If it wasn't abundantly clear to you last week there seems to be a bit of a crisis in the banking sector at the moment. The Fed's hawkish monetary policy over the last year and a half has sent interest rates for debt instruments soaring while simultaneously pulling dollars out of the system. What we're witnessing now is a system wholly dependent on low interest rates and dollar creation breaking down. It cannot operate without a constant deluge of those sweet IV fire hose injections of dollar liquidity.

In the midst of all of the bank failures and the ensuing chaotic scramble by governments and central banks bitcoin has performed like a true risk-off asset. Cleanly disconnecting from equities markets and c0mpletely diverging from bank stocks as citizens around the world wake up to the fact that the banks are, by all definitions, insolvent. As a bitcoiner it feels great to be validated. Since the days of Satoshi bitcoiners have been warning that a banking system run completely on the hopes and prayers of fiat diktat is a system doomed to fail. However, even though it feels good in a way to be validated, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to ensure that bitcoin is a sturdy enough lifeboat for those looking to exit the fiat system with as little pain as humanly possible. Make no mistake, there will be pain, but it can be mitigated if those building out the tools and companies that make it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to interact with the bitcoin protocol dig their heels in an begin shipping.

Focus is key right now. I know it is easy to get caught up in the "we told you so" mindset. I have certainly been guilty of that over the last couple of weeks. But I truly believe that it is a moral imperative for those of us building out every layer of the bitcoin stack to work as hard and as diligently as possible right now. There is still a lot of work to be done to ensure that as many people as possible can find safety in sats if and when they decide to.

Hashrate needs to be more granularly distributed.

Mining pools need to be further distributed to eliminate choke points.

The lightning network needs to continue maturing and being battle tested.

Wallets need better, more intuitive UX.

Multisig solutions need to be more widespread and embedded in business practices.

Transacting privately needs to be made more accessible.

Hardware devices need to get ready for mass production.

Point of sale systems need to be mainstreamed.

Bitcoiners need to be prepared to onboard family members and friends looking to move into bitcoin.

There is a ton of work to do and no time should be wasted. Again, I know it feels good to be validated in real time, but the problems we're attempting to solve are larger than we can fathom and an orderly transition is only made more probable if the infrastructure is as sturdy and robust as possible as the transition is happening. And make no mistake, the transition may be happening sooner than anyone thought possible. When your monetary and banking systems are prototypical con games they collapse rather quickly when confidence begins to erode. Every move governments and central banks have made over the last few weeks have allowed doubt to creep into the con game. Sure depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and other institutions have been made whole, but when banks like Credit Suisse, which have been around for almost 170 years, begin failing shock begins to enter the system.

2008 is still ripe in many people's minds and it looks like this banking crisis is setting up to be much worse than 2008 because we're looking down the barrel of a full on sovereign debt crisis instead of a collapse in the housing market. To make matters worse, we live in the age of social media in which information spreads like wildfire. Even if this crisis were as or less severe as the 2008 crisis the fallout will be worse because it's much easier to spread panic in 2023 than it was back then. Love it or hate it, this is the reality we live in. One person's version of spreading panic is another person's version of spreading information others have the right to know. Mainly, that the banking system is insolvent.

As more people become equipped with more information about how the banking system works and, more importantly, how it is being "saved" by the governments and central banks they are justifiably going to seek out alternatives. The financial pundits who are attempting to save the fiat fractionally reserved system are doing themselves a grave disservice at the moment by meticulously explaining why a full reserve bank cannot exist in today's world. Once people fully understand why full reserve banks cannot exist they will run for the doors.

Let's get to work.

Final thought...

Time to take the trash out.