Listen To This Episode:
Matthew Mežinskis is co-host of the Crypto Voices podcast and author of the Crypto Voices Global Monetary Base report. In this episode of Fed Watch, Christian Keroles and I discuss that report’s Q3 2020 update with Mežinskis. What follows is a wide-ranging conversation, from Mežinskis’ “Bitcoin origin story” to the difficult definitions of what money is, and back to a personal walkthrough of visuals contained in this report (please see the YouTube version of the podcast for this visuals).
Mežinskis was introduced to Bitcoin in 2011 but did not get heavily involved until 2013. As most people who have fallen down the bitcoin rabbit hole know, an outlet while assimilating the concepts of Bitcoin is required. Mežinskis’s outlet was in the form of his podcast, “Crypto Voices.” From its modest beginnings, with Mežinskis reading and talking about Bitcoin articles, the show began a new phase with the addition of co-host Fernando Ulrich. It grew into a home for the exploration of important economic concepts via quality interviews and deep discussions between the two hosts.
Through the conversations on Crypto Voices, Mežinskis and Ulrich became aware of the glaring lack of information around base money. Some disparate data existed, but none was systematically presented. Base money is the foundation of our monetary system, yet no easily-accessible data was available until Mežinskis started publishing the Global Monetary Base report. He spent a long time sifting through data and has produced a beautiful result.
The discussion on this episode of Fed Watch centered around the question of “what is base money?” and Mežinskis’s thoughts on some of the edge cases in the definition. We also attacked the inflation/deflation debate from a data-driven angle thanks to Mežinskis’s research and knowledge on the subject. We didn’t ask simple questions and expanded the topic past the common hyperinflationary tropes of the end of the dollar.
The listener will hear discussion on dollar liquidity, the history and current status of gold and silver, foreign reserves of the dollar, and, of course, Bitcoin’s current status relative to other base money types. Mežinskis also shared some great charts which can be seen on the video version of Fed Watch on YouTube.
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