When have you seen something that you can’t unsee?

Earlier this year, I sent a text message to my sons, Jackson and Nathan, on a Saturday morning.

I had built a computer server, installed open-source software, and installed Bitcoin Core software and began downloading the blockchain data that is Bitcoin. I had direct visibility into the Bitcoin network itself. I could view every block from the Genesis Block (block 0) onward. I could inspect every transaction, the sender and receiver addresses, the transaction amounts, the input and output scripts (UTXOs), fees paid, and confirmation status. And I had a Bitcoin wallet on my computer to store, send, and receive bitcoin.

I saw digital gold. And this I cannot unsee. 

Today, October 31, is the seventeenth anniversary of the publication of the Bitcoin: A Peer‑to‑Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto (October 31, 2008), the white paper that started it all.

I kind of noticed it at the time. But not as much as I should have. My ties to the open-source software community date back to my first business, E-Markets, when we built a server room in Ames with Dell boxes running open-source software, Linux, as their operating system. Out of the open-source and cypherpunk communities came this thing, Bitcoin.

A couple young entrepreneurs I hang out with had told me to check out Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah. Someday.

Someday came in 2021 when I purchased my first bitcoin at $47K. Then an exchange called FTX collapsed in November 2022 and bitcoin prices sank toward and below $20K. While my bitcoin investment was in the red, I started to do more research. I have always been part of the 0.00001% of economists with an opinion that a return to a hard money system with dollars backed by gold would be good. Could there be such a thing as digital gold? Had Satoshi Nakamoto been a digital alchemist? 

Last January I started a white paper of my own. If Bitcoin is digital gold, then it’s a digital commodity. Commodities have served as money, and commodity producers are certainly impacted by monetary systems. Are there opportunities for commodity producers in what increasingly appears to be an evolution toward more decentralized monetary and finance systems?

The opportunities white paper I’ve written, Commodity Markets and Decentralized Money, outlines the historical evolution of money, describes problems of the current fiat system for commodity markets, and highlights emerging opportunities in a Bitcoin Standard world. It also describes six opportunities: 1) Being paid in a currency that holds its value, 2) arbitrage between bitcoin and fiat currencies, 3) peer-to-peer commerce, and 4) decentralized pricing and risk management, 5) decentralized capital formation and access, and 6) tokenization. 

To summarize, the evolution to decentralized money heralds an era of new opportunity in commodity markets.

Buckle up, agriculture. It will be a ride!

Commodity Markets and Decentralized Money - October 31 2025.pdf