100 years ago, Henry Ford wanted an alternative currency. Well before Satoshi

[LeGaulois]

It was in 1921 when Henry Ford was interviewed by a newspaper about his visions for the future of the American economy.



At that time, gold was the reserve currency of the dollar (until the 1970s).
The stock (was and still is) variable and its monopoly by the banking industry was already problematic at the time.
He claimed that with such "an accumulation of banking systems, nations had no difficulty in financing wars, and therefore that this misdistribution favored armed conflicts in an inter-war context."

In trying to change this, he came up with the idea of creating a currency based on the use of energy to compete with gold, as well as stop the wars (or at least refrain since I believe it's impossible to stop financing wars.)
Henry Ford was anti-Jews and said the war was because of them (sorry I've no sources but google it, it's well known)

“The essential evil of gold in relation to war is the fact that gold can be controlled. Break the control and stop the war."

“Gold is the most useless thing in the world. I am not interested in money but in the things of which money is merely a symbol.”
— Henry Ford

On December 4, 1921, the New York Tribune published an article outlining Ford's vision of replacing gold with an energy currency that he believed could break the banking elite's grip on global wealth and end the war. He intends to do this by building "the largest power plant in the world" and creating a new currency system based on "units of power."

Under the energy currency system, the standard would be that a certain amount of energy exerted for one hour would be equal to 1 dollar. It's just a matter of thinking and calculating in different terms to those imposed on us by the international banking group. We have become so accustomed to them that we think there is no other way," said Henry Ford on 4 December 1921 in the New York Tribune.

The 'immediate' stock of energy and the lack of storage would, according to Ford, have made it possible to better regulate money. In this sense, the entrepreneur was already proposing to create a monetary system based on units of power generated by "the largest power station".

When you think about it, Bitcoin is somewhat similar to his idea with hardware using electricity and validating the blocks. We could say Bitcoin is correlated to the cost of energy

While Ford was never able to advance his vision of a fully backed currency, Bitcoin seems to have proven that idea a century later. Since 2009, more than 18.8 million BTC has been created through energy-intensive mining that requires computers to solve increasingly complex mathematical problems.

https://voi.id/en/technology/86586/henry-ford-100-years-ago-proposed-energy-currency-instead-of-gold
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/100-years-ago--henry-ford-proposed-%E2%80%98energy-currency-to-replace-gold-10545114
https://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/1645441/bitcoin-100-ans-auparavant-henry-ford-theorisait-la-cryptomonnaie.htm

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[jackg]

He probably had high goals for making things more efficient (or competing with others to do it) and creating a monopoly out of the new currency though or maybe he already had some hold on oil fields/production.

The US Dollar did, in a way, base itself off oil (and it also then ended up being used for war funding and fuelling).

I prefer that this sort of thing is being done now when there are many different ways to generate power at similar costs from different sources and there aren't just a few people with monopolies on systems (I wonder if bitcoin would've forced the Internet/phone lines to be developed faster though - but then there's still some areas with big populations that only have 3g or 2g so possibly not).

[Upgrade00]

He intends to do this by building "the largest power plant in the world" and creating a new currency system based on "units of power."

His thinking might have be somewhat similar to the Bitcoin idea, but the intention was way different.

Having a singular power plant fueling the system already presents a sort of centralization, one which can be controlled, particularly by the state it is located in; considering that control of money (to sponsor wars) was the idea behind the whole thought, that would have made it no different

[Hydrogen]

It was proven that minted gold and silver coins can be devalued during the roman empire. The percentage of silver in each roman denarius was reduced. Until catastrophic hyperinflation occurred.

I did not know precious metal coins and gold/silver standards could produce high levels of inflation until recently. Prior to that I always believed what Ron Paul said about a return to a gold standard guaranteeing the integrity of our monetary unit of exchange.

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

-Henry Ford

Competition between rival currencies within the same national borders, sounds like a good idea to me. It increases the number of tools, options and opportunities people have access to. The opposite trend to the direction the world has taken since the 2020 pandemic began.