Ex Nihilo No More

For centuries, Austrian economists diagnosed the root cause of business cycles with remarkable precision: credit expansion untethered from real savings. Mises demonstrated it, Hayek formalized it, and history confirmed it repeatedly. Yet, despite that theoretical clarity, one question remained unanswered in practice: Is a credit system structurally incapable of artificial expansion even possible? The emergence of collateralized lending protocols in decentralized finance suggests, for the first time, that the answer might be yes.

Fear, Time Preference, and the Distortion of Human Action

Periods of crisis reveal something unsettling about human behavior. Faced with uncertainty, individuals and institutions alike tend to accept measures that would otherwise be unthinkable. Restrictions on movement, suspension of rights, and centralized decision-making often emerge not gradually, but almost effortlessly, as if they were the natural response to danger.