Niko Jilch – How Bitcoin Solves the World’s Biggest Problem | BTC Prague 2025 Keynote

From Roman debasement to the petrodollar, the history of money is a history of abuse. On the BTC Prague stage, I walked through five hard lessons from monetary history — and explained why, for the first time ever, we may have finally found the answer.

It Always Starts With the Romans

When I look at the history of money, one thing becomes clear immediately: when empires control money, they abuse it to fund themselves. The Romans did it over centuries — slowly, almost invisibly debasing their coins. One generation barely noticed. But across generations, the damage was catastrophic. That’s lesson one, and it never really stopped applying.

Gold Was Good — Until It Wasn’t

The classical gold standard of the 19th century was hard money, and global trade thrived under it. But it relied on physical settlement and trust in central banks. Both failed under the stress of World War I. The gold standard never truly recovered. That’s lesson two: physical neutrality exists, but political neutrality does not last.

Bretton Woods and the Dollar’s Rise

After World War II, only one country was left standing — the United States. At Bretton Woods in 1944, Harry Dexter White won the argument: the dollar would be backed by gold, and everyone else would be backed by the dollar. It worked for a while. But Nixon shut the gold window in 1971, effectively devaluing the dollar overnight. Lesson three: even a gold-backed system becomes politicized if controlled by one state.

The Petrodollar and the Financialization of Everything

Nixon had a plan. He struck a deal with Saudi Arabia — oil would only be sold in dollars, creating permanent demand. He also opened China, recycling dollars into American debt. Then Volcker raised rates to 20% and put America into recession — deciding the international role of the dollar mattered more than the domestic economy. From there came the financialization boom of the 80s and 90s. Lesson four: fiat reserve currencies are tools of political power.

Every Alternative Has Failed

The euro tried to be a neutral alternative — backed by 13,000 tons of gold, independent from any single government. For a brief moment, the world believed in it. Then came Iraq, the financial crisis, and eventually the freezing of Russian currency reserves. China and Russia dumped their euros. As I see it, the dollar is Coca-Cola, and the euro is now just Coke Zero. The yuan? Capital controls and state surveillance make it a non-starter. Gold? Still physical, still centralized, still hard to move. Lesson five: every alternative fails on neutrality, openness, and trust.

Magic Internet Money

Satoshi once wrote: imagine a base metal as scarce as gold, but with one magical property — it can be transported over a communications channel like the internet. When I map assets across four categories — neutral, portable, censorship-resistant, and trustless — only Bitcoin has a green dot in every single one. For centuries, the world searched for money that no king, no empire, no politician could control or debase. Bitcoin is not perfect. But for the first time in history, we may have actually found it. And that is how we end up with magic internet money.