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Loop XXI

Education0:48

Your savings are an ice cube

A short film on the dollar after August 1971. Consumer prices rose enough that one dollar from that summer buys about an eighth as much, while productivity pulled away from typical pay. The film sets those facts next to Bitcoin's fixed supply.

Vertical picture, 48 seconds. The spoken words are also printed on the picture. Read the transcript. Download MP4 (8.8 MB).

Summary

Original Loop XXI picture and script. The narration is synthetic. The film is education about published U.S. price and pay statistics and about a protocol rule. It is not a product offer.

Education only. Nothing on this page is investment advice. Nothing here is financial, legal, or tax advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold Bitcoin or any other asset. A supply cap is a rule of the current protocol, not a forecast of price.

Transcript

Narration text only.

Your savings are an ice cube. And the room keeps getting warmer.

August 1971. The dollar's last link to gold is cut.

Since then, it takes more than eight dollars to buy what one dollar bought that summer. Nearly ninety percent, melted.

Now look at work. Since 1979, American productivity is up about ninety-four percent. Typical worker pay? About thirty-three.

Workers made more. They kept less. The gap flowed to the people who already owned assets.

That is who loses when money melts. The people paid in it.

Bitcoin doesn't melt. Twenty-one million. No one can print more.

Hard money keeps the value of your time.

Sources

Checked 16 October 2026. The film rounds these figures. CPI-U is an average basket, not every household's costs.

  1. Federal Reserve History, Nixon Ends Convertibility of U.S. Dollars to Gold (15 August 1971). The dollar's official convertibility to gold was suspended.
  2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, all items, seasonally adjusted (CPIAUCSL), via FRED. August 1971: 40.700. September 2026: 336.298. Dividing 40.700 by 336.298 leaves about 0.121, so about 88 percent of that purchasing power is gone. The later index is about 8.26 times the earlier one, which is the film's "more than eight dollars." The September 2026 observation matches Loop XXI's FRED snapshot from the same day. The series is revised.
  3. Economic Policy Institute, The Productivity-Pay Gap. From the fourth quarter of 1979 to the second quarter of 2026, the tracker shows productivity up 93.7 percent and hourly pay up 32.7 percent. The film rounds those to about ninety-four and about thirty-three.
  4. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Why does the Federal Reserve aim for inflation of 2 percent over the longer run? The 2 percent longer-run goal is a policy aim, not a promise that prices will rise by 2 percent every year.
  5. Bitcoin's consensus rules schedule issuance to a cap of 21 million. The schedule is described at Controlled supply. The cap is a protocol rule. It is not a prediction of what a bitcoin will be worth.