money, or paper money backed by commodities, did not allow for quick expansion of the money supply. And so it was that Massachusetts introduced the western world to paper fiat money. <\/p>\n

“Apart from medieval China, which invented both paper and printing centuries before the West, the world had never seen government paper money until the colonial government of Massachusetts emitted a fiat paper issue in 1690,\u201d according to Rothbard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The impetus for Massachusetts\u2019s historic emission of paper fiat was (as is ever the case) war. Massachusetts was at war in Canada and needed to finance soldier salaries, supplies and arms<\/a>. The results were, predictably, disastrous. <\/p>\n

\u201c[W]ithin a year after the initial issue, the new paper pound had depreciated on the market by 40 percent against specie,\u201d Rothbard wrote<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In 1692, Massachusetts declared its paper money official legal tender<\/a>. In so doing, it invoked Gresham’s Law:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThis legal tender law had the unwanted effect of Gresham\u2019s Law: the disappearance of specie circulation in the colony. In addition, the expanding paper issues drove up prices and hampered exports from the colony. In this way, the specie \u2018shortage\u2019 became the creature rather than the cause of the fiat paper issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Rothbard, \u201cA History Of Money And Banking In The United States\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Over the following decades, other colonies emulated Massachusetts by issuing their own paper fiat legal tenders:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cSimilar consequences \u2014 dramatic inflation, shortage of specie, massive depreciation despite compulsory par laws \u2014 ensued in each colony. Thus, along with Massachusetts\u2019 depreciation of 11-to-1 of its notes against specie compared to the original par, Connecticut\u2019s notes had sunk to 9-to-1 and the Carolinas\u2019 at 10-to-1 in 1740, and the paper of virulently inflationist Rhode Island to 23-to-1 against specie. Even the least-inflated paper, that of Pennsylvania, had suffered an appreciation of specie to 80 percent over par.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Rothbard, \u201cA History Of Money And Banking In The United States\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In what was to become a recurring theme, Rhode Island was the worst offender:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cNotes issued by Rhode Island in 1740, later called \u2018old tenor\u2019 lost so much in value that in 1771 \u00a38 \u2018old tenor\u2019 were accepted by the state Treasury in payment of taxes for 6 shillings \u2018lawful money,\u2019 a depreciation of almost 96%.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Nussbaum, \u201cMoney In The Law\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

By most measures, the colonial experiment with paper fiat money was unsuccessful, and in 1751, the British Parliament sought to stanch the bleeding by “prohibit[ing] the colonies from issuing any further Paper Bills or Bills of Credit, of any Kind or Denomination whatsoever,” and that \u201cno paper money in New England should be legal tender,” Natelson wrote. In 1764, Parliament “extended the ban on issuance of legal tender paper currency from New England to all American colonies,” bringing an end to the colonial fiat era.<\/p>\n

The period immediately following the Revolution is known as the Confederation Era, after the Republic\u2019s first governing document, the Articles of Confederation, which was effective from March 1, 1781 to June 21, 1788. The Articles \u2014 unlike the subsequent Constitution \u2014 expressly empowered the Confederation Congress to emit paper money, but it declined to do so.<\/p>\n

Ten of the states, however, did issue paper fiat. Rhode Island, once again, was a notorious abuser of this power, imposing draconian compulsory tender laws that nearly sparked a constitutional crisis within its borders. After the state\u2019s courts declared the compulsory tender laws unconstitutional, Rhode Island\u2019s Assembly \u201cconstituted itself into a tribunal taking the judges to account because of their disobedience toward legislation duly enacted by the Assembly. The procedure was not carried through but four of the judges, it seems, were not reelected,\u201d per Nussbaum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Founders Intended To Prohibit Paper Fiat<\/h2>\n

This history, much of it experienced firsthand by the Founders, shaped their views on money. The Founders were certainly not a monolith, and discerning their original intent with respect to many provisions of the Constitution can be fraught. But their shared hatred for fiat money is undeniable. <\/p>\n

The Constitution\u2019s prohibition on state legal tender, and the absence of a federal power to issue paper fiat, was primarily designed to avoid inflationary monetary policy like that practiced by the colonies, Continental Congress and later, the states under the Articles of Confederation. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe colonists had long recognized that depreciating currency enriched some social groups at the expense of others,\u201d according to Natelson. Among those thought to be on the losing side of inflationary paper monetary policies were “widows, orphans, clergy, and “[s]alary [m]en,” per Natelson. The winners were, of course, known to be the “debtors,” whose obligations were depreciated by inflation.<\/p>\n

Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention detail the overall disgust held for paper money. For example, during the Convention\u2019s opening remarks, Edmund Randolph, “speaking of the defects of the [C]onfederation\u201d era, stated that \u201cthe havoc of paper money had not been foreseen\u201d by the authors of the Articles of Confederation.<\/p>\n

Madison\u2019s notes further reveal that Roger Sherman, as part of the committee drafting what would become Article I, Section 10<\/a>\u2019s prohibition on state legal tender laws, sought to add \u201cemit bills of credit, nor make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender\u201d to the prohibition because he \u201cthought [the Convention was] a favorable crisis for crushing paper money<\/strong><\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Likewise, the record of the ratification process, conducted by state conventions, “includes many general comments that the Constitution would put an end to paper money,” Natelson wrote. The state legal tender paper laws “were cited as justification of the ban at ratification conventions, and ‘were attacked both as immoral efforts to redistribute wealth from some constituencies to others and as a source of bad international and interstate relationships.'”<\/p>\n

And a number of references to the clause prohibiting state tender laws are found in the Federalist Papers<\/a>, which describe the section as removing from the states the power to issue \u201cpaper medium,\u201d (\u201cthe same reasons which shew the necessity of denying to the states the power of regulating coin, prove with equal force that they ought not be at liberty to substitute a paper medium in the place of coin,\u201d Madison wrote), or \u201cpaper money\u201d (\u201cThe States, by the plan of the convention, are prohibited from doing a variety of things\u2026 The imposition of duties on imported articles, and the emission of paper money, are specimens of each kind,\u201d Hamilton wrote). In Federalist No. 44, Madison explained the need to prohibit the states from issuing paper money:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe loss which America has sustained since the peace, from the pestilent effects of paper money<\/em> on the necessary confidence between man and man, on the necessary confidence in the public councils, on the industry and morals of the people, and on the character of republican government, constitutes an enormous debt against the States chargeable with this unadvised measure, which must long remain unsatisfied; or rather an accumulation of guilt, which can be expiated no otherwise than by a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of justice, of the power which has been the instrument of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In a later letter discussing Federalist No. 44, Madison confirmed \u201c[t]he evil which produced the prohibitory clause in the Constitution of the United States was the practice of the States in making bills of credit, and in some instances appraised property, \u2018a legal tender.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Another after-the-fact exchange between two additional Founders demonstrates a continuing opposition to paper fiat. Writing to Thomas Jefferson in 1819, John Adams commented:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Debasing the coinage] is to steal. A theft of greater magnitude and still more ruinous is the making of paper<\/strong>.<\/em> It is greater because in this money there is absolutely no real value. It is more ruinous because by its gradual depreciation during all the time of its existence it produces the effect which would be produced by an infinity of successive deteriorations of the coin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jefferson responded (perhaps self-servingly):<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe paper bubble is then burst. This is what you and I, and every reasoning man, seduced by no obliquity of mind or interest, have long foreseen. Yet it’s [sic] disastrous effects are not the less for having been foreseen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Although the Founders clearly hated paper money, they “were unsure about placing a total ban on Congress’s power to issue paper money,” according to Khan<\/a>. Many thought by failing to expressly grant the power, the federal government (possessed of only those powers granted to it by the people and states) would not be able to issue paper fiat and declare it legal tender. It is clear, however, that “they were certain about denying states even a conditional power of issuance,\u201d Khan wrote.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, at the time of the founding, gold and silver \u201cconstituted the preferred money of the world primarily because supply was limited,\u201d per Khan. That \u201cnatural scarcity \u2026 was a virtue to be preserved in both law and economics.\u201d<\/p>\n

For that reason, and “at the urging of Alexander Hamilton, [the Founders] adopted a bimetallic standard,\u201d Khan added. Gold, of course, was known to be superior to silver due to its greater scarcity. But, “[s]ilver, the ancient money of the American colonies, had its status deeply entrenched in the consciousness of the people and realities of the market,” and was thus allowed as parallel legal tender.<\/p>\n

The historical record of the Founders\u2019 writings and debates, therefore, establishes that the chief concern animating the decision to limit state legal tender to gold and silver, and refusing to grant the federal government an express power to adopt fiat money, was the history of inflationary paper money issuance and compulsory tender laws forcing its acceptance.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin\u2019s Qualities As \u201cDigital Gold\u201d Comport With The Founders\u2019 Original Intents For The U.S.<\/h2>\n

The Founders permitted states to declare gold and silver tender because these metals were largely immune to government interference, which had produced inflation and economic instability. This immunity stemmed from scarcity. As Hamilton noted<\/a>, gold\u2019s \u201cpreeminence\u201d as money was owed to its \u201cgreater rarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only is gold scarce within the earth, but it\u2019s also very costly to produce (mine, refine, smelt, coin), and difficult to forge or fake. These additional properties ensure that gold\u2019s scarcity remains intact despite new gold being brought to market. As described by Saifedean Ammous in \u201cThe Bitcoin Standard<\/a>,\u201d at the time of the founding, gold had the lowest rate of inflation of any monetary good, meaning it was the \u201chardest\u201d money, because the existing stock was so much larger than the flow of new gold into the market.<\/p>\n

These combined properties (scarcity, high cost to produce and difficulty to fake) have been described<\/a> as \u201cunforgeably costly.\u201d Because gold was not only \u201chard money,\u201d but also unforgeably costly, state adoption of gold as legal tender would not lead to inflation within the Republic. States could not quickly issue more gold coins to fund their governments. <\/p>\n

Gold, therefore, was the best monetary technology in existence at the founding for solving the problems identified by the Founders with state legal tender laws and paper money. Accordingly, the states only retained their power to adopt this hard, unforgeably costly money as tender.<\/p>\n

The Evolution Of Money: Bitcoin Succeeds Gold<\/h2>\n

As Professor Khan so presciently observed nearly 23 years ago<\/a>, although \u201cthe monetary clauses of the Constitution \u2026 incorporated a universal truth at the time of their adoption,\u201d they nonetheless \u201cfailed to halt the evolution of money.\u201d <\/p>\n

With credit cards having mostly replaced cash, and as the Federal Reserve and Congress explore issuing a central bank digital currency,\u201d Khan\u2019s prediction that<\/a> \u201cthe dollar will eventually become an abstract unit of currency with no specific embodiment in metal or paper\u201d has proved correct.<\/p>\n

But non-state, monetary goods like gold have evolved too. Introducing his early electronic gold protocol, Nick Szabo explained<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cPrecious metals and collectibles have an unforgeable scarcity due to the costliness of their creation. This once provided money the value of which was largely independent of any trusted third party. Precious metals have problems, however. It’s too costly to assay metals repeatedly for common transactions. Thus a trusted third party (usually associated with a tax collector who accepted the coins as payment) was invoked to stamp a standard amount of the metal into a coin. Transporting large values of metal can be a rather insecure affair, as the British found when transporting gold across a U-boat infested Atlantic to Canada during World War I to support their gold standard. What’s worse, you can’t pay online with metal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThus, it would be very nice if there were a protocol whereby unforgeably costly bits could be created online with minimal dependence on trusted third parties, and then securely stored, transferred, and assayed with similar minimal trust. Bit gold.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Szabo\u2019s \u201cBit gold\u201d was a forerunner to what many today consider to be the \u201cdigital gold\u201d of bitcoin. <\/p>\n

This is how Bitcoin\u2019s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, described Bitcoin<\/a>: \u201cThe steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a comprehensive discussion of Bitcoin\u2019s operation is beyond the scope of this article, suffice it to say, \u201cBitcoin is a peer to peer electronic cash, a new form of digital money that: [1] can be transferred between people or computers without any trusted middleman (such as a bank), and [2] whose issuance is not under the control of any single party,\u201d as Yan Pritzker put it in \u201cInventing Bitcoin<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

In other words, bitcoin \u2014 like gold \u2014 is a bearer asset that is not issued by the state, a bank or a corporation.<\/p>\n

And as a truly decentralized network, Bitcoin\u2019s issuance rate, or monetary policy is practically immutable, thus eliminating the risk of inflation. Unlike fiat currencies such as those issued by the colonies, Continental Congress or states, which were issued on a variable schedule at the whim of politicians or bureaucrats, often with very little notice, Bitcoin\u2019s code sets the issuance rate of new bitcoin and caps the overall supply at 21 million. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no central authority that determines the evolution of the Bitcoin software and no single programmer is able to dictate any outcome,\u201d Ammous wrote. Thus, because no central authority can produce more bitcoins at will, Bitcoin is immune to the inflationary debasement to which fiat currencies are prone.<\/p>\n

But Bitcoin is not just as good as gold, it\u2019s better:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBeyond digital scarcity, Bitcoin is also the first example of absolute <\/em>scarcity, the only liquid commodity (digital or physical) with a set fixed quantity that cannot conceivably be increased.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Ammous, \u201cThe Bitcoin Standard\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

About every ten minutes a new block is added to Bitcoin\u2019s blockchain, yielding a reward, or issuance, of 6.25 new bitcoins, at the current reward level. That issuance is measured against the 19 million bitcoin already in existence<\/a>. This makes Bitcoin\u2019s growth rate very low \u2014 on par with gold\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin Comports With The Founders\u2019 Understanding Of Hard Money<\/h2>\n

Like gold before it, bitcoin solves the problem identified by the Founders with state legal tender laws and paper fiat because it is immune to inflationary monetary policies. <\/p>\n

The Founders understood gold as the best form of money in existence. Bitcoin has incorporated those properties that made gold the preeminent money at the founding (scarcity and unforgeable costliness), and elevated them through the use of modern communications and computing technology.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t because gold was an inert shiny rock that states were allowed to adopt it as tender. Its monetary properties mattered, not the form that it took. Article I, Section 10\u2019s reference to \u201cgold and silver coin\u201d<\/a> therefore, was a reference to so-called commodity money, not mere elements on a periodic table.<\/p>\n

As George Selgin explains, \u201ccommodity\u2019 money consists, as the term suggests, of some useful article of trade, that is, something that has a use other than that of being a medium of exchange, and that is also naturally scarce, in that it commands a positive value in equilibrium, which (assuming competing suppliers) is equal to its marginal cost of production.\u201d Commodity money is contrasted against fiat money, i.e., \u201cpaper notes, or central bank deposits readily convertible into such notes, which are useful only as exchange media, and which command a value in equilibrium far exceeding their zero or near-zero marginal cost of production.\u201d<\/p>\n

If gold was commodity money, then, as George Selgin suggests in \u201cSynthetic Commodity Money<\/a>,\u201d \u201cBitcoin raises the intriguing possibility that one might create a synthetic commodity money based upon a production \u2018protocol\u2019 such as might replicate the outcome of almost any conceivable monetary rule.\u201d <\/p>\n

Bitcoin\u2019s protocol, as previously discussed, has enshrined a \u201chard money\u201d monetary rule akin to gold.<\/p>\n

This transition from commodity money to synthetic commodity money is an example of a new technological development that would be encompassed within the original meaning of the monetary clauses, such as Article I, Section 10.<\/p>\n

Justice Neil Gorsuch has explained<\/a> this originalist analytic with a series of examples from other Constitutional provisions:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cOriginalism teaches only that the Constitution\u2019s original meaning is fixed; meanwhile, of course, new applications of that meaning will arise with new developments and new technologies. Consider a few examples. As originally understood, the term \u2018cruel\u2019 in the Eighth Amendment\u2019s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause referred (at least) to methods of execution deliberately designed to inflict pain. That never changes. But that meaning doesn\u2019t just encompass those particular forms of torture known at the founding. It also applies to deliberate efforts to inflict a slow and painful death by laser. Take another example. As originally understood, the First Amendment protected speech. That guarantee doesn\u2019t just apply to speech on street corners or in newspapers; it applies equally to speech on the Internet. Or consider the Fourth Amendment. As originally understood, it usually required the government to get a warrant to search a home. And that meaning applies equally whether the government seeks to conduct a search the old-fashioned way by rummaging through the place or in a more modern way by using a thermal imaging device to see inside. Whether it\u2019s the Constitution\u2019s prohibition on torture, its protection of speech, or its restrictions on searches, the meaning remains constant even as new applications arise.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While at first blush, Article I, Section 10\u2019s reference to \u201cgold and silver coin\u201d appears narrow in meaning, it was originally understood to refer to the hardest forms of commodity money \u2014 that is, not paper fiat money \u2014 then in existence. But \u201cnew applications of that meaning\u201d have arisen \u201cwith new developments and new technologies,\u201d namely, synthetic commodity money. The hardest form of which is bitcoin.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

With an understanding of the history of paper fiat money and legal tender laws in America, the debates at the Constitutional Convention and Ratification Conventions, and the Founders\u2019 views on the subject, it can fairly be said that the Founders\u2019 original intent was to create a Republic based on sound money. At the time, this was gold. Today, we have digital gold \u2014 Bitcoin. The Founders would have embraced such a technological evolution of sound money with fervor. <\/p>\n

The Founders, in other words, were Bitcoiners.<\/p>\n

This is a guest post by Aaron Daniel. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this July 4th, let\u2019s remember that America\u2019s founding fathers wanted to create a republic based on sound money like Bitcoin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2530,"featured_media":6631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[503,1777,422,2149,1514],"class_list":{"0":"post-8291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-4th-of-july","9":"tag-constitution","10":"tag-feature","11":"tag-independence-day","12":"tag-u-s"},"author_data":{"id":2530,"name":"Aaron Daniel","nicename":"aaron-daniel","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/wbd-profile-pic-2-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/america-founders-constitution-declaration-guy-fawkes.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2530"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}