Why Zack Polanski Should Embrace Bitcoin

In 2013 the Green Party wrote it into policy: debt-based money is “a key driver of unsustainable economic growth that is destroying the environment.” Then the party stopped talking about it.

Why Zack Polanski Should Embrace Bitcoin is an open letter to the leader of Britain’s eco-populist moment, written from inside his own party. The author is a Green Party member, and the ask is not that Polanski buy Bitcoin, endorse it, or hold a single satoshi. It is that he turn the same suspicion he already trains on billionaires and fossil capital onto one more piece of machinery: the way money itself is created.

Inside the book:

The growth imperative is built into the money. Why an economy that must expand every year to stay solvent will eat the planet whatever we vote for, and what the post-growth literature gets right and wrong.
Where money actually comes from. The Bank of England’s own 2014 bulletin on money creation, why 97% of the money supply is issued by private banks, and the Green policy that already says so.
Inflation is a wealth tax running in reverse. Collected from nurses, paid to asset holders, and never voted on by any parliament. Why a wealth tax treats the symptom.
The energy question, conceded and then answered. Honest accounting on Bitcoin mining consumption, the parts of the industry that embarrass the author, and curtailed Scottish wind that consumers are already paying to waste.
Not the casino. Written for a politician whose account was hijacked to promote a crypto scam. Why you can despise the tokens, the frauds, and FTX, and still take the underlying tool seriously.
Who wins and what it costs. The early-holder problem, the demographics, and the distributional objection stated at full strength rather than dodged.
What this asks of government, and what it doesn’t. Bitcoin as a commons, who the technology is actually for, and why honest money does not disarm a state.

Author Benjamin de Waal is a Bitcoin builder and consultant and a member of the Green Party of England and Wales.

This book is the author’s own argument. It is not affiliated with, approved by, or endorsed by Zack Polanski or the Green Party of England and Wales. Nothing in it is financial advice.