I wish more people knew about Bitcoin’s connection to the bank bailouts. Bitcoin unfortunately does not have the best brand ambassadors. This week is a great opportunity to tell your friends about it, because it matters.

The 2008 bank bailouts were a major motivator behind the creation of Bitcoin. The first block ever mined even contains a reference to it: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks. During the bank bailouts, the government just printed a bunch of money and gave it to the banks, around 700 billion USD. They did this because it was politically expedient, well really because they had to or the whole damned system would collapse. And the 99% ended up paying for the mistakes of the 1%. All of us were made to pay for the mistakes of a very small, incredibly powerful and wealthy segment of society who made reckless investment decisions. People lost their homes, their jobs, their livelyhoods, their savings, and yet not a single one of those bankers went to jail. Instead, they took the bailout money and gave themselves extravagant bonuses. Yet the problem is not new, throughout history, every nation that has ever failed, has had their currency end in hyperinflation. The temptation to print money is too strong. Perhaps it is something that should not be entrusted to politicians or even humans at all.

Satoshi, in his wisdom, created a system by which no new money could ever be printed. No corruptible, tempted authority could use it to turn on the money printer and rob entire generations of their wealth or force them to pay for wars they did not support. He made a currency which cannot be corrupted and cannot be hacked, with 99.9% uptime, with instant transfers across borders. It is neutral technology open to anybody with a phone or a computer and access to the internet. Which is much less than you need to open a bank account. Bitcoin doesn’t care about your credit history, or whether or not you can provide a reliable mailing address. Bitcoin doesn’t close on weekends and will never charge you exorbitant fees to use your own money. You never have to wait days for a payment to clear. Bitcoin puts you in charge of your money and nobody else. And it makes sure nobody can print away its value.

But then a bunch of people came along selling get-rich-quick schemes based on crypto technology, and everybody goes “crypto bad”. Satoshi gave a gift to the world. He didn’t stick around to get rich off it, he didn’t use it for celebrity, he just made Bitcoin and disappeared. Thank you Satoshi for your gift to the world.