The Satoshi Revolution – How and Why Government Outlawed Private Money

How did ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788 affect private money?
People assume the United States Constitution grants Congress a monopoly ‘right’ to issue money. The assumption comes from Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 of the Constitution which delegates to Congress the power “[t]o coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.” People are incorrect.

In his pamphlet, “Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails” (1844), the legal scholar and private money advocate Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) explained,

“[T]he powers of Congress…’to coin money’, are in reality exclusive, only as against the State governments….The constitutional prohibition upon individuals, to coin money, extends no farther than to prohibitions upon ‘counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States’. Provided individuals do not ‘counterfeit’ or imitate ‘the securities or current coin of the United States’, they have a perfect right, and Congress has no power to prohibit them, to weigh and assay pieces of gold and silver, mark upon them their weight and fineness, and sell them for whatever they will bring, in