The Currency Trilogy of the Entropy Increase Era: Golden Ark, Dollar Dusk, and Computing Power Babel Tower

Written by: Musol

When I first read “Love, Death, Bitcoin” and saw the epic of three hundred years of monetary history folded into a ten-thousand-word essay, looking at the curve on my phone where gold and Bitcoin once resonated and climbed, I vaguely glimpsed the floating remnants of currency in the long river of history—the tulip bubble of the Dutch Guilders has not yet dissipated, the echoes of the British pound’s cannons still resonate, and the stars and stripes of the dollar are fading in the torrent of data.

This reminds the author of Braudel’s insight in “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II”: the twilight of every hegemonic currency is a metaphor for the entropy of civilization. At this moment, gold awakens in the central bank vaults, Bitcoin whispers in the power matrix, and the dollar hovers on the edge of the debt cliff. Within the space-time folds formed by these three, there lies a deeper capital fable than Keynes’ “animal spirits.”

After re-reading William Endall’s secret history of the banking family late at night, I suddenly realized that the shadow cast by the thirteen pillars cast by the founding of the Federal Reserve in 1913 had been extended to Vanguard Group’s ETF matrix and BlackRock’s Bitcoin spot fund a hundred years later. This fateful cycle is just like the civilizational season depicted by Spengler in The Decline of the West - when gold flows from the secret room of the South African dictator to the London vault, when the dollar climbs from the ruins of Bretton Woods to the throne of the petrodollar, when Bitcoin transforms from Satoshi Nakamoto’s cryptography puzzle to the “digital gold” in the institutional position report, mankind’s pursuit of absolute value has always oscillated between the heavy curtain of power and the rift of freedom.

Let’s throw a jade brick to引砖, using my own experiences and humble opinions, and with the remnants of financial history as a torch, attempting to illuminate the eternal theater of the collapse and reconstruction of this currency Babel Tower:

Pt.1. Hegemonic Transformation: The Evolution from Gold-Backed Chains to Oil Sovereignty

Tracing back to Hamilton’s central bank concept in 1790 and the covert birth of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the gene of dollar hegemony has always engraved the capital will of the “giants of the steel age.” The establishment of the Bretton Woods system elevated the dollar to a pedestal, just as Keynes warned that the “golden shackles” ultimately became the sacrifice for the Triffin dilemma—Nixon’s “Sunday of Default” in 1971 declared the end of the gold standard, yet gave rise to a new order of petrodollars.

This process is akin to the transition of hegemony depicted by Braudel in “Material Civilization, Economics and Capitalism from the 15th to the 18th Century”: the financial hegemony of the Netherlands gives way to the industrial hegemony of the UK, ultimately culminating in the oil-military complex of the United States. The technological prosperity of the Clinton era and Greenspan’s loose policies pushed the hegemony of the dollar to its peak, but also laid the groundwork for the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, as revealed by Soros’s theory of reflexivity:

Prosperity itself breeds the seeds of destruction.

Pt.2. The Millennium Paradox: From Barbaric Relics to Signs of Collapse

From the gold coins of the Roman Empire to the anchors of Bretton Woods, gold has always played the role of “Noah’s Ark in times of crisis.” The price surge triggered by the dollar’s decoupling from gold in 1971 (from $35 to $850 per ounce) was essentially a stress response to the collapse of the fiat currency credit system, confirming Keynes’s assertion that “gold is the last bastion and reserve in times of emergency.”

The 2008 financial crisis, when gold fell and then rose, exposed the fundamental contradiction of the modern financial system: when the black hole of liquidity devours all assets, only gold can pass through the monetary illusion and become the “ultimate liquidity”. Now Trump’s tariff cannon and debt snowball ($36 trillion in national debt/124% of GDP) are repeating the historical playbook, and the feat of global central bank gold purchases exceeding 1,000 tons for three consecutive years is just like the sorrow of Mondale’s “impossible triangle” in the digital age - the triangular support of sovereign credit currencies (exchange rate stability, free flow of capital, independent monetary policy) is collapsing, and gold is once again the ultimate choice of “stateless currency”.

Pt.3. Three Shadows: From Black Obsidian Cocoon to Gilded Transformation

The blockchain spark sown by Satoshi Nakamoto in the embers of the 2008 financial crisis has undergone three value discoveries:

The dark web payment tool of 2013, the ICO frenzy carrier of 2017, and the institutional asset allocation of 2020, ultimately culminated in the ultimate transformation of “digital gold” during the global credit crisis of 2025. This evolutionary trajectory aligns with Schumpeter’s theory of “creative destruction”—the collapse of the old system clears ecological niches for new species. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s declaration that “Bitcoin is the internationalized version of gold,” along with MicroStrategy’s aggressive strategy of holding 500,000 BTC, marks the formal coronation of traditional capital’s recognition of Bitcoin’s value storage properties. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s executive order incorporating Bitcoin into strategic reserves mirrors the historical reflection of the Nixon Shock of 1971:

When the foundation of fiat currency credit is shaken, decentralized assets become candidates for the new order.

Pt.4. J-Curve Sanctification: Paradigm Rebirth Labor Pains

The current capital market is undergoing a triple variation of “dollar decoupling - gold soaring - bitcoin awakening,” and the essence of this structural transformation is the generational shift of the monetary paradigm. As economic historian Charles P. Kindleberger pointed out in “A Financial History of Western Europe”: monetary system changes often lag behind technological revolutions by 50-100 years.

The J-Curve dilemma that Bitcoin is currently facing—short-term constrained by the valuation logic of tech stocks, long-term benefiting from the consensus of digital gold—resembles the dormant period before gold broke free from the gold standard in the 1970s. From the perspective of Kondratiev wave theory, we are standing at the historical intersection of the sixth wave of technological revolution (digital civilization) and the reconstruction of monetary order, where Bitcoin may play the role of gold in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution:

Both the gravedigger of the old system and the paving stone of the new civilization.

Looking back at three hundred years of monetary history, from Hamilton’s central bank blueprint to Satoshi Nakamoto’s cryptographic utopia, humanity’s pursuit of value storage has always oscillated between centralized power and decentralization. The twilight of the dollar’s hegemony, the renewed crowning of gold, and the wild growth of Bitcoin together constitute the monetary trio of this era.

As Marx said: “Money is not a thing, but a social relationship.” When the trust bonds of globalization show cracks, the rise of digital currency may signal a real-world projection of Hayek’s ideal of “denationalization of money.” In this era full of uncertainties, the only certainty is that the evolution of the forms of money will never stop, and we are all witnesses and authors of this millennial epic of monetary history.