Electricity writes blocks that cannot be reprinted. Open to anyone. Every node checks the same rules. No debt on the chain.

A rising CAD wage is the illusion. The unit shrank. Count hours to one ounce of gold, and hours to one bitcoin against its 2010 dollar price.

(QC hourly × 2,080) / gold in CAD · 2,080 = 40×52, not official annual earnings · gold CAD from 1957. 1970: 148.5 oz · 2025: 14.2 oz · 2026 YTD: 11.0 oz.

US median family income, 1971: $10,290 ÷ gold $41 = 251.0 oz. Same ounces at gold on 2026-10-19 ($4,176.10) = $1,048,099. 2025 closed family income is $110,500. Not Québec wages.

Official CPI is a yearly average of a changing basket, not the price of one thing you bought. The Bank of Canada aims at 2%, the midpoint of a 1–3% range, since 1991. At 2% a price doubles every 35 years. At 1% it takes about 70. Over 1971–2025 a constant 2% path is 2.91×; 1% is 1.71×. The 2025 print was +2.1%. The index is 7.86× 1971.

A $2 1971 all-items basket is $15.71. Phones, clothes, and furniture pull that down. The official food basket is $20.89. Eggs are not on this tape. Milk and steak skip 1971. Butter in 1971 is wholesale, not the shelf. The same $2 held in gold is $232.

The claim is that school, housing, and health care rose because supply was held down and demand was subsidized, while machines got cheaper. Canada, 2000–2025, percent from each series’ own 2000 level. Tuition fees +109.9%. Owned accommodation +104.2%. Health care +59.3%, less than the all-items basket +72.1%. Household appliances ended −2.4%, after a deeper dip. Not a US hospital bill. Household appliances, not televisions.

Québec undergraduate sticker, school year against that calendar year’s wage and gold. 2006/07 $1,932 was 110.0 hours and 2.82 oz. 2024/25 $3,587 was 113.5 hours and 1.10 oz. The dollar sticker rose 86%. The hour barely moved. The sticker fell in ounces of gold.

Québec sticker hours 110.0 → 113.5 h. Computer equipment, software and supplies is a different index (2011-04=100) and fell 40.5% from 2012 to 2025. It is not on this chart. Official indexes adjust for quality.

The base hurdle is the rate of monetary debasement — money-supply growth — not the CPI print. Closed December year-on-year from the site’s own M2 series. After risk and costs, this tape still uses gold CAD 9.20%/yr as the hold rate. Global broad money is not in the boot files, so it is not on this chart.

United States, FRED CPIAUCNS, annual average from 1913. A $3 1913 basket is $97.72 at closed 2025 CPI — 3.07% of the old buying power left. January–July 2026 is a stub: $100.53. The same $3 in 2025 gold, from the 1913 mint price of $20.67, is $500. Not a Canada print.

Canada’s long series starts in 1914 (OECD all-items, not StatCan). A C$3 1914 basket is C$80.31 at closed 2024 — 3.74% left. January–March 2025 is a stub: C$81.19. Gold in CAD starts in 1957, so there is no 1914 gold path for that C$3.

Official CPI is the yearly print they target. Here the measure is the CAD price of one ounce of gold. 1971–2025: gold CAD 9.20%/yr (C$41.41 → C$4,809.51, 116×). Québec wages 4.60%.

Spending, transfers, and tax-to-GDP are the claim on the unit. Debt and M2 finance that claim when tax is not enough. The remaining gold hour is after-tax wage divided by the gold-equivalent wage.

The metal did not run out. U.S. gold stock rose from $4.10 billion in October 1929 to $4.45 billion in September 1931. After Britain left gold, the stock fell (to $3.99 billion). What failed was a fractional-reserve system under a legal gold-cover rule on Federal Reserve notes (40% at $20.67; excess was free gold). Commercial-bank deposits were a claim on the bank, not a direct gold window. In March 1933 an internal drain (coin versus deposits) and an external drain (fear of devaluation) exhausted free gold. Convertibility stopped.

The policy response was not to find more metal. It was to force private gold into government hands at $20.67, then raise the official price of the same ounce by 69% to $35. The gold stock went from $4,033 million (January 1934) to $7,438 million (February) — $2.8 billion of that was the repricing itself, loosening the cover constraint. This was a deliberate devaluation of the paper claim — the founding act of the modern fiat dollar.

Three economists who lived the 1930s named different parts of the same machine. They can all be right at the end of a long credit cycle: liquidation raises the real burden of debt, demand collapses when everyone cuts spending together, and the crash also clears weak structures. The gold prints above stay the cover drain and the $20.67 → $35 rewrite.

Hayek, Prices and Production (1931), named the boom before that drain. Credit was expanded. The market rate sat below the rate genuine saving would have set. Longer projects were started on that signal. When the expansion stopped, those projects no longer cleared.

Gold’s physical properties explain why it was chosen as money. Its market value, however, rested heavily on the monetary premium that came with that role. Once the state could compel surrender of the physical metal and rewrite the terms of the claim, the bearer character of gold proved limited. The episode remains the clearest demonstration that a monetary asset held through intermediaries or subject to legal seizure is not fully sovereign.

The headline is the price, not dividends. 1871–2025 is Shiller’s December average of daily closes, not December 31. 2026-08-21 is a live Yahoo print. In gold ounces, 2000–2025 is 4.77 oz → 1.99 oz.

Ideas from Saifedean Ammous on money, in plain words. Each line says where it comes from.

First market price was 8.6 cents in July 2010. Halvings on the chart are supply dates, not a forecast.

IBIT is a fund that holds bitcoin. The other tickers are companies that say they hold it. Their price also moves on leverage, new shares, and the stock-market clock. None of that mints a coin.

Day percent is last two Yahoo daily closes (session hours). Thin names (OTC, Euronext) gap. The coin does not care. Not a holdings census.