Dominic Frisby – Surprise Appearance: Some Thoughts About Stuff | BTC Prague 2025 Keynote

I wrote a brand new talk the night before stepping onto the BTC Prague stage for a second time — and I wanted to share some of the ideas that I think matter most right now: cycles of money, the silent theft of inflation, and why not owning Bitcoin is the real risk.

The 100-Year Cycle of Money

I’m an author from the UK. I wrote what I believe was the first book about Bitcoin — Bitcoin: The Future of Money, back in 2014. Richard Branson said “read it and glimpse into the future,” though it’s not entirely clear he actually read it. But that’s beside the point.

What I want to talk about is cycles. There’s a pattern I’ve noticed in the evolution of money. Coinage was invented around 700 AD — one of the most brilliant financial technologies ever created. It certified the weight and purity of metal and enabled economic mobility and trade. Then came the printing press and printed money. Isaac Newton, as Master of the Mint, established the great recoinage of 1716, putting Britain on a gold standard. That lasted until the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain printed money to fund the conflict, followed by another recoinage in 1816. That gold standard then held for roughly 100 years — until 1914, when Europe abandoned it again to pay for the First World War.

Here we are, 100 years later. And the next evolution in this cycle is Bitcoin entering the mainstream.

The Real Cost of Fiat Money

During the 19th century, when money was sound and backed by gold, prices more than halved over 40-year periods. The same wage would buy you double the goods. That’s what produced the extraordinary growth of the middle class. Then fiat money arrived, and the consumer price index has gone absolutely bananas ever since.

I want to share a table that I find deeply telling. Since 1970, average salaries in the UK have gone up 22 times. But the average house has gone up 70 times. Why? Because we buy houses using debt — and debt is how fiat money gets created. Markets flooded with debt-driven money, constrained by planning laws, balloon in price. Cars bought on finance, universities funded by student loans — same story. Meanwhile, washing machines have only gone up four times, because we buy them with cash and we’ve gotten better at making them. Eggs, milk — similar story.

In the 19th century, under sound money, all of these things should cost less than they did 50 years prior. Instead, almost everything costs dramatically more. That’s the hidden tax of inflation.

The Risk Is Not Owning Bitcoin

Government spending is going to remain uncontrollable. Even the cleverest people in the world won’t be able to stop decades of currency debasement. The democratic system makes it almost inevitable. But there is a solution: Bitcoin. Its network is over 600,000 times more powerful than the world’s top thousand supercomputers combined. Nation states are holding it. Multinational corporations are holding it. It stands a genuine chance of becoming the default money system of the world.

Some people hear all of that and say: “It’s too risky.” But the real risk is the opposite. The risk is not owning Bitcoin. Its potential is so enormous — why would you not want exposure to this technology? When you buy Bitcoin, you’re buying the product of the cumulative, combined intelligence of an entire protocol, community, and movement. And looking around at the foreheads in any Bitcoin conference room, that’s a considerable amount of intelligence.

Sign up for my newsletter, The Flying Frisbee, and if you want a copy of the book — you know where to find me.