TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #798: The Roman Playbook for Destroying a Currency with Jeremy Ryan Slate

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Jeremy Ryan Slate, host of the Athenian Book Club, traces how Roman emperors debased the denarius from 95% silver to nearly nothing to fund legions and donatives. Marty Bent and Jeremy cover the Third Century Crisis, Diocletian's price controls, Constantine's gold solidus, and why sound money kept the Byzantine Empire stable for centuries. They draw parallels to Federal Reserve money printing, quantitative easing, the Cantillon effect, inflation, and why Bitcoin may offer a modern fix for broken money. Jeremy on X: https://x.com/JeremyRyanSlate Jeremy’s website: https://jeremyryanslate.com/ The Bitcoin Playbook for Commercial Real Estate Owners & Investors: https://www.tftc.io/CRE STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/yHGkvYxdqT Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: Block: Cash App: For a limited time, new customers can get $21 added to their balance. Just use code TFTC10 when you sign up, and send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. Square: Visit http://square.com/go/tftc for up to $200 off eligible Square hardware. Bitkey: Use code TFTC10 for 10% off the new Bitkey. Aven https://www.aven.com/bitcoin CrowdHealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/tftc Simple Mining https://www.simplemining.io/tftc Salt of the Earth: https://drinksote.com/tftc Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/ Disclosure: Bitcoin services are provided by Block, Inc. Bitcoin services are not licensable activity in all U.S. states and territories, and not all services are available in all states. Bitkey is not available in New York. Block, Inc. operates in New York as Block of Delaware and is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Bitcoin is a non-deposit, non-bank product that is not FDIC insured and involves risk, including monetary loss. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures: https://help.cash.app/btcdisclosures Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at http://square.com/go/tftc! #squarepartner. Offer expires December 31, 2026 at 11:59 pm PST. Offer for $40 off the cost of one Square Stand, $75 off the cost of one Square Terminal, $100 off the cost of one Square Handheld, or $200 off the cost of one Square Register, excluding applicable taxes. Limited to one discount per product type per seller account. Each code is limited to one redemption per account holder. Valid for new Square customers located in the US only. Offer not valid with guest checkout. Square reserves the right to modify, revoke or cancel the offer at any time. Offer cannot be combined with any other coupon. Void where prohibited, not redeemable for cash, and non-transferable. #squarepartner #blockpartner

You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free. If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Jeremy, thank you for joining me.

kids for having me, man. I appreciate you inviting me on. Well, I'm very excited for this, this conversation. It's been a meme for the last couple of years, but men thinking about the Roman Empire and what the trajectory of modernity, how it compares to what happened in Rome. I was telling you before we ever record how I found it. I found, I think I remember now. I think it was a clip from your Sean Ryan episode. Uh, the Federal Reserve one or no? No, it wasn't about money because I was, I was pumped when I DM you. I was like, hey, would love to have you on the show to talk about the history of Rome, but through the lens of their monetary system,

you're like, this is my favorite topic. So it's the most important. You know, like everything else that is happening, like, sure, history is never monocausal. It's never one thing, but like monetary policy, if you've got good money, you can make a lot of mistakes and everything will be okay. Well, and that's like, oh, what are our taglines of the show

is fix the money, fix the world. So this just started in this city nine years ago. I've moved around. I was in Texas now in Philadelphia, but now coming up to record a pub key, But I started the show because I'm a bitcoiner. People are looking to learn about Bitcoin. And I truly believe that a lot of the issues

that we see today as it pertains to social, political, economic stem from the fact that we broken the money. 100%. Money is the root of everything we do as a society. Well, I'm glad this interview finally happened then, because I have been banging the drum for this for probably five years that it's like border shore, you know, social policy sure. But like money,

fixes a lot of mistakes. And I think the Roman East is a really good example of that. The Eastern Roman Empire, which history likes to call the Byzantine Empire, that word didn't exist until the 16th century. One of the major reforms Constantine did is he actually fixed the money. And that gave them 700 years without real inflation, which is pretty wild. So it can fix a lot of mistakes. Well, before we get to Constantine. Yeah. Sorry, I'm going ahead. No, no. I think because I think it's important to like set the stage and of how the denaria how was initially issued and how it inevitably became debased and I mean we don't have to go through the whole timeline everything exactly happened but like I guess a broad brush yeah what was

happening socially and parallel to the debasement of the currency what were the justifications for it and how how did it happen initially well I think just the one thing important understand before we get into that is the idea of like what was Rome because I think a lot of people get confused they hear you know Roman Empire Julius Caesar being the first emperor which he wasn't You know, Rome is, it's a kingdom first in 753 BC. It becomes a republic in 509 BC and then an empire somewhere between, it's debated, but somewhere between 31 and 27 BC. And in the West, that goes to 476.

So very often we're talking about monetary debasement. We're actually talking about the empire. So we're talking about kind of that second century is a really good period of time to put it. And if you want to look at coinage, the reason coins existed, their main purpose was actually to pay the military. it's important to understand when you're going to see a coin, why would you put the things on it you're going to put on it? So if you're a weak emperor, you're going to put a lot of things on it to make you look strong because you want the military to take that coin and be like, oh, that's badass. Yeah, of course, I'll take this money. And that was a very important key component

of trust. So money isn't just money. It's also an amazing propaganda tool. There is a book, if anybody gets a chance to go grab it by Zonker. I think it's called Propaganda in the Age of Augustus or something like that. But if you look up Dr. Frederick Zonker on an Amazon, you can find it. And it kind of goes over more of like the symbols and things people put on coins. So coinage is vital. Now when you look at the denarius, the silver denarius was their kind of key type of money they used. Now they had gold coins and things, but the main things that would be used in the marketplace was the Solidus. So that, or that, I'm sorry, the DeNarius. The Solidus is the gold coin. This is an aureus would be in the time of Augustus where that's about the first century AD,

well, first century BC to first century AD, it's about 95% pure silver. Now, what you end up seeing is by the 270s or like deep into what's called the third century crisis at this point in time, it's somewhere between two and four percent pure. A really easy number to say is five because we really just don't know the exact purity because coins differed so much, but it had lost 90% of its silver content. in about a 200-year period. So that shows you that debasement kind of hit a certain point and hits the gas, and there's a really great chart out there,

which shows kind of the value of Roman currency, and it kind of goes across, goes across, just drops off a cliff and then goes flat. And the thing you want to find out is, why does that happen? And this goes back to the military again, which is a really key point. So in 193, there is Commodus, who is the son of Marcus Aurelius, and he dies, the calendar's changed since then,

but sometime around January of 193. And that year is what's called the year of the five emperors. So the guy that takes over for Commodus, which Cominus is killed, by the way, he's strangled to death by a gladiator after there's several botched assassination attempts on him, including his concubine trying to poison him with wine. They just really didn't like this guy. The guy that takes over for them is a senator named Pertanx. And Pertanx is very well thought of.

He's had a senatorial family for a very long time. but he reigns for somewhere around 80 days because what ends up happening is he wants to start to try to handle some of the debt he starts to pull back some of the pay that's promised to the Praetorians which is something you just don't really do so the Praetorians kill him

and they actually take the empire and put it up for auction and the man that ends up winning has one of the best names in Roman history which is Didius Julianus and he bids 25,000 Cistercies per man per guardman member and he becomes the new emperor. Now, there is a politician who's not really a general yet,

but he will become one in North Africa and from an area named Leptus Magna. And his name is Septimius Severus. He's actually going to come with a legion from North Africa into Italy, have Didius Julianus killed, and then place himself upon the throne. He's going to remove those guys from the Praetorian Guard that have been a problem, replace them with his old men. And what he does after that, is this kind of key thing to what causes the debasement of currency. So what he's going to do is double legionary pay. He's going to somewhere around double the size of the legions because he realizes I need a bigger army to control things like what just happened.

And when a new emperor took over, they did something called a donative. That was a gift they gave to the military. So he gives the largest one since Marcus Aurelius. So we're going like four emperors before that. So a huge gift and double legionary pay. And that's going to be a blueprint that every emperor after, him into the third century is going to follow. And that's why money is going to lose value so quick.

And how did they do that is they would actually clip off pieces of the coins, and they would add other base metals to take apart the size and the weight and everything else. So you're gradually seeing this silver coin become bronze on the inside with a nice type of like an aluminum foil version of the silver on the outside. So that's, there's lots of other causes you could say, what destroys money, but that's really the key one is, is military pay and what they were doing with it. Yeah. It was a long winded, so I'm sorry. No, no. I'm happy you said that because this is something I've been saying, confirms and validates something I've been saying, but ultimately,

because after that, you had the Roman army spread out throughout their part of the world. Yes. And that was ultimately, I think, fast forward to the end, what led to the whimper of the fall of Rome, which was the military came back and said, hey, we just went and fought these wars. Can you pay us? They got the currency. They're like, this is worthless. Well, there's a little bit more to it than that as well, because obviously there's other things that caused the currency to collapse faster. Like Severus's son, Caracalla, is in a real need for money. So he's in a, in 212, he's going to take about 30 million people and make them citizens overnight because now it changed the way they were taxed. He could also tax their inheritance. So he's really in a need for new money.

But then also, if you look at how the military changes, that's a really, that's a really really key component too, because why would this military come back and say, hey, we're not happy with this money? And that's because for the most part, they had become less and less Roman. And I know Elon's talked about this a lot, you know, birth rates and whatever it might be. And that's part of it, but it's not the only thing. It's not monocausal. In the 160s, you have something called the Antonine plague where about 10% of the empire dies. You also have policies that had changed pre-empirate and late republic into who could serve, because they also had a military crisis then as well. As there were more slaves coming in and the individual farmers had lost their farms, there was a property requirement to serve, so there's trouble getting soldiers. So Marius

is going to end up changing that, getting rid of the property requirements, now he can bring the landless poor and the army. So they start, the army itself becomes really just the landless poor and even other non-Romans they could pull in. You know, even Julius Caesar had his German guard that was pretty important to him. But as you get past this Antenheim plague in the 160s, there's now an issue of where do we get more soldiers from. And that's where they start bringing in, initially troops into the legions, and then they create a policy in the late third and fourth century

called the Federati. And that's basically these barbarian tribes fighting under barbarian commanders, but under the flag of Rome. So when your money loses value, and the people fighting for you are just for that money and the promises you can keep because Rome had broken a lot of promises these barbarians,

well, when the jig is up, they're going to turn on you. And I think when you look at the fall of Rome in 476, it's kind of not the, you know, down in flames and mashing of teeth. It's literally just a contract. The final emperor is a teenager named Romulus Augustulus, and Odo Walker, who is the Visigothic commander at that point in time, basically retires him, sends him to Ravenna with a pension,

and there's records of him living into the 6th century, and sends the Imperial Regalia back to Constantinthropos, says we don't really need an emperor anymore. Emperor Zeno is kind of like, oh, whatever, I don't have time to deal with it. So it's kind of really interesting how money really is a core component of that, because if you had sound money, you could have survived a lot of those things. And was it a frogs boiling a water situation over the course? Like, what was the awareness of the Roman public or the army as the currency was being to base? Well, one of the interesting things is the military is going to become aware first. If you've heard of the word salary, which many people have,

to deal with on a yearly basis. It comes from the words salarium, which is the Latin word for salt. What happens in the third century is soldiers aren't incredibly happy with the money. So now they're adding an amount of a salt ration that you're also given in addition to your money. And because salt has so much value, it could be used for so many different things. That's where the idea of being worth your salt is coming from. And you also see, I guess to describe the third century crisis because this is kind of a key part of it, you would have men claim to be emperor, their Legion would raise them up, and they might find something purple to put them in or take their legionary flags down, sew them together, and make that something purple to put on that

man. And then that guy would go march on Rome. And in that 26 period from 235 to 284, a 50-year period, sorry, you have about 26 different men claim to be emperor. And that's a kind of a really key component showing you how the military felt about it. Well, if that guy becomes emperor, he can get me more than what I'm getting now. And they would fight for that promise. And if that promise didn't come through, well, it wouldn't have to be another commander killing that emperor because they would do it themselves.

And there's numerous different awarenesses of that. But you also see, as you're getting deep into this third century crisis, so after 235, there's a strong black market that happens. Because initially in the marketplace, people are demanding more coins because they realize something's wrong with the coins they have. You know, the silver is flaking off in their hands. so they're realizing something is wrong.

So they raise prices. And when it's really happening is a black market because they're realizing that the only way to handle this is actually to trade goods. And Diocletian, who's one of the famous reformers toward the end of the third century, I think somewhere around 301, he's going to have his edict of maximum prices.

Where he's going to say, all right, this has gotten so bad, we're going to tell you how much you can charge and there's lists you can look up, like how much you could charge for legal services, all these different things, where he thinks he can solve it with price controls. And that actually just makes the way black market go harder because people are like, well, I'm not going to be told how much I can make.

So when you look at the average person, the military is going to feel at first, but the average person is going to start realizing, I'm not going to pay that for that. I'm just going to, well, you take a sheep? Like, you know, what can I do to actually start trading in kind? Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's literally a story as old as time. If you have, and that's, again, one of the things I've been saying on this show for years in the context of Bitcoin juxtapose to the U.S. dollar. any other fiat currencies like if you have the ability to hit the button to print more money push come to shove near in that position of power you're going to hit it well can we just call it something

so people don't know what it's called like maybe q ewee that'd be a great thing yeah quantitative easing what does that mean oh don't don't worry about it just means we're printing more money yeah and that's and that's again bringing this into the the parallels between ancient roman today i think we've reached a point particularly post-covid where people are recognizing like hey something's wrong with the money the inflation going rampant. And I think it's setting off alarm bells in people's heads. Well, I think the struggle, too, for most people, they just see prices going up,

and they just think things are getting more expensive, and they don't realize that it's actually the dollar in your pocket. It's the greedy corporations. No, it's the greedy corporations. You know, we're going to eat the rich, whatever it might be. But they don't realize that it's the dollar in their pocket that every time new money is printed is now divided up and worth less. And for a lot of people, most of their dollars,

I'm as guilty of this anybody else. I hardly use cash anymore. Most of your dollars are digital anyway, right? So it's very easy to dilute them. So it's a lot more insidious because people go to the gas pump or they go to the grocery store. You know, I'm in northern New Jersey. It was like nine bucks for the good bacon last week.

I'm like, that's insane. But like you see these prices going up astronomically and you just really think things are getting more expensive when it's actually your dollar has been devalued to such a point. And then they try to fix it with different policies like, you know, universal basic income hasn't happened yet, but that's been a big topic.

We had our COVID checks. We had our COVID checks, which once again drives inflation, makes a dollar in your pocket worth less, or there's been the latest thing of if we win the election in November, or Trump says he's going to give everybody $5,000. Well, that's kind of concerning because that would destroy the economy again and dilute the money further, make the inflation problem worse. And you even look at, I'm trying to think of what the thing I was going for here is, you look at kind of how money is diluted and it becomes a real

problem it becomes a because people just don't understand oh minimum wage is the thing i was looking for you like states like california passing a 20 an hour minimum wage or 15 new jersey 15 dollar an hour minimum wage they don't realize that actually takes a problem way above the point where you can solve it and makes that problem worse like when it's actually a monetary problem yeah and we talk about this a lot in bitcoin that can't tell in effect too like the mechanism through which money is created um i'm sure you've heard the mean the case-shaped economy obviously the well-dwell and equality has gone up but the mechanism from dollars being created either via the commercial banking system via new loans or the federal reserve via just the overprinting of the currency

via treasury buybacks or quantitative easing buying treasuries printing money to buy those assets mortgage back securities whatever it may be the people that get access to that money first benefit they just take it and they buy assets financial assets typically real estate assets hard assets that go up and by the time that money matriculates down to the low rungs of the economic ladder, the prices have already risen and the amount you're getting paid, maybe get like a two and a half to five percent income increase on year on year. By the time you've, that's manifested in your bank account, prices have gone up and you're already behind. Well, I think the struggle too is I think even like the way the tax system is set up, you know, the people with the most money get the

most benefit and the people at the least money get the most benefit. It's the people in the middle that actually are a lot of small business owners that are actually driving the economy. They get hit the hardest, right? With self-employment taxes, and a lot of those of different things as well. So it becomes hard for them to survive. So it's like the system continues to kind of just grind people out and there's not a ton of ways out. Yeah. And so like bringing back this back to parallels.

Sure. Going back backward in time to ancient Rome. I mean, mentioned Constantine. Like what would, based off of what you've studied in Rome and the debasement of their currency and the, the negative consequences that had on the Roman Empire. You mentioned Constantine. What did he do to fix the currency?

What was the benefit of that? So I guess to kind of go a little bit before him, too, is kind of important because emperors realized that currency was a problem. And there's a number of attempts to actually fix that. I mentioned Caracalla before. He mince a coin called the double antinianus, which is basically, about one and a half size of the denarius.

And they're like, oh, it's so good, it's worth two of them, but they're kind of like, well, the weight's about one and a half. He's like, no, no, that's two, it's two. So you have an attempt to fix currency there because people were losing faith in currency. You go down the road toward the end of the third century crisis around 275, Aurelian who's the empire had broken up

at that point in time where you have kind of the hollowed out center. You have the West breaks off and forms, it's called the Golic Empire, the East breaks off and forms of the Palm Iran Empire. And in a five-year period, he reconquers the West, reconquers the East, and they issues a new coin, hoping that people will have faith in this coin.

And he's assassinated some term around that time period. So he doesn't have time to actually fully institute a monetary policy. You go further, and Diocletian is gonna attempt to issue new gold and new silver coinage. And people just didn't have faith in it. Like there was a real crisis of confidence. So when you look at what Constantine did,

the two prongs of it, even though there's other things you could put attention when they did, but the two prongs of actual monetary policy is pretty important because you have a crisis of confidence in kind of the central part of the Roman Empire, right? Where people are pulling further away from being involved in the state because it's not really benefiting them.

So Christianity is actually a really key part of that because now people are brought into kind of one worldview again, right? Because Rome is interesting where you had your 12 traditional Roman gods, but you could bring in gods in different places. You might have soul invioms, which is a god that are really in worshipped and Constantine earlier in his life worship, which is from North Africa. You might worship ISIS from Egypt or Apollo from Greece, and a lot of these things were acceptable. And the only time real worship of Roman gods was enforced is when

things weren't going well. They would try to restore what's called the peace of the gods or the Pax de Orm by forcing everyone to sacrifice to Roman gods. So that had been their way of trying to to bring people, I guess, back on the same page. And it's not incredibly successful because there's a lot of persecutions of Christians, Jews, and other different religions in that time period because they would not sacrifice. And so Christianity is kind of a key point of giving people something to believe in again. And that's kind of pulling the doctrine and the theology and everything out of it and just seeing that it was important to have people on the same page. That's one side of it. And Constantine was a driver of that. He was a driver of that. It's not the official religion of the

empire during his life. He's going to pass the edict of Milan in 313, which basically takes Christianity and makes it no longer illegal, but it won't become the official religion of the empire until 380 under Theodosius. But that's one of the first core things he's doing is getting people, I guess you could say, on the same page. Now, if people are on the same page, it's going to be easier to introduce a monetary reform. So what he ends up doing now is since Christianity is being favored and a lot of pagan temples are closing, he's now taking in a lot of the gold from a lot of the places that, you know, the different temples and things that are out there. So he starts bringing gold into the center. And around 314, he mints a few hundred gold coins. And he's going to mint gold coins

every single year until sometime in the late 320s. He dies in the 330s. So over that period, he's able to gradually put them on a gold standard. And that gold coin that he puts them on, the solidus, is going to go until about the year, I think, it's like 1054 somewhere around there without inflation. So, and I guess to understand as well, it doesn't mean that the denarius or that silver denomination disappear, that becomes kind of a two-tiered economy, right? Where there's gold that's kind of keeping everything stable. Silver is still used quite a bit, but now there's gold that people have faith in because this currency is stable. So that's a really key thing that Constantine does. And interestingly enough, I don't think

the monetary policy really gets any play out there. Everybody just talks about Christian. because it's such a dramatic change, and that is an important change, but the currency changes is vital. And it's kind of coupled with a lot of the different things he does. He also, the Praetorian Guard had been responsible for killing somewhere around 17-ish different emperors, and he actually disbands them and actually closes down

the Castro Praetoria, which is like their home base where they go to hang out. This is like the deep state of... You could say that in a lot of ways. The Praetorian Prefect, who's the person in charge of the Praetorian Guard, was very often seen as the most powerful man in Rome. And if you even look at the second emperor, Tiberius,

he's dealing with, he's a weird guy. He kind of doesn't want to be emperor, but he does want to be emperor. And later in life, he decides he just doesn't want to live in Rome anymore. So he goes and lives in the island of Capri. And there's still some of the ruins there too. And you can see his palace.

It's kind of interesting to look at. But he makes like this sex palace on Capri and kind of like leaves alone Rome to his pretty, Prefect Sejanus, and he only comes back to Rome when he feels that Sejanus has gotten too powerful, and his own life might be threatened, and has Sejanus put to death. So the prefect and the Praetorian Guard is, in terms of a power center, you could see it as kind of a power behind the power. So Constantine's going to realize this is a real problem. I've seen how many emperors they killed.

I remember a hundred years ago when they auctioned off the empire to Didius Julienus, that's something that needs to go. We need to believe in something. We need sound money. And if you look at the Eastern Roman Empire, you know, I think it's an oversimplification to say that it's just money and something to believe in that saves the East. It's also geography as well. They'd had some of the richer tax bases. Constantinople is insanely hard to attack because of where it's located. And in Rome, in the West, emperors had actually moved out of the city of Rome and we're up in the kind of northeast in a place called Ravenna because it was surrounded by swamps and it was a little bit easier to defend. They couldn't really defend Rome anymore. So

geography plays a big part in it but i think without currency without shared belief you don't really have something to save and when constantine was slowly instilling a in or um installing a gold standard what were the the externalities on the roman economy or the the the lead to peacetime that were people less um perturbed than they were before uh did they recognize that the currency was actually So that's hard to say. I don't know a lot about that part.