Ron Paul's Stance on Bitcoin and Crypto: It Has to Be Voluntary

Let's start with the honest part: I didn't win Ron Paul over to crypto.

I've tried. The last time I sat in Dr. Paul's office, I put a physical coin in his hand and told him it was a bridge. On one side is the world he taught me to love: gold, silver, the stuff you can hold and lock in a safe. On the other side is the digital world my kids already live in. I told him young people aren't buying gold and silver the way we did. My daughter will never own a safe. Everything that matters to her lives on the phone in her hand.

I walked out of that meeting thinking I'd taught him something. I didn't think I'd converted him.

So on the first episode of Honest Money LIVE, with no edits and no second takes, I asked him again. I told him to give me his raw, unfiltered thoughts on crypto.

His first words were, "I have to be careful. I have to modify my answers because I know where your position is."

Then he gave me an answer that's more useful than a yes or a no.

He didn't answer the question I asked. He answered a better one.

Most people asked about Bitcoin jump straight into the technology: mining, energy, volatility, whether it's a bubble. Dr. Paul didn't go near any of that. He went to first principles.

"Our philosophy solves this problem totally and completely."

His point was simple. You might think crypto is best for you and your kids. Somebody else might want gold. Somebody else might want something we haven't invented yet. That's fine. The argument isn't about which money wins. It's about the rules everyone has to play by.

He named two of them.

Rule #1: It has to be voluntary

"Everything has to be done by free choice... You have to have freedom of choice, and your answers have to be very voluntary. You can't force it on other people."

Then he reminded us, as only Ron Paul can, of what happens when that rule gets broken:

"The government hasn't given us a free choice on our gold. They took the gold away, and we weren't even allowed to own it."

That's not ancient history to him. He told us he jumped out of his chair on August 15, 1971, when Nixon went on TV and cut the dollar's last tie to gold. Watching that happen is what took economics from a hobby to his life's work.

Here's why this matters to crypto people. Forced money is dishonest money, whatever it's made of. Paper you're required to accept, a central bank digital currency you're required to use, a coin some government mandates: none of it passes this test. And a crypto project that only survives because it has the right friends in Washington fails it too.

Honest money gets chosen. Nobody can make you use it.

Rule #2: We don't lie, cheat, steal or kill our way into prosperity

The second rule is what Dr. Paul calls natural law, which he described as the oldest tool people have for sorting truth from fiction:

"We're not allowed to lie, cheat, steal or kill, and we can keep our own opinions. And then how do you change my mind? By persuasion. Volunteerism."

Most people agree with that until it costs them something. Everybody's against murder and fraud. Dr. Paul pointed out that we let one group ignore the rule every day:

"You have to apply the rule to the government. Just think of what would happen if we enforced that principle today — that the government couldn't lie, couldn't cheat, couldn't steal, couldn't kill. What kind of world would that be? It would be peaceful."

Think about what that means for money. Earlier in the show, Daniel McAdams said the 2008 crisis showed people the whole financial system was fake. The money, the Fed, all of it, except the taxes working Americans pay directly or through inflation. Inflation is stealing with better PR. You can't print your way to prosperity, and you can't bail out your friends with other people's savings and call it a rescue.

Dr. Paul also said the rule works in both directions. If you're free to choose, "the responsibility is on you." When your business hits a rough patch, "you cannot crawl to the government to send a congressman down the street to steal from him."

That's my rule too: no bailouts, no favors, no shortcuts.

So where does that leave Bitcoin and crypto?

This is my take, not Dr. Paul's. I heard him leave the door wide open, and I told him so on air.

If the test is voluntary and no lying, cheating, stealing or killing, then crypto isn't honest or dishonest by default. It depends on how it's built and how it's run.

On paper, good crypto passes the test better than any money we've ever had:

• Nobody is forced to use it. You opt in, and you can opt out.
• Nobody can quietly print more. The supply follows rules everyone can read.
• Nobody stands in the middle. No bank can freeze it, and no processor can deplatform you.
• Everybody can check the math. The ledger is public and the receipts are permanent.

I also have to be honest about the other side, because Dr. Paul's rules apply to our industry too. Crypto has been full of lying, cheating and stealing: rug pulls, hacks, exchanges gambling with customer funds, "decentralized" projects run by one guy with the keys. And I watched the banks show up around 2016–2018 and take over a grassroots movement, the same way the suits and buses took over the Ron Paul revolution. The technology didn't fail. People broke the rules.

Honest money isn't a coin. It's a behavior. The ledger just makes it easier to prove.

That's why I started TEXITcoin, and it's why I believe crypto can be the most honest money civilization has ever seen. I know that's a big claim, and I don't expect anyone to accept it after one episode. That's what the rest of this series is for.

Proof, not promises

Talk is cheap, so here's what we did live on the show.

I pledged $10,000 to the Ron Paul Institute for every episode Daniel co-hosts with me. Then I paid the first one on air, in USDC on Base, through NectarPay. It's a non-custodial payment tool, so the money went straight into the Institute's wallet: no fees, nobody in the middle, nothing to freeze. Before we signed off, we gave away $1,000 in USDC to one of the viewers who joined us on X.

Both transactions are public. You don't have to trust me. You can check them on the Episode 001 page, where every donation and prize has its transaction ID linked to the blockchain.

That's what it looks like when nobody lies, cheats or steals: the receipts are open to everyone.

Ron Paul's stance, in one sentence

If you want the short version for your group chat, here it is:

Ron Paul isn't for crypto or against it. He's for freedom of choice, and he's against force and fraud.

He fought for years to make competing currencies legal and let people choose their own money. He'll never tell you which money to use. He'll tell you nobody gets to force it on you, and nobody gets to lie, cheat, steal or kill to get ahead. Any money that can live by those rules has earned a hearing, digital or not.

That's a door. I plan on walking through it.

Why we're doing this live

Dr. Paul said something else that stuck with me. He learned from Leonard Read that you don't have to beat people over the head. "If you present the truth, people will finally come your way." He said there's a remnant out there that knows and honors the truth, that it's growing, and that you'll never know how many people you've reached.

That's why Honest Money LIVE is live. No editing, no rewinds, what we call proof of no edit. In a world where you can't tell what's real anymore, the most honest way to have this conversation is out in the open, with real people making real transactions.

And Dr. Paul's last piece of advice is one I've lived by since the day he got me started back in 2007:

If you're not having fun while you're fighting for freedom, you're doing it all wrong.

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Watch the full conversation with Dr. Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams, with the transcript and on-chain receipts, at Honest Money LIVE — Episode 001. New episodes go live every week at noon Central on /live.

Quotes come from the live broadcast and have been lightly cleaned up from the auto-generated transcript so they're easier to read.