RFK Jr. wants a Gold & Bitcoin Standard

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK) plans to bring the US Dollar back onto a sound money standard by progressively backing the currency with a basket of “hard assets including Bitcoin and precious metals”.

Speaking at a fundraising event, RFK explained how it would work:

“My plan would be to start very, very small; perhaps 1% of issued T-bills would be backed by hard currency, by gold, silver, platinum or bitcoin.”

The backing would increase annually depending on the initial outcome. Even a small backing would go a long way to restoring strength back in the greenback. With continued inflation only being hid meekly behind the statistical “base-effects” that come with a second year of large price rises, even a small backing with “hard” assets that have a limited supply is material. Bitcoin’s limited supply puts it in the same league as Gold, Silver and Platinum whose limited supply and natural properties are all considered to be precious metals. 

Running on a hard money platform runs in the Kennedy family. RFK’s famous uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, re-introduced silver certificates with Executive Order 11110 - issued on 4 June 1963. The treasury’s silver reserves had been depleted by 80% in 1961 alone, and the demand for silver was boosting the value of silver above the government's fixed value. The new silver certificates were to be issued by the treasury, not the Federal Reserve, and would in effect take the power to print ‘money’ away from the Central Bank….. Needless to say, the policies were wound-back in the months after the assassination, but that’s a story for another day. 

In the same speech, RFK also announced that, if elected, he would “exempt the conversion of bitcoin to the U.S. dollar from capital gains taxes.” He said that investing in Bitcoin and supporting its growth would have far-reaching benefits for the US economy more broadly and would serve to protect Americans’ financial privacy and freedom.

“My uncle, President Kennedy, when he was in office, understood the importance of hard currency and the dangers of having pure fiat currency with no other option,” Kennedy said. “He understood the relationship between fiat currency and war, fiat currency and … very, very destructive environmental projects and also these giant aggregations of wealth and the unbalance, the disparities in wealth that are the ultimate yield of every fiat currency.”

"Fiat currency was invented to fund wars,” he continued. “I like base currencies because they make it more difficult, you have to go to the public. You can't just print money to fund the war and tax the public through the hidden tax of inflation. You actually have to go to the public and say, ‘Here's what this war is going to cost.’”

While it’s hard to imagine many voters disagreeing with more financial privacy and freedom, it’s unclear how much credence the candidate’s policy platform is getting from traditional mainstream media. Time will tell if RFK is able to implement sound money monetary policy and bring the US dollar back onto the solid ground of hard assets such as Gold, Silver, Platinum and Bitcoin. This is of course all in the ‘choice’ department… the soon to be held BRICS summit discussing a new gold backed global currency may well remove that ‘choice’ element from the equation.  Interesting times ahead for the mighty US Dollar….