Eighteen years on, bitcoin's old bailout argument lands on Main Street

Eighteen years ago, an anonymous author writing as Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper describing a new kind of money. In a CoinDesk opinion piece marking the anniversary, Onramp chief executive Michael Tanguma argues that the paper's original grievance has not gone away — and that small businesses are still the ones footing the bill.

The timing, he notes, was pointed. The white paper appeared on October 31, 2008, four weeks after Congress approved a $700 billion bank rescue. When the first bitcoin block was mined on January 3, 2009, it carried a London newspaper headline about a second bailout for banks.

Rescue after rescue

According to Tanguma, the pattern since then has been consistent: the largest institutions get the backstop, while everyone else absorbs the aftermath. He cites the Federal Reserve's March 2020 move to cut rates to near zero and pledge unlimited bond purchases, and regulators' March 2023 decision to protect every depositor at Silicon Valley Bank under a systemic-risk exception — including balances far above the $250,000 insurance cap.

The system behind those rescues has grown enormously, he writes: the Federal Reserve's balance sheet rose from $0.9 trillion in September 2008 to $9.0 trillion in April 2022, and net interest on federal debt reached $1.05 trillion in fiscal 2026, more than the $965 billion spent on defense.

The invoice lands on small firms

Small businesses, Tanguma argues, start with the thinnest buffers. He cites a survey from the first weeks of the 2020 shutdowns in which the median firm with more than $10,000 in monthly expenses held only about two weeks of cash. When such a business runs short, he writes, nobody waives the rules to save it — the owner borrows, cuts hours, or closes.

The cost shows up first in what firms buy. A pound of ground beef cost $3.87 in February 2020 and $6.79 in September 2026, a 76% rise against a 30% increase in consumer prices overall, according to the article. In September, a net 31% of small business owners reported raising their selling prices, more than double the historical average of net 14%.

A reserve priced differently

Tanguma's case for bitcoin rests on its fixed supply of 21 million coins — money, in his framing, that no rescue package can print more of. Priced in satoshis, bitcoin's smallest unit, that same pound of ground beef fell 79%, from about 40,100 sats in February 2020 to about 8,400 sats in September 2026, he writes.

The same logic applies to a firm's cash reserve, according to the piece: $100,000 held since February 2020 bought about 25,900 pounds of ground beef then, but only about 14,700 pounds by September 2026, 43% less — and about $77,100 worth of a broader basket.

Tanguma does not dodge the obvious counterargument: a business with thin margins cannot easily hold an asset whose price swings sharply. Bitcoin fell 77% between November 2021 and November 2022, he acknowledges, though it has since climbed back above its November 2021 high. Cash, by contrast, has shown no such recovery, he argues — losing about 23% of its buying power against consumer prices and 43% against ground beef since February 2020.

That comparison is the heart of his pitch: for surplus held across years, the volatility that matters is the one on the invoice. Whether owners accept it is still their decision, he says — but eighteen years on, they at least have a reserve option outside the reach of the next rescue.

Crypto prices are volatile and the figures above reflect the reporting of the cited sources at the time of publication.

Written by the BidAsk Newsroom. Based on reporting from the sources below.