End the Fed

When I got into Bitcoin in 2012, it was because of people I knew who “red-pilled” me about why we should “End the Fed.”

Monetary control is predatory, inflation is a hidden tax on savings, and if you live in the jurisdiction of a central bank, you just might live on a free-range plantation.

These are great reasons to want to end the Federal Reserve Bank!

For many years, the typical bitcoiner was a libertarian-leaning, sound-money advocate who wanted to see Bitcoin used as a means to fulfill the dreams of the great Austrian economists; imagining a world where sound money finally reins in reckless monetary policy, inflation is tamed, and central banks become obsolete. Nearly every bitcoiner wanted to end the Fed. But ironically, the loudest voices making this claim today are often the same ones celebrating Bitcoin’s newfound place in the traditional financial world as a reserve asset, a store of value, or digital gold tucked away in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and corporate treasuries.

If Bitcoin becomes little more than a highly volatile, tightly held reserve asset controlled by hedge funds and ETFs, it will never “end the Fed.” It will join the Fed. It’ll be absorbed into the very system it was meant to displace, playing the same role as gold or treasury bonds; as collateral for debt, a hedge for inflation, or a way for institutions to signal sophistication.

What it won’t be is a real alternative to fiat currency.

The original vision for Bitcoin was not a new class of investment for the elite. It was a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that could compete with fiat in everyday transactions. It was designed to allow individuals to transact without intermediaries and without relying on the machinery of central banking. And the opening line of the white paper made this clear: Bitcoin was built for “commerce on the internet…”

But over time, a new narrative took hold. One that turned Bitcoin from a protocol into a product. Blockstream and other firms, backed by some of the same venture capitalists (VCs), big banks, and PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) mafia alumni who previously helped monopolize online payments, successfully shifted Bitcoin’s direction toward a passive, low-bandwidth settlement layer. Instead of being used, it would be stored. Instead of empowering the unbanked, it would protect the overexposed. And instead of disintermediating the Fed, it would quietly fold itself into the monetary status quo as a reserve-tier asset.

So no, Bitcoin isn’t ending the Fed. It’s being folded into its ecosystem.

Let’s take a look at the most common arguments Bitcoiners give for why it could theoretically replace or constrain the Fed, and see where they fall apart:

3. Ending Centralized Monetary Policy – The idea here is appealing: take power away from bureaucrats and put it into code. But BTC is not being used to replace central banking functions. No one’s setting wages or pricing goods in BTC. And again, a system where most of the liquidity is managed by centralized financial institutions defeats the purpose of decentralization.

4. Transparency and Predictability – Sure, Bitcoin’s monetary policy is transparent. But transparency only helps if people are using the system. If Bitcoin becomes a backstop asset for the existing financial system, then that predictability isn’t driving behavior. Rather, it’s just an input into risk models.

So what would actually move the needle? What would a Bitcoin ecosystem look like that could plausibly disrupt central banking?

Start with Bitcoin SV.

Unlike BTC, which is crippled by its own arbitrary constraints and political gatekeeping, BSV still follows the original design. It can scale. It can be used in real-time, by real people, for real commerce. And that’s where the opportunity lies.

Using tools like 1Sat Ordinals and BitcoinSchema.org, we can build actual financial primitives (tokens, contracts, marketplaces) on Bitcoin’s base layer. We can create systems where each party to a trade manages their own funds and risks directly, just like Bitcoin’s architecture intended. No global smart contracts. No honeypots. No reliance on centralized exchanges or custodians. Just real liquidity flowing peer-to-peer.

Consider a future where a BSV-native financial ecosystem exists: MNEE as the stable base-pair for all tokenized commerce, 1Sat Ordinals providing the atomic ownership layer for any asset class, and composable smart contracts built with sCrypt and standardized via BitcoinSchema. The result isn’t just a better version of decentralized finance (DeFi). It’s an alternative financial system entirely: banking, lending, trading, and much more complex financial instruments!

If we build this correctly, we don’t need to wait for ETF approvals or hope BlackRock (NASDAQ: BLK) becomes our friend. We can create an on-chain economy that grows with usage and rewards participation. Liquidity can live on-chain, not on someone else’s balance sheet. A hedge fund could be a smart contract. So could your bank. And most importantly, we can build financial tools that are as resilient as Bitcoin itself while actually getting away from the risks of central banking, fiat currency, and the crypto-native exchanges, which have only exacerbated the problems of the old-world banking cartels.

Want to end the Fed? Don’t buy BTC and wait for it to moon. Build something. Create value. Use Bitcoin as money. That’s the only path to structural change.

Otherwise, we’ll all be watching Jerome Powell read inflation numbers while our “decentralized” assets trade on the same platforms that powered the last crisis.

Watch: History of Bitcoin with Kurt Wuckert Jr.