Bombs, Stones, and Scarcity: Why Bitcoin Wins

When the U.S. bombed the Central Bank of Iraq in 2003, chaos should have destroyed the Iraqi dinar.

But something strange happened.

In the Kurdish north, people had held onto old “Swiss dinar” notes—leftovers from before Saddam Hussein’s printing presses flooded Iraq with new currency.

After the bombing, the Saddam-era dinar plummeted. But the Swiss dinar—whose supply was fixed—surged in value.

No new notes were being made. With the central bank effectively gone, the currency that couldn’t be printed into oblivion became sound money by default.

Sound familiar?

A century earlier, on the remote island of Yap in Micronesia, money took the form of giant limestone discs called Rai stones.

These massive coins were rare because they had to be carved by hand and hauled across the ocean. The stones’ value came from how hard they were to get.

Then came an Irish-American trader named David O’Keefe, who used modern ships and tools to flood Yap with new Rai stones. Suddenly, the stones were no longer scarce.

Even though chiefs tried to declare O’Keefe’s stones worthless, the supply shock crushed the value of the entire monetary system.

When money loses its scarcity, it loses its value. Yap learned that the hard way.

Which brings us to Bitcoin.

Unlike fiat money, Bitcoin has a fixed supply: there will never be more than 21 million coins.

No one can print more.

No military can bomb its vault.

No politician can dilute its value.

Its scarcity is enforced by code, not committees.

Bitcoin is what the Swiss dinar became by accident—and what Yap’s stone currency could never be: hard money that’s resistant to manipulation and inflation.

As the world drifts into deeper monetary instability, Bitcoin offers something rare: a stable, sovereign, decentralized foundation for value. It’s money that belongs to no one—and everyone.