Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings, so said the American poet Carl Sandburg. Since the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin cyber-currency in 2009, techies today can create money, eroding the legal power of central banks to create fiat money. Few doubt that the mighty American empire is founded on the power of the United States dollar.

Not only is Uncle Sam able to create that currency, he has the unique power to sanction anyone using it, without the civil rule of law to appeal. Money is a tool of power, and creating it needs lots of energy, which is why mining cybercurrency is highly energy-intensive. The estimated power used to produce cyber-assets ranges from 0.4 to 0.9 per cent of annual global electricity generated. Total cyber currencies in the world are valued at between $2.6 to $3 trillion, not bad compared to roughly $8 trillion of official coin and currencies circulating around.

Put in perspective, the size of the global financial system per the Financial Stability Board at end 2022 was $461 trillion, roughly 4.5 times world GDP, compared with about 100 per cent of GDP in 1980. Banks accounted for 39.7 per cent of total financial assets, non-bank financial intermediaries 47.2 per cent, central banks 8.5 per cent and public financial institutions 4.6 per cent. McKinsey Global Institute estimated that the global balance sheet got bloated because of asset price inflation from lower interest rates and credit expansion, as well as rise in equity prices.

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Monetary expansion occurs either through fiscal deficits (increase in liability of governments), credit expansion by banks (debt creation) or........

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