Jeremy Ryan Slate: Rome's Currency Debasement Playbook Transcript — TFTC Article: https://www.tftc.io/roman-currency-debasement-jeremy-ryan-slate Transcript page: https://www.tftc.io/roman-currency-debasement-jeremy-ryan-slate-transcript Published: 2026-10-05 Machine transcription, lightly cleaned; may contain errors. ======================================================================== [0:07] Jeremy Ryan Slate: You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. I mean, talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. [0:17] Marty Bent: 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. [0:28] Jeremy Ryan Slate: I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. [0:31] Marty Bent: If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Probably should be. Probably should be. Jeremy, thank you for joining me. [0:38] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Hey, thank you for having me, man. I appreciate you inviting me on. [0:40] Marty Bent: Well, I'm very excited for this conversation. It's been a meme for the last couple 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 hit record how I found it. I think I remember now. I think it was a clip from your Sean Ryan episode The Federal Reserve one or no? No, it wasn't about money 'cause I was pumped when I DM'd 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. [1:16] Jeremy Ryan Slate: And it's the most important. You know, like everything else that was happening, like sure, history's 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. [1:27] Marty Bent: Well, and that's like, oh, one of our taglines of the show is fix the money, fix the world. So this show started in this city 9 years ago. moved around. I was in Texas, now in Philadelphia, but now coming up to record at PubKey. 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, economics stem from the fact that we've broken the money. [1:54] Jeremy Ryan Slate: 100%. [1:54] Marty Bent: Money is the root of everything we do as a society. [1:57] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Well, I'm glad this interview finally happened then because I have been banging the drum for this for probably 5 years that it's like, Borders, sure. You know, social policy, sure. But like money fixes a lot of mistakes. And you know, 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. [2:27] Marty Bent: Well, before we get to Constantine. [2:30] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. [2:31] Marty Bent: No, no, I think because I think it's important to like set the stage and, um, of how the denaria, how it 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. [2:48] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Yeah. [2:49] Marty Bent: What was happening socially in parallel to the debasement of the currency? What were the justifications for it and how did it happen initially? [2:55] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Well, I think just the one thing important to understand before we get into that is the idea of what was Rome, because I think a lot of people get confused. They hear Roman Empire, Julius Caesar being the first emperor, which he wasn't. Rome is 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. In the West, that goes till 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 2nd century is a really good period of time to put it. [8:02] Marty Bent: Yeah. [8:02] Jeremy Ryan Slate: It was a little long-winded, so I'm sorry. [8:03] Marty Bent: No, no, no, this is, I mean, I'm happy you said that because this is something I've been saying, confirms and validates something I've been saying. But ultimately, 'cause after that you had the Roman army spread out throughout their part of the world, right? [8:19] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Yes. [8:19] Marty Bent: 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. [8:31] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Well, and there's a little bit more to it than that as well, Obviously, there's other things that cause the currency to collapse faster, like Severus's son Caracalla is in a real need for money. So he's— 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 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. [11:05] Marty Bent: Yeah. Was it a frog's boiling in water situation over the course? What was the awareness of the Roman public or the army as the currency was being debased? [11:16] Jeremy Ryan Slate: 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 word salarium, which is the Latin word for salt. What happens in the 3rd 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 3rd century crisis, because this is kind of a key part of it, you would have men claim to be emperor. [13:38] Marty Bent: Yeah. I mean, 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 juxtaposed to the US dollar or any other fiat currency is like, if you have the ability to hit the button to print more money, push comes to shove, and you're in that position of power, you're going to hit it. [13:58] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Well, can we just call it something so people don't know what it's called? Like maybe QE, that'd be a great thing. [14:02] Marty Bent: Yeah. [14:02] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Quantitative easing. What does that mean? Oh, don't worry about it. It just means we're printing more money. [14:06] Marty Bent: Yeah. And that's, again, bringing this into the parallels between ancient Rome and today, I think we've reached a point, particularly post-COVID, where people are recognizing, hey, something's wrong with the money. [14:19] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Yeah. [14:20] Marty Bent: Inflation going rampant. And I think it's setting off alarm bells in people's heads. [14:24] Jeremy Ryan Slate: 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. [14:33] Marty Bent: It's the greedy corporations. [14:34] Jeremy Ryan Slate: No, it's the greedy corporations. You know, we're gonna 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 as anybody else, I hardly use cash anymore. You know, most of your dollars are digital anyway, 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. I'm in Northern New Jersey. It was like $9 for the good bacon last week. I'm like, that's insane. But 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. [15:21] Marty Bent: But we had our COVID checks. [15:22] Jeremy Ryan Slate: We had our COVID checks, which once again drives inflation, makes the dollar in your pocket worth less, or there's been the latest thing of, if we win the election in November, Trump says he's gonna give everybody $5,000. Well, that's kind of concerning 'cause 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. States like California passing a $20 an hour minimum wage, or New Jersey, $15 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, right, when it's actually a monetary problem. [16:12] Marty Bent: Yeah, and we talk about this a lot in Bitcoin, the Cantillon effect too, like the mechanism through which money is created. I'm sure you've heard the meme, the K-shaped economy. Obviously the wealth inequality's 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, whatever, or quantitative easing, buying treasuries, printing money to buy those assets. [16:38] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Mm-hmm. [16:38] Marty Bent: mortgage-backed 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 lower rungs of the economic ladder, the prices have already risen. [16:56] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Right. [16:56] Marty Bent: And the amount you're getting paid, maybe you get like a 2.5% to 5% income increase year on year. By the time you've That's manifested in your bank account, prices have gone up and you're already behind. [17:09] Jeremy Ryan Slate: Well, and 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 with 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 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. [17:33] Marty Bent: Yeah. And so bringing this back to parallels and going backward in time to ancient Rome, I mean, you mentioned Constantine. Based off of what you've studied in Rome and the debasement of their currency and the negative consequences that had on the Roman Empire, you mentioned Constantine. What did he do to fix the currency? What was the What was the benefit of that? [17:59] Jeremy Ryan Slate: 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. You know, I mentioned Caracalla before. 5 sizes of the denarius. And they're like, oh, it's so good, it's worth 2 of them. 5. And he's like, no, no, it's 2, it's 2. 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. [20:40] Marty Bent: And Constantine was a driver of that within— [20:42] Jeremy Ryan Slate: He was a driver of that. He— 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— the different temples and things that are out there. [22:35] Marty Bent: This is like the deep state of— [22:37] Jeremy Ryan Slate: 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 2nd 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. [23:52] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm. [23:53] Jeremy Ryan Slate: 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 were 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. [24:20] Marty Bent: And when Constantine was slowly instilling a, or, Installing a gold standard, what were the externalities on the Roman economy? Did it lead to peacetime? Were people less perturbed than they were before? Did they recognize that the currency was actually— [24:42] Jeremy Ryan Slate: So that's hard to say. I don't know a lot about that part.