They declared independence from a king in 1776. Then they tried to pay for it with a printing press. The Continental Congress had no gold and a war to fund, so it printed. Paper dollars called Continentals, millions of them, backed by nothing but a promise and the hope of victory. At first they spent fine. Then prices climbed. Then they ran. Within a few years it took a fistful of Continentals to buy what a single silver coin once did, and "not worth a Continental" entered the language as the insult it still is. The same government that fought a war over taxation without consent taxed everyone anyway, quietly, through the printer, no vote required. The soldiers who won that war were paid in money that melted in their hands. Sound money was the unfinished business of 1776. It still is. Bitcoin is the first money in that whole story that no Congress can print more of. Fixed supply, enforced by every node, no emergencies and no exceptions. Independence from a king was step one. Independence from the printing press is the part we still owe them.