Naomi Whitehead has lived through 116 years of monetary history. She was 3 when the Fed was created and 115 when the Czech National Bank became the first central bank in the world to buy Bitcoin. Here’s what happened in between: 1913 (age 3): creation of central banking. The Federal Reserve Act created the Fed and authorized Federal Reserve Notes, initially subject to a 40% gold-reserve requirement. The stated goal was an “elastic” currency and a lender of last resort. It was the institutional start of managed money. 1933 (age 22): Executive Order 6102. During the Depression banking crisis, Roosevelt required most private gold coin, bullion, and gold certificates to be surrendered at the existing official rate. Domestic gold convertibility was ended. Americans could no longer redeem dollars for gold. 1934 (age 23): end of the domestic gold standard. The Gold Reserve Act moved monetary gold to the Treasury and reset the official price to $35 an ounce, a devaluation of roughly 41%. Private monetary gold ownership stayed broadly restricted for the next four decades. The classical monetary restraint was broken for Americans. 1944 (age 33): Bretton Woods. The dollar became the center of the postwar system: foreign currencies were pegged to the dollar, and the dollar was convertible to gold at $35 only for official foreign holders. A gold-exchange standard, not the old full gold standard. It allowed the U.S. to issue dollar liabilities far beyond its gold holdings. 1971 (age 60): the dollar becomes fiat. The Nixon Shock closed the gold window. Foreign official holders could no longer redeem dollars for gold. By 1973 major currencies were floating. The dollar was no longer redeemable for a fixed quantity of gold. 2008 (age 98): the financial crisis. Housing leverage, bank balance sheets, and easy credit collapsed. The Fed cut rates to zero, began quantitative easing, and massively expanded its balance sheet to stabilize the system. Fiat expansion became the main crisis tool. October 2008 / January 2009: creation of Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper described a peer-to-peer electronic cash system with a hard cap of 21 million coins and no central issuer. The genesis block was mined in January 2009, with a message about bank bailouts embedded in it. A direct counter-offer to a system that had just required emergency intervention. 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024: the Bitcoin halvings. The new-supply rate was cut in half on a fixed schedule, from 50 BTC per block to 3.125 today. No committee or emergency exceptions. The monetary policy works whether Bitcoin was $10 or $60,000. March 2020 (age 109): COVID money printing. Rates went back to zero and the Fed launched massive QE. Its balance sheet surged from around $4.2 trillion at the start of 2020 to nearly $9 trillion by early 2022. Bitcoin’s issuance schedule did not change. 7 September 2021 (age 110): El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender. The first country to put it alongside a national currency, require businesses to accept it as payment, and hold it on the state balance sheet. A nation opted into the 21 million cap. January 2024 (age 113): U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs. The SEC approved exchange-traded products holding spot Bitcoin. Wall Street distribution met a fixed supply. BlackRock, Fidelity, and others became pipes into the same asset. October 2025 (age 115): Bitcoin hits a new all-time high above $126,000. Against a dollar whose gold link had been gone for 54 years. November 2025 (age 115): Czech National Bank buys Bitcoin. The Czech National Bank became the first central bank in the world to buy Bitcoin.

Last weekend was all about hardware wallets and self-custody at BTCHEL. I gave a keynote on Hardware Wallets 101 in Finnish, covering the basics, then joined a panel on “What’s actually stopping you from holding your own keys?” that went much deeper into self-custody. Thanks to everyone who came by, asked questions, challenged the ideas, and stuck around for the discussions. And thanks to the BTCHEL crew for putting it all together. Had an absolute blast.