Dear Paul,

I am writing today in response to your opinion piece in the New York Times entitled "Why I'm a Crypto Skeptic". I have read numerous pundits' and economists' takes on the key question you posed in that article, namely "What problem does cryptocurrency solve?", but I remain dissatisfied with their answers. While they all provide valid and convincing arguments, they neglected the one argument that I believe resonates above all others with the human spirit.

Your detractors to date have all argued from a strictly rational economic and monetary perspective. In contrast to their technical financial arguments, all of which have merit, I am going to provide a simple answer that addresses both the problem cryptocurrency solves and what it is actually tethered to in terms a layman can understand. As one will see below, the problem it solves and the tether that guarantees value for its users are flip sides of the same coin.

To address the problems cryptocurrency solves, one must understand the fiat monetary system, private central banking and its political machinations. The private central banks enjoy a monopoly on issuing currency as debt that, via inflation they control, destroys the purchasing power of the general public while redistributing wealth upwards. Inflation they are only able to create because they have subverted and suborned government to treat human beings as yield-bearing chattel.

You confirmed this by stating, "...fiat currencies have underlying value because men with guns say they do." This clearly delineates how governments have been corrupted to collateralize the lives of its citizens - citizens it is sworn to protect from coercion and extortion by private parties. By confirming coercion and extortion as the foundation of the current economic order you acknowledge that financial slavery is not an unforeseen side effect of the system, but what it was made for.

These is a huge problem, to put it mildly.