Michel Azar’s Post

Ask most people if their money is safe in the bank. ↳ They'll probably say yes. Ask Lebanese depositors the same question. ↳ They'll probably laugh.   In 2019, $172 billion in deposits sat in Lebanese banks.   By 2024, that number had fallen to $88 billion.   The rest didn't disappear in a market crash.   It was frozen. Devalued. In many cases quietly transferred abroad by the political class - while ordinary depositors couldn't withdraw $300 a month.   Six years later, depositors are still waiting.   Here is what most people have never been told about how banking works.   When you deposit money in a bank, you stop owning money.   You own a claim on money.   A promise. An IOU. (I OWE YOU)   The bank takes your deposit and lends it out many times over. Your savings become collateral for loans elsewhere in the system.   This is called fractional reserve banking - and it is the foundation of every modern financial system in the world.   It "works". Until it doesn't.   And when it doesn't, the legal reality becomes impossible to ignore.   You are an unsecured creditor of your bank.   In Lebanon, unsecured creditors waited 6 years - and are still waiting.   Lebanon is the case study where the truth became impossible to hide.   Every bank in the world operates on the same principle.   Your deposits are the bank's liability to you - managed by people you never elected, under rules you never agreed to, in a system that works until political pressure, bad management, or a crisis makes it stop.   Bitcoin is the first monetary technology in history where this changes.   You hold the keys. You hold the coins.   Ownership. Full stop.   For the first time - that distinction is real and enforceable by math, rather than by the goodwill of an institution.   → Have you thought about what you actually own - versus what you have a claim on?