On the 29th November 1773, the Dartmouth- a British ship sailed into the Boston Harbour. Later that evening American revolutionaries boarded the Dartmouth and destroyed 342 chests of tea by dumping them into the Harbour, and so the American Revolution started. It’s one of the many examples in history of how a nation’s power of authority is unequivocally reliant on its ability to tax the people that it governs.

Historically, the payment of taxes was achieved through the force of arms. A nation has always had more power than the individual that it governed. However, when the individual became a collective, and that collective developed a larger force of arms than its nation; violence, upheaval and revolution were usually quick in following.

Today, in most first world countries, the force of arms is usually the last resort used by countries to enforce the payment of taxes by its populace. Today, nations now utilise online-based algorithms- predetermined by the calculation of the individual’s yearly income. This means that for most workers, a tax is taken from them at 00:00 on the last working day of each month.

This means there is no opportunity for the individual to say no to the payment of tax. There is also no opportunity for the collective to say no. It is a direct implication of the introduction of online centralised ledger systems. Online banking is a good example of one of these systems. These systems have strengthened a nation’s ability to monitor the use of its currency and as a result, the enforcement of taxes is infinitely more efficient- and less violent. These systems are now also used to control the national and international usage of a nation’s currency.

One example of this is if a resident of France travels to Spain and purchases an item in Spain using a debit card, the person’s bank will send a text message requesting confirmation of the use of the debit card. This is a positive example of currency control. It means that the credit card details cannot be stolen easily and used in another country without knowledge. However, the bank in France will also take a small percentage fee for the use of this debit card- at no cost to the bank. This is anegative example of currency control. It means the person is paying for the use of their own assets outside of the country. Just as a thought, in this example the person is one of the lucky 2 billion people living in the western world. If this person had been one of the 2–6 billion living in a third world country where the currency is heavily inflated, and the nation is in an economic crisis, the individual might expect to pay 20–30% on any money transferred in or out of the country.

Why is this important? Because this is a currency transaction tax. It serves two purposes: it simultaneously deflates its own currency and inflates the currency of another country. It’s another example of how currency is controlled and manipulated by nations.

Since the dawn of civilisation, every nation in the world has been in a perpetual state of adversity against its citizens in regards to increasing the monitoring and control of its own currency. As mentioned above, the portal of online, centralised ledgers, allows nations to extract currency through tax and inject currency through inflation very efficiently. Every nation and bank in the world has already realised this, and governments are now leaning towards a monetary system utilised solely on online, centralised ledgers.

An example of this is the reduced availability of over counter banking and the increased advertisement of online banking. The use of online banking is also a good example of the rapidly approaching age of automation. This is a prelude to war against paper money. Both first world and third world countries around the world are already enacting fiscal policies against their cash-based societies. For individuals residing in first world countries, they are happy to ride the bandwagon of online banking as most are confident that the money that they get paid into their account each month will be worth the same amount of money the next month. Unfortunately, for many people living in the third world countries, the idea of a monetary system primarily based on online banking could be a manmade disaster and this is already happening.

In 2016, the Indian Prime minister, Narendra Modi banned the use of 500 and 1000 rupee notes under the guise of “reducing corruption”. The move effectively removed 86% of the country’s wealth and caused chaos as people scrambled to banks to replace their 500 and 1000 rupee bank notes- with only 48 hours to do so. Banks ran out of legal tender and were forced to close. Hundreds of people died in the following weeks as they were left with no legal currency and therefore unable to pay for medical treatment and basic commodities. Those without bank accounts- approximately 48% of the country, lost a significant portion of their savings overnight. This fiscal policy of targeting the unbanked is becoming more and more widespread in countries such as the Ukraine and Venezuela as countries transition towards online ledger systems.

Countries realise that taxing the unbanked is more difficult than taxing the middle or upper classes. With no online record of assets, the only way to tax lower-class families is to completely remove the assets used most by the lower-class or make them redundant-i.e. paper money. With Zimbabwe, the change towards online ledgers was not an option due to the lack of technology at the time and Instead of reducing the paper money supply as what happened in India in 2016, President Robert MugabeIncreased the supply of paper money. As a result, the Zimbabwean dollar rapidly inflated and $500 bills saved by the poor were made useless when one hundred trillion dollar bills- that’s $100,000,000,000,000 were now being used daily.

This inflation was more of a result of poor fiscal policy rather than Mugabe directly targeting the poor’s savings, however, it displays the feckless characteristics of a dictator with no regard for the wellbeing of the most vulnerable people living in Zimbabwe. Even today Zimbabwe currency inflation Per Year is approximately 79,600,000,000%. The Zimbabwean dollar is now no longer used, instead, the population generally use the US dollar as a form of currency

So where do people turn to when their governments are inflating the supply of their currency rendering their savings useless. Since the birth of bartering and trade, every currency and commodity has been inflated by its governing authority. More paper money can be printed and more gold can be mined. The shelf-life of a country’s currency is approximately 20–30 years, after this point, the currency becomes significantly worth less and less as governments become increasingly tempted to print more and more in response to rising levels of government debt.

No person alive or dead has truly utilised a store of value or commodity that has never been inflated by its governing authority. Not many have even considered the possibility of a deflationary currency. That was until in 2009 when an unknown developer using the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto released the first iteration of an online, decentralised, deflationary currency known as Bitcoin.