<div id="readability-page-1"><div><div><p>Author: Tiezhu Ge on CRYP<span>TO; Source: X,</span><span>@TiezhuCryp</span><span>to</span></p><p>The most fundamental and implicit organizational and coordination mechanism in modern society is not money itself, but the continuous extension of debt-creditor relationships.</p><p>Whether it is a nation, a community, an organization, or an individual, they are essentially doing a repetitive action: exchanging the future for the present.</p><p>The economic growth and consumer boom we take for granted do not stem from wealth appearing out of thin air, but from a highly institutionalized consensus that the future can be allocated in advance. Debt is precisely the technical means of realizing this consensus.</p><p>From this perspective, a more fundamental core lies in: who has the greater ability to discount the future to the present, and who has the power to define the future. In this sense, the creation and contraction of money are merely expressions of a debt-ridden world. The magic of finance is actually only one thing: the intertemporal exchange of resources. I. Understanding Gold and the Dollar from a Debt Perspective If you place debt at the center of the world's operation, the roles of gold and the dollar immediately become clear. The dollar is not a currency; it is a tool for debt coordination and pricing. US debt is not simply a liability of the United States itself. Placed within the global balance sheet, the dollar system is: the United States exports its future promises, and the world provides the capacity to absorb present debt. Both sides, using the dollar as a contract, have reached the largest intertemporal transaction in human history. Gold's uniqueness lies in the fact that it is the only financial asset that is not backed by any liabilities. It requires no endorsement or promise from anyone; it is the ultimate repayment. From a balance sheet perspective, gold is the only asset without a counterparty. This is precisely why gold often appears inefficient, unprofitable, and lacking in growth potential when the debt system is functioning well; however, its value is re-evaluated when people begin to doubt whether it can be successfully redeemed in the future. Some say that gold is a safe haven against geopolitical risks. But if you continue to analyze it using balance sheets, this statement is incomplete. Geopolitics does not directly destroy wealth; what it truly undermines is the stability of debt relationships. II. Safe Haven: Finding a Healthy Balance Sheet Understanding the above logic... It becomes clear that if you understand the world as an ever-expanding balance sheet, then so-called hedging isn't about finding a single, perpetually safe asset, but rather about finding a healthy and sustainable balance sheet structure at different stages. The most fundamental risk isn't volatility, but rather the imbalance in debt structure. Therefore, if we observe recent market trends, what accompanies the depreciation of the US dollar and the huge fluctuations in the Japanese yen? It's the rapid appreciation of the fiat currencies of countries with relatively healthy balance sheets, like Switzerland. If we extend this further, why is silver rising, and why are other commodities rising? Looking at it from a broader macro perspective, the only fundamental variable currently influencing debt-creditor relationships is AI. AI is not simply an industry; in my view, its fundamental nature lies in its ability to reshape balance sheets. On one hand, it exponentially reduces human efficiency costs, making software cheaper, replacing labor, and bringing information processing to near-zero cost. On the other hand, it creates unprecedented rigid capital demands in the real world, making computing power, electricity, land, energy, and minerals the most powerful real-world constraints. These two forces are simultaneously impacting global balance sheets: efficiency is becoming lighter, while capital is becoming heavier. This is fundamental to the current debt system restructuring. In other words, any work that can be digitized, logicalized, and automated has its costs reduced to zero. Software, copywriting, design, and basic code—once expensive intellectual assets—are becoming as cheap as tap water. Everything has a price. The generation of each token involves the burning of computing chips, the consumption of electricity, and the transmission of copper cables. The more intelligent AI becomes, the more greedy it demands from the physical world. In the past few decades, global growth has relied heavily on financial engineering: credit expansion, leverage rollover, and expectation management. The future can be continuously discounted, making debt seem light and controllable. But when growth is re-bound to intangible variables like computing power, electricity, resources, and production capacity, debt is no longer just a numbers game. From this perspective, if you look at silver and commodities, what the market is pricing is a pre-pricing of future production capacity constraints. Therefore, when growth is locked in by physical constraints, the magic of debt fails. Because no matter how much currency you inject, without enough copper to build the power grid and enough silver to manufacture panels, AI's computing power cannot run. III. Has the end of the dollar arrived? Nothing is permanent, including gold. Understanding the workings of the debt world necessitates accepting a less-than-pleasant conclusion: gold is not a permanent solution either. The current price increase is merely a reflection of the scarcity of assets with no counterparty. However, gold cannot generate cash flow, improve productivity, or replace real capital formation. From a balance sheet perspective, it's essentially freezing risk temporarily. Returning to the US dollar, why does it still exist despite market pessimism? Because you need the world's deepest pool of assets for collateral, settlement, and hedging; you hold US Treasury bonds not just because you trust the US, but because you need an asset recognized by the global financial system and readily available for collateralized financing. The strength of the US dollar lies not in its financial correctness, but in its irreplaceable network effect. It is currently the only container in human civilization capable of supporting trillions of dollars in debt. For decades, the core capability of the dollar system has been to discount the future to the present: the US issues debt, and the world pays the bill; US consumption drives global supply—essentially a global redistribution of time value. However, as the US fiscal path increasingly relies on continuous balance sheet expansion and debt rollover, the dollar's credibility undergoes a subtle shift: it remains the best option, but no longer a free one, with opportunity costs rising significantly. But the fatal flaw isn't these factors, but rather the fact that as growth increasingly depends on electricity, computing power, resources, and production capacity, the financial system's expertise in using expectations, leverage, and discount rates to artificially transfer the future to the present will be constrained by the hard realities of the physical world. The so-called Greenland, tariffs, and manufacturing reshoring are all essentially games revolving around this hard constraint. In other words, the US must first complete the reshaping of AI infrastructure, making the dollar the sole credential for purchasing the world's strongest computing power and most efficient productivity. This is the necessary condition for the dollar's return to its former glory. Otherwise, against the backdrop of physical constraints and AI redefining the global division of labor, the dollar system will gradually lose its ability to discount the future, gradually heading towards an end-of-days era. A slow but irreversible relative decline will occur until a monetary anchor that better represents real productivity and technological dominance emerges to replace it.</p></div></div></div>

<p>The article by Tiezhu Ge discusses the role of debt in modern society, emphasizing that economic growth is driven by debt-creditor relationships rather than wealth creation. It highlights the dollar as a tool for debt coordination and gold as a unique asset without liabilities. The author argues that a healthy balance sheet structure is crucial for stability, and recent market trends reflect shifts in debt structures influenced by AI. The piece concludes that as growth becomes constrained by physical resources, the dynamics of debt will change significantly.</p>

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A World of Gold, Dollars, and Debt: A Reassessment of Balance Sheets