Nick Szabo  🔑

I am planning on writing a monthly research bulletin on the economics of Bitcoin. What are some economic questions related to Bitcoin you would like to see me discuss?

Trade deficits between countries that have high production / consumption of Bitcoin. How will mining affect trade deficits and how government's could encourage mining to reduce trade deficits in case of Hyperbitcoinization . Also: mining vs. buying/hodling opp. cost calculation.

Good question. Just as a quick response: Switzerland ran trade surpluses and accumulated enormous amounts of gold, without it producing any gold. The point of money is that it's as easy to produce as to purchase, so instead of mining, countries should have good econ policies

Did Switzerland gov buy the gold though or was it the Swiss people? Worth looking into episodes where govs. didn't buy gold for sovereignty wealth funds but instead installed policies that incentivized individual hoarding of gold but with national "macroeconomics" objective

Gov didn't buy it and the best policy they followed was the almost complete absence of any economic policies. A free market meant people saved, accumulated capital, increased productivity, and earned gold from abroad. Also, security & peace made foreigners sent their gold there

I think a large part was some sort of gentleman agreement amongst European elites until mid 20th that was off limits to prevent mutual destruction of gold/wealth storage as hedge against losing wars.

Yes, though it may not have been an agreement as much as the self-interest of most of the leaders having their wealth stored there, plus Switzerland's complete absence of foreign policy making nobody an enemy & giving them a very strong defensive base.