On Ulysses S. Grant and Sound Money
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We recently received an email from Lee Bratcher, Founder and President of the Texas Blockchain Council, that we agreed with whole heartedly and wanted to share with our audience.

“During the economic downturn of 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant took a firm stand for sound money that positioned the U.S. for our meteoric rise during the turn of the 19th century (Some trivia: Grant’s real first name was Hiram but due to a typo at West Point, they had his name down as Ulysses and from then on he was known as Ulysses). During his presidency, advocates for an easy money policy in Congress passed a bill, known quite literally as the inflation bill, that would have added $100 Million to the U.S. money supply (today we are adding that amount on an hourly basis).

Grant resisted the temptation to take the expedient route and he vetoed the bill, knowing it would cost his party in the mid-term elections. The Republicans were routed in the mid-term but his courage to do what was right set the country on a sound trajectory. This return to sound money after the Civil War set the U.S. up for an economic boom in the following decades. In fact, historian and Grant biography Ron Chernow posited that Grant’s veto of the inflation bill was the single most important factor in establishing the U.S. as the world’s preeminent industrial and economic power.

In the public square today, we should not succumb to defeatism on the topic of a debt spiral and prolonged periods of high inflation. Sound money matters. Grant knew it, we know it. The only people who don’t are the ones not paying attention and those who ascribe to modern monetary theory.”

We support this message and we also believe that sound money matters.

Byte Federal is the founding member of the Florida Blockchain Business Association and will be in attendance at the North American Blockchain Summit in November. We hope to see you there!