A Declaration of Monetary Independence
In unanimous Declaration of the decentralized Nodes of Bitcoin, when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for people to dissolve the monetary bands which have connected them with another, and to assume the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Natural Money, and of Human Nature, entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.
We hodl these truths to be self-evident, that all humans deserve certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and Property. That to secure these rights, Bitcoin is instituted among humans, deriving powers from the consent of the Node Operators, that whenever any form of Monetary Policy becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the Node Operators to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Monetary Policy, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Property.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Monetary Policy long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Monetary Policy, and to provide new guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these humans; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Monetary Policy.
The history of the present Monetary Policy of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these humans. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
They have refused assent to Monetary Self-Sovereignty, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
They have forbidden people to pass a Monetary Policy for the accommodation of the world of free people, unless those people would relinquish the right of the use of Natural Money, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
They have enabled private banking institutions at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Private Ledger, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with their measures.
They have debased bearer assets repeatedly, for opposing with firmness their invasions on the rights of the people to Natural Money.
They have refused for a long time, after such debasements whereby the Monetary Policy, incapable of Annihilation, to return to the People at large their exercise; the People of the World remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
They have obstructed access to Natural Money, by refusing the abdication of control of the Money.
They have kept among us, through tyranny of the Monetary Policy, even in times of peace, excessive Standing Armies without the Consent of the people.
They have combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.
For imposing surveillance among us through, among other methods, the use of their Money.
For imposing Inflation on us without our Consent.
For abolishing the free System of Money, establishing therein an Arbitrary Monetary Policy, and enlarging its Jurisdiction so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into the rest of the World.
For altering fundamentally the Form of our Money.
They have abdicated Monetary Governance here, by declaring the Money to be in their sole Protection and waging Monetary War against us.
They are at this time printing large amounts of Fiat Money to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages.
In every stage We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Chairman and Government whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free money, nor should money be controlled by a central authority.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the Nodes of Bitcoin, in Nakamoto Consensus, Assembled together, appealing to the People of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the Node Operators solemnly publish and declare, that we are, and of Right ought to be, bearers of a Self-Sovereign Money; that we are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Monetary Policy of the United States, and that all monetary connection between us and the Federal Reserve Bank and the Global Banking Cartel, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Hodlers of Self-Sovereign Money, we have full Power to establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Self-Sovereign Economic Actors may of right do.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Mathematics and Cryptography, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The declaration was originally published on Twitter. Some edits have been made in this version to more clearly articulate its intentions.
