Dr Edwin Vieira 2020 Interview with a Millennial Bitcoin Investor on Gold & Monetary History
Dr Edwin Vieira is one of the world’s pre-eminent domain experts on gold & silver as constitutional money, as well as a monetary historian.
He wrote the seminal work “Pieces of Eight” which is a 1700 page tome on the subject that has become somewhat of a rare collectors item.
https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Eight-Disabilities-Constitution-Foundation/dp/0967175917
He’s a constitutional attorney who has taken multiple cases to the supreme court.
I’m a regular guy, not a lawyer or a monetary expert…just a millennial entrepreneur who found Bitcoin as a way to opt out of a corrupt fiat money system.
I’ve been on a never-ending journey to discover the truth about money & banking as well as try to question the narratives of the gold experts, Austrians & anarchocapitalists to figure out if what they say is really true.
I’ve been a fan of Trace Mayer since 2011, Trace often credits Dr Vieira’s book Pieces of Eight for sending him down the hard money rabbit hole — so I had to talk to Dr Vieira.
To be honest I chickened out of this interview twice, but I’m glad we finally recorded it.
For context, I’m Canadian. I was an avid fan of Ron Paul and supported him during his presidential campaign in 2008 and 2012. Because the US Dollar is the world’s reserve currency, what happens to the USD affects everyone, so you’ll find a lot of Canucks follow US politics & finance more than our own.
In 2008 I learned what a scam money really was, and in 2011 when I saw Bitcoin, it instantly made sense to me.
I got into Bitcoin early because of people like Trace, and through following Ron Paul I learned the basics of Austrian economics vs Keynesianism, gold as money & the value of sound money vs fiat money.
I held Bitcoin from $10 all the way to $10,000 and I still hold Bitcoin. I’m one of those people that think Bitcoin & Gold will be the net beneficiaries of the money printing we are seeing now.
Since I’m writing a book on Bitcoin, I really wanted to speak with Dr Vieira to ask him some specific questions that I wasn’t able to find watching his previous interviews from 6–10 years ago.
- How does gold fit in a world where there are no gold backed currencies anymore?
- How does sound money work with modern monetary theory?
- Is sound money & getting off of fractional reserve banking really the answer in a world with deflationary effects of technology causing large swaths of the population to have their jobs automated away?
- How does Dr Vieira see this playing out over the next 5–10 years with his knowledge of previous cycles in monetary history?
One of the chapters in my book is a primer on fiat money, gold & monetary history, and this interview was very helpful in helping me think through some philosophical issues I was having defending the idea of an Austrian money standard from progressives & left leaning folks advocating things like the green new deal.
My show is aimed at being a non-technical informational podcast for millennials & their boomer parents (who hold 60% of the world’s wealth) learning about the follies of fiat money & why they should diversify into Bitcoin and gold to store their wealth.
I felt it was a privilege to expose people my age and socioeconomic status to Dr Edwin Vieira’s viewpoints. His knowledge is almost like a long lost secret.
As I saw the bank & corporate bailouts in 2008/2009, lots of QE (printing trillions of dollars from nothing), bank reserve requirements disappearing & the historic printing in 2020, I started leaning more towards the viewpoints of Bernie Sanders & the progressive left.
I started to lose the fervour I once had for Austrian economics & Libertarianism… we have not lived in a capitalist system for some time, but a corporatist system … the monetary system currently feels more like a ponzi scheme for the 0.1% rather than benefiting the silent majority.
A lot of people my age and socieconomic status don’t really question the system we live in, and many have become accustomed to the way things are with money … we don’t have Austrian policies but we also don’t live in a true Keynesian system either.
I wonder sometimes about nuances in the views of Austrians, when it comes to monetary policy & the way things have gone since the great financial crisis. This is the greatest ponzi in history and maybe they can keep it going for another 100 years.
The podcast is a long informal, conversational, exploration of monetary history, militias, social unrest, and more.
It gets thick at points, but I decided not to edit it because hopefully someone out there who’s smarter than me will catch some nuances in what Dr Vieira has to say.
To any Bitcoin podcasters out there, I highly recommend getting Dr. Vieira on your show! Reach out to me on Twitter (I’m @bradmillscan there) and I’d be happy to make the introduction.
Here’s some earlier videos from Dr Vieira:
https://youtu.be/NwGAjj1CWz0 if you want to hear more.
Dr. Vieira is currently writing on why militias are a better more effective constitutional answer to militarized police.
