THE LAST FIAT MAN
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He wakes up every morning to the sound of a notification. Not an alarm, no: a discreet vibration, a digital caress. The screen lights up before his eyes. The blue light reminds him that he exists. He's no longer sure when he stopped getting up on his own. He obeys the screen as one obeys an invisible authority. His phone tells him the time, the weather, the traffic, the stock market. He doesn't need to think, he needs to scroll.
His bank account is blinking in the corner. He hasn't had any cash for a long time. Physical currency makes him uncomfortable. Too real, too risky. He prefers the abstract promise of numbers on a screen. Everything is clean, fluid, frictionless. A flick of the wrist, a beep, and the transaction is validated. He feels free. Free as a bird that doesn't notice the bars of its cage.
The last fiat man has never known anything else. He believes he lives in modernity, while he survives in assisted dependence. He owns nothing, but he's glad he does. He has no savings, but he has a credit card. He has no property, but he has a premium subscription. His existence is a stream of monthly payments: housing, car, health, entertainment, data. Every month, it all starts again, like artificial respiration. Money comes in, money goes out. Nothing accumulates, nothing remains. He is not the master of the flow; he is its willing victim.
His bank knows him better than he does. It knows when he overspends, when he sleeps poorly, when he leaves town. It silently adjusts his trust score. His behavior has become a given. His life a line of code. He thinks he's free because he can choose between Visa and Mastercard, between iPhone and Samsung, between Netflix and Disney+. He doesn't see that the freedom he's being sold is a superficial illusion. Behind it, everything is already locked down. There are no more choices, only versions.
His work has no more meaning than his money. He clicks, copies, transfers, presents, comments, checks. He produces nothing, he validates processes. His days are an administrative theater. He works in an air-conditioned tower where the light remains the same, whether it's 9 a.m. or 6 p.m. He no longer sees the sun, only screens. His pay arrives on the 1st of the month, automatically. He doesn't receive a single coin. His salary passes through, is distributed, and evaporates. His account is a constant toll highway. Everything he earns ends up somewhere else before he even understands where.
And when he receives a loan, he smiles. He believes the bank trusts him. He doesn't understand that it's chaining him. Each debt is an invisible leash, a thread that connects him to the matrix. He calls himself a homeowner, but he lives in a mortgage. He calls himself a motorist, but he drives around in a credit. He calls himself independent, but he must work until he's 67 to repay the time stolen from him. The last fiat man doesn't live, he finances his survival.
In his pocket, he keeps a black card, heavy and elegant. He sometimes shows it off proudly, like a trophy. It's the symbol of his success, he believes. Contactless contact. The magical gesture that replaces willpower. Each payment is an act of faith in the system. He doesn't know that his money doesn't exist, that it's only a state promise guaranteed by a debt he'll never repay. But he doesn't want to know. The truth disturbs comfort, and comfort is all he has left.
He still believes in growth. He looks at GDP as a moral barometer. If the figure rises, he feels reassured. If it falls, he is afraid. He never asks what this growth represents, or who benefits from it. He doesn't want to know that the value we create is an illusion inflated with credit. That the wealth he celebrates is extracted from the poverty of others. That his comfort rests on a mountain of public and private debt, on the exploitation of future time. His world is a house of cards where each floor rests on the previous lie.
His government treats him like a child. He is watched, protected, guided. He is told what to think, what to fear, what to love. He accepts. He surrenders. He trades his freedom for security, without ever rereading the contract. The last fiat man does not want to be free. Freedom requires choosing, understanding, risking. He prefers the tranquility of prohibitions. He believes the law protects him, without seeing that it imprisons him. He confuses peace with docility.
He doesn't hate tyranny; he delegates it. He wants rules, QR codes, passes, certificates. He wants to be controlled, but politely. He can't stand uncertainty. He no longer knows what to do with a world without an interface. If he loses his phone, he panics. If he loses his connection, he loses his identity. He can no longer buy anything, move around, or even get information. He no longer exists without the network. He has become an extension of the machine he believes he owns.
His smile is sincere. His servitude, too. He no longer feels the chain; it's digital. His happiness lies in notifications: an order delivered, a story liked, a payment validated. His dopamine is automated. He no longer reads, he scrolls. He no longer speaks, he comments. He no longer thinks, he reacts. Every emotion is predefined by a profitability algorithm. He no longer belongs to himself, but he believes he's free, and that's all that's expected of him.
The currency he uses is programmed. It is paid to him conditionally, withdrawn upon detection. If his behavior is deemed deviant, his access is suspended. He calls this modernity. He fails to see that fiat currency has become a tool of collective training. Every payment, every transaction, every expense feeds the profile of the perfect slave. The one who never rebels because he is afraid of losing his points. The last fiat man no longer needs a master: he watches over himself.
In the evening, he comes home, turns off the light, and watches a series on a screen he rented on credit. He laughs on command, cries on command. His emotion is a product. His time is a commodity. He no longer has an interiority, only flux. And sometimes, between two episodes, a void crosses him. A dizziness. He doesn't know why. He feels hollow, as if something is escaping him. So he orders something. A new pair of shoes, a meal, a gadget. The emptiness calms for a few hours. Then he returns.
He sometimes dreams of another world, without knowing which one. He feels vaguely that everything is false: the prices, the promises, the salaries, the words. But he doesn't know where to begin to escape. He has never known scarcity. He has never touched a raw truth. His entire existence is based on decreed values, symbols issued by institutions he doesn't understand. And when he hears the word "Bitcoin," he laughs. He repeats what he was taught: "It's dangerous, it's speculative, it's for extremists." He doesn't know he's talking about his only way out.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, a man watches in the dark. He has no debt. He has no bank account. He expects nothing from the system. On his desk, a small machine hums. Silently, it calculates the proofs of a parallel world. Its screen doesn't display the price of Bitcoin, but the hash rate. It doesn't need permission to exist. It mines, it verifies, it signs. It lives on the edge of the flow. It doesn't look at logs, it looks at blocks.
The Bitcoiner hasn't fled the system; he's surpassed it. He doesn't want to destroy it; he's making it obsolete. He doesn't need to convince, only wait. Every block added is another crack in the illusion. He doesn't have a retirement plan; he has keys. He doesn't seek returns; he seeks the truth. His wealth isn't in an account; it's in the network. It has no trusted third party, no strings attached, no compromise. He is alone, yes, but free. And in a world where everything is under control, solitude is the ultimate luxury.
His lifestyle seems ascetic, but he is sovereign. He chooses when to turn off his machines. He chooses when to spend, when to send, when to keep. His wealth cannot be printed by decree. It obeys no one. He has understood what others refuse to see: fiat money is not a tool, it is a leash. And as long as man wears it, he will never be free.
The Bitcoiner lives with little, but he sleeps soundly. He knows that his satoshis are not someone else's promise, but the fruit of his own effort. He doesn't entrust his money to a banker, he entrusts it to code. He doesn't believe in speeches, he believes in mathematics. And in this rigor, he rediscovers faith. A faith without dogma, without state, without hierarchy. Faith in measurable, verifiable, immutable truth. What religions have promised, Bitcoin has encoded.
The last fiat man is trapped in a system that produces nothing but its own survival. The Bitcoiner, on the other hand, is already elsewhere. He lives in a parallel, decentralized, inviolable economy. He knows that the fiat world will collapse, not with a great crash, but in administrative silence. One day, accounts will be frozen, withdrawals limited, rates adjusted. Citizens will continue to accept it, until the screen goes blank. And then, it will be too late.
On that day, the last fiat man will wake up in the dark. His phone will no longer answer. His card will no longer work. His freedom will die with the network he believed to be eternal. He will seek refuge, meaning, value. But he will find none. Because he will have spent his life renting the world instead of owning it. Because he will have confused security with servitude. And while he desperately searches for a way out, somewhere, in silence, the Bitcoiner will continue to mine.
The sound of his machine will be the heartbeat of the real world. A world where value is proven, where freedom is quantified, where trust is not delegated. The last fiat man will die without understanding what he has lost. The Bitcoiner, however, will have already rebuilt. Block after block. Truth after truth.
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