Bill to Kill US Federal Reserve Was Inspired by Bitcoin Book

U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) made waves with Bitcoiners last month after introducing a bill to abolish the Federal Reserve. As it turns out, that bill was inspired by a famous book about Bitcoin that outlined the evils of central banking.

In a Thursday podcast appearance discussing the bill with author Tom Woods, Massie said he “learned some things” after listening to The Bitcoin Standard audiobook by Saifedean Ammous—concluding it was “way past time” to bring back legislation to end the Fed.

“The first 80% of it is not about Bitcoin, it’s about money, it’s about ‘what is money?’” the congressman explained. “He has to lay that down before you can explain what Bitcoin is, because you can’t assume that everyone knows what money was.”

The 2018 book proposed that Bitcoin could become the world’s most dominant money because of its superior monetary properties—particularly its scarcity, which is enforced by a maximum supply of 21 million coins. Ammous also connects a series of social ills in recent decades to the United States’ abandonment of the gold standard in 1971, including reduced household savings and inflated housing and asset prices.

Massie’s “Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act” touched on many of the same points, declaring that “retirees see their savings evaporate” under the Fed’s policies, which “benefit the wealthy and connected.”

Massie had co-sponsored a bill with the same name back in 2013, which was originally introduced by former Libertarian congressman Ron Paul in 1999.

While that bill received minimal support from just two co-sponsors eleven years ago, Massie contends that all of Ron Paul’s predictions have played out since that time: high inflation, trillions of dollars printed, and a “loss of faith” in government institutions.

To his surprise, Massie said, his 2024 bill received two dozen co-sponsors, all Republican.

The online Bitcoin community also gave Massie their unflinching support. On Thursday, Massie began an exchange with Ammous on Twitter over how they turned against centralized management of the economy, both citing economics professors.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.