Stroke of a Pen

IntroBefore the banks, before the paper, there was a stone.

Verse 1It started with a stone on the island of Yap,
limestone wheels you could never fit into a sack.
Nobody moved them, everybody knew whose they were.
The first ledger on earth was a memory, a word.
Then O'Keefe sailed in with the tools to haul more,
flooded the island, now the stone ain't rare no more.
Glass beads in West Africa, precious in the trade,
till the glassworks overseas made the value fade.
Every time the tech got better, the money got diluted.
The hardest thing to make is the money that survived it.
Gold came out the ground at a trickle, never flood.
Kings wore it on their heads and soldiers paid in blood.
Newton at the Mint set the silver price too low,
1717, and the gold standard grows.
Then paper made it lighter, just a promise, just a claim.
Banks wrote more claims than gold and nobody complained.

ChorusStroke of a pen, and your savings get thin.
Stroke of a pen, now they print it again.
But you can't fake the work, and you can't forge the block.
21 million, tick tock, next block.

Verse 21933, 6102,
bring your gold to the bank or ten years is due.
They paid you in paper, then they marked the paper down.
Forty years you couldn't hold it in your hand in this town.
'44, Bretton Woods pegged the world to the buck,
buck pegged to the gold, but only foreigners could touch.
'71, August, Sunday night on TV,
closed the gold window. Temporary, said he.
Oil priced in dollars, now the whole world's in line.
Factories went quiet while the printer worked overtime.
7% a year doesn't sound like a lot,
till a thousand turns to one by the time the century stops.
You're running on a treadmill, need a raise just to stand.
Seven after taxes and it's slipping through your hands.
2008, and the music went dead.
Too many claims, not enough chairs, so they printed instead.

ChorusStroke of a pen, and your savings get thin.
Stroke of a pen, now they print it again.
But you can't fake the work, and you can't forge the block.
21 million, tick tock, next block.

Verse 3Halloween 2008, one email, nine pages.
No trusted third party, cash that nobody cages.
A name nobody knew, Satoshi Nakamoto,
standing on the cypherpunks: Hashcash, b-money, Bit Gold.
January 3rd, '09, he mined the first block,
put the Times headline in it like a stamp on a clock:
Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
Said the root of the problem is the trust that it takes.
Trust the bank not to debase, history's full of the breach.
So he swapped trust for work, put the men out of reach.
21 million, no king and no throne,
and we're back on the island, the whole world keeps the stone.

ChorusStroke of a pen, well, that was then.
Now it's proof of work, and it's ours again.
Property in cyberspace, hold your keys, watch the clock.
21 million, tick tock, next block.

OutroNo one moves it, everyone remembers.
Tick tock, next block.