Quality Beef with Quality Money
- Introduction: What Is Money
- Section 1: The Fiat Standard
- Section 2: The Bitcoin Standard
- Section 3: Getting Started to accept Bitcoin
Introduction: What Is Money
We spend a huge portion of our lives working for money, but few of us stop to think about what money actually is. In simple terms, money is a tool that allows us to store our time, effort, and skill into the future. We trade a day’s work for money, and that money represents the value of our labour. Later on, we can exchange that money for the things we need, fuel, meat, groceries for the family, new clothes, a unit of electricity to run the home, you name it. As money is a method of storing the hours we work today to buy something tomorrow, ideally, a week’s wages should always buy about a week’s worth of the same essentials, whether you spend it now or save it and spend it in a decade. In other words, good money ought to hold its value, preserving the buying power of our sweat and effort over time.
Unfortunately, we have all noticed that our dollars do not buy as much as they used to. Maybe you have seen it when comparing bills from a few years ago. The hard-earned money that bought a trolley full of goods last year now buys a smaller, lower-quality amount. Why? The value of money is changing. This means the hours you worked in the past are losing their worth, your time and effort is being stolen. Money is not supposed to work this way; each dollar we save should hold onto the value we originally put into earning it.
This is why the idea of “good money” is important. Good money works for you, not against you. It is money you can earn, save, and count on to have the same buying power when you need it later. Whether you are running a cattle farm or teaching kids, the principle is the same: you deserve money that is as reliable as the work you put in to earning it.
We spend our lives working for money—we need money that actually works for us.
Section 1: The Fiat Standard
To understand why Bitcoin, we first need to understand fiat money. Money was not always just “numbers on a screen” or coloured pieces of paper.
When Money was “Real”
For a long time, currencies were “pegged” to gold (the gold standard). Paper notes could be exchanged for an amount of physical gold sitting in a vault:
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Forced Honesty: Governments had to run balanced budgets. If they wanted to spend more than they earned, they had to actually spend physical wealth that took real work to acquire out of the vault. They could not just “invent” more money.
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Fiscal Responsibility: This kept the governments in check. They could only fund wars or programs that were really worth it and they had to have the real assets to back them up or the population would vote them out.
When “Real” money ended
In 1971, the gold standard broke. The US started printing more paper dollars to fund wars and spending than the gold they held in their vaults. France grew suspicious and famously sent ships to New York to trade their paper dollars for the physical gold they were promised.
They got their gold, but President Nixon defaulted and “closed the gold window” before the world cottoned on to the fraud and inevitable economic collapse. Post 1971, we have lived in a “Fiat” system (Fiat is Latin for “by decree”). The USD and the AUD are now backed by nothing but a government promise and unfortunately history shows us just how untrustworthy governments can be.
Inflation, the “Hidden Tax” of Printing & Debt
Today, when the government spends more than it takes in, it runs a deficit, but it is not taking anything real out of its vaults to pay for it, it simply “creates” or “prints” the difference. Similarly, when someone borrows money from a bank for a business or house, that money is not coming from a saver’s account. The bank creates “new” money from nothing.
Every time governments print, or banks lend, more units are added to total amount of money in existence and the real value or purchasing power of each of our dollars is diluted. This is the real inflation, the expansion of the money supply.
The table below shows what $100.00 saved at different points in history would be worth today (2026).
| Time Period | Year AUD Saved | Value in Today’s Goods | Total Loss of Value |
| Today | 2026 | $100.00 | 0% |
| 1 Year Ago | 2025 | $96.20 | -3.8% |
| 2 Years Ago | 2024 | $93.10 | -6.9% |
| 5 Years Ago | 2021 | $85.40 | -14.6% |
| 10 Years Ago | 2016 | $73.80 | -26.2% |
| 20 Years Ago | 2006 | $54.60 | -45.4% |
| 30 Years Ago | 1996 | $43.20 | -56.8% |
| 40 Years Ago | 1986 | $26.40 | -73.6% |
| 50 Years Ago | 1976 | $10.80 | -89.2% |
The Australian dollar’s purchasing power or ability to hold value is like a melting ice cube; becoming worth less and less every year (until it becomes worthless). The bleeding of value reduces our incentive to save and forces us to speculate and take risk to invest just to hold our current value into the future.
The effects of inflation on Your Hard Work
This table compares the average Australian wage against the cost of assets and essentials over the last ten years. While it looks like we are earning more, our purchasing power for real things has been decimated.
| Asset (2016 vs 2026) | Price in 2016 | Price in 2026 | Change in AUD (%) |
| Avg Full-Time Wage | ~$80,000/yr | ~$105,000/yr | +31% (big pay rise) |
| Gold (per oz) | ~$1,700 | ~$7,400 | +335% (4 times more expensive) |
| Median House (AU) | ~$600,000 | ~$1,280,000 | +113% (twice as expensive) |
| Prime Beef (Retail) | ~$16.00/kg | ~$34.00/kg | +112% (twice as expensive) |
On paper, we are earning about $25,000 more than a decade ago. It feels like progress; however, house prices have grown nearly four times faster than our wages. In 2016, a median house cost about 7.5 years of the average salary. Today, it costs over 12 years of salary. We are working more years of our life for the same roof over our head. If you save in Australian Dollars, you are participating in a race where the finish line (the cost of real stuff, land, gold, and cattle) moves twice as fast as you can run. Storing your hard labour in Australian dollars is like storing your future cattle feed in a “silo” that constantly leaks.
Section 2: The Bitcoin Standard
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a global, decentralised per to peer digital payment network that no government, central bank, or single person controls. Bitcoin runs on open-source code and is not controlled by a company, government, or single person.
A “Bearer Asset”
Most fiat money today is digital; an entry in a bank’s database that they can change, charge exorbitant fees on, or freeze at any time. Bitcoin is different, it is a bearer asset, just like a physical gold bar, a stack of cash, or a slab of beef. Once you hold it in person, it belongs to you and only you without needing a government’s or bank’s permission to send it, receive it, or hold it.
Scarcity
The most important thing about Bitcoin is its limited supply.
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There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins. Bitcoin cannot be “printed” or “debased” by anyone.
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Units of Measurement: You do not have to buy a whole Bitcoin. Each Bitcoin is made up of 100,000,000 Satoshis (or “Sats”). Think of it like dollars and cents, but with much more room to grow.
Trustworthiness
In the cattle industry, you rely on a ledger or a brand to prove ownership. Bitcoin uses a public ledger that anyone can see and audit, but no one can cheat. Every transaction is verified by a global network of computers (miners, of which I am one of them), making it the most secure and transparent financial system ever built.
A common concern for newcomers is whether the network can be hacked. It is important to understand two things:
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Open-Source Hardening: The Bitcoin code base is open-source, meaning anyone can read the code and lock for weaknesses. While this seems counter-intuitive, it means thousands of independent developers are constantly auditing it for bugs. There are now trillions of dollars of value on the Bitcoin network, and it has never been hacked in its 17-year history.
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Mathematical Certainty: The odds of guessing a private key (your “digital signature”) are roughly equivalent to someone finding one specific atom in the known universe. (there are roughly 10^80 atoms in the observable universe and approximately 10^77 possible Bitcoin private keys). As long as you keep your physical seed phrase offline and secure, your wealth is mathematically secure.
Because Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million, it acts as a constant measure. No more adjusting future dollars against present dollars to allow for leaked value. Bitcoin does not care about government deficits, bank lending, or the $1.2 Trillion in national debt Australia is projected to hit by 2029.
When you measure the world in Bitcoin, the same table from Section 1 flips completely. Instead of everything getting more expensive, everything gets cheaper.
| Asset | Price in 2016 (in BTC) | Price in 2026 (in BTC) | In Bitcoin Terms |
| Gold (1 oz) | ~2.5 BTC | ~0.06 BTC | 97% Cheaper |
| Median House (AU) | ~850 BTC | ~11 BTC | 98% Cheaper |
| Prime Beef (1 kg) | ~0.02 BTC | ~0.0003 BTC | 98% Cheaper |
While these figures are expected to fall over time as Bitcoin’s market capitalisation grows with adoption, everything over a longer time horizon gets cheaper in the future when measured in Bitcoin. When I say to people I am holding off on buying a house until they get cheaper, they look at me like I am a madman. Bitcoin is the first system since the Gold Standard that brings honesty back to money. By moving even a small portion of your beef sales into Bitcoin (1%, 3% or 5%), you will then be moving your hard work into a “silo” that does not leak value.
You stop being a “Price Taker” at the mercy of the dollar’s decay and become a “Wealth Saver” for the future.
Section 3: Getting Started to accept Bitcoin
You do not need to change how you run your business to start benefiting from Bitcoin. You just need to change how you save some (or all) your profit.
There are multiple ways to store your value in bitcoin with the most common two below:
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Custodial (Strike): Think of this like a digital bank with the added ability to hold, send and receive Bitcoin. It is perfect for getting started and making day-to-day business transactions and my suggestion for you to get your feet wet.
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Self-Custody (Hardware Wallet): This is the goal for “meaningful” amounts (thousands of dollars). You move your larger amounts to a cold wallet. This is the “bearer asset” mentioned earlier which you own completely.
We will cross this bridge if you are comfortable with the basics and decide to start saving larger amount in Bitcoin in the future.
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Navigating the Strike App
Strike is a regulated app in Australia that connects to your bank via the NPP for instant transfers. Download the app from Google Play store (Android) or the App store (iOS) or online at https://strike.me/en/ and sign up.
When you open Strike, you will see two main sections at the bottom of the screen. Think of the AUD section as your Working Account and the Bitcoin (BTC) section as you Savings Account.
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The AUD Screen (Cash): This is just like a traditional bank. You can store, send, and receive Aussie Dollars.
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The Bitcoin Screen (BTC): This is where you can send and receive bitcoin and store some savings or longer-term wealth. When you tap this section, you see the live price of Bitcoin and your total balance.
Creating a “Dollar-Matched” Invoice
The beauty of Strike is that you can price your beef in Dollars but receive the payment in **Bitcoin **(you can also receive AUD). This ensures you get the exact value you asked for.
How to do it:
1. Open Strike and tap the Bitcoin logo at the bottom.
2. Tap the ‘Receive’ button.
3. On the next screen, tap ‘Bitcoin Wallet’.
4. You will see a button to enter an amount. Click the top right button to select AUD (you will see the $ sign instead of the bitcoin sign).
5. Type in the price of the sale (e.g., $700.00). Strike will instantly show you exactly how many Bitcoins or “Sats” that equals at the current market rate.
6. Tap ‘Receive as’ to decide if you want that payment to land in your AUD balance or stay as Bitcoin.
· The invoice is created; you now have two options to collect payment:
o In Person: Get the customer to scan the QR Code in their lightning wallet, press send and get payment instantly.
o Remote: Tap the ‘Share’ icon and choose to share the invoice by message, email or other. The customer pastes the invoice code into their lightning wallet and presses send. You should receive it instantly after they have sent it.
Moving Money Back to Your Bank
If you ever need to turn that Bitcoin back into Aussie dollars for fuel, fencing, or new stock:
1. Go to the Bitcoin screen.
2. Tap ‘Sell’ and enter the amount you need. That money moves instantly to your AUD screen.
3. Go to the AUD screen, tap ‘Withdraw’, and send it to your linked bank account. Because Strike uses the NPP (New Payments Platform), it usually lands in your bank in seconds.
That is it. You are now ready to receive quality money for quality beef!
Reach out if you have any questions or discuss a workflow that best suits your ordering, inventory, and accounting systems and down the track self-custody storage of your hard earnt Bitcoin
If you like, I can pay the remaining $350 for last order in Bitcoin for you first transaction.
I wish you the best of luck in your new venture.