The Hard Money Project (THMP)
The Hard Money Project is a research initiative led by Lluis Aragones at RDX Works, which aims to establish the foundations for self sovereign money in the digital age.
The Hard Money Project will first provide the details of the research, built on which a set of theoretical protocols will be proposed that remove the need for a central authority in the issuance of money.
Introducing The Hard Money Project
The Hard Money Project is a research initiative led by Lluis Aragones at RDX Works. It aims to address one of the most pressing issues of our time: the institution of money.
At this point in history, as every asset, along with their rights, undergo full digitization, we are experiencing a “Bretton Woods moment” of the digital age—a critical time where the redefinition of the global monetary system is already under way. How it's shaped now will have lasting effects for generations to come. Bitcoin was the first stage of a fundamental shift in the idea of what self sovereign digital value can achieve. It also demonstrated the criticality of community engagement with the fundamental concepts that drive the creation and control of money.
Since inception, Bitcoin has served as a gateway to Web3 ownership outside of centralized control. For the first time, a digital asset allowed for the reclaiming of the full custody and control of digitally represented property. However, Satoshi recognized that the bitcoin project was incomplete—it was designed as a decentralized store of value, serving as the base asset for community currencies to be built on top.
This point matters far more to the world than is immediately obvious. Part of the purpose of The Hard Money Project is to help people truly understand why Bitcoin is both essential to, and an incomplete picture of the full solution.
However, since the creation of dollar backed stable coins (like USDC) or dollar pegged stable coins (like DAI), there has been little progress in building truly self sovereign decentralized currencies that are able to operate independently of the dollar, or another fiat basis.
The Hard Money Project will first lay out the results of the research work that Lluís and his academic collaborators have conducted prior to joining RDX Works, as well as his work since his tenure at the company. Once that groundwork has been laid, The Hard Money Project will outline a set of proposals for an interconnected system that allow for the issuance of true self-sovereign, decentralized monies that are capable of operating at community levels while coordinated on a global scale.
The scope of this project is very large and is currently in the dissemination phase of the research. For it to move into the technical implementation phase, it will require a movement—but everything starts with putting an idea out into the world, seeing what others think, and maybe sparking a fire that changes the world.
Lluís Aragonés - Project Lead
Lluís is the Head of Economics Research at RDX Works, where he leads The Hard Money Project, starting with a focus on formal monetary economics systems design, and now, community engagement. Currently completing his PhD in monetary economics, Lluis’ goal now is to make this project, and the economic theory and practice behind it, accessible through engagement and discussion.
After that, he will focus on defining and formalizing, with the help of community engagement, the vision for a complete self-balancing standard of bitcoin-backed, self-sovereign digital currencies.
With an interdisciplinary background, Lluís is pursuing a PhD at the University of Navarra, continuing his economics, business and finance studies from his time at IESE Business School, Princeton, and the University of Zurich. His career spans corporate accounting in the U.K., financial advisory in New York, and investment management in Switzerland with Vontobel. At ETS Asset Management, Lluís discovered Bitcoin’s potential, sparking his passion for distributed ledger technologies. His work is driven by a commitment to ethical principles, aiming to design monetary protocols that reward and serve the common good.
After extensive research across the crypto sphere, Lluís came to the conclusion that Radix was THE platform capable of supporting all the delivery requirements for such a system. Ultimately, this is the reason that he joined RDX and is committing his research to the furtherment of the Radix public network.
Contextualizing The Hard Money Project
Decentralized, stable value crypto currency has always been close to the heart of both Dan Hughes (Founder of Radix) and Piers Ridyard (CEO of RDX Works). Dan started research into Radix back in 2013 with the goal of improving two core aspects of Bitcoin, first the scalability of decentralized public ledgers, and second a reliable form of decentralized money that could be used by everyday people everywhere.
It was on the subject of stable value crypto currency that Dan and Piers first bonded in 2016, and while development of the Radix public ledger and a successful Radix ecosystem has always taken, and continues to take 99% of their combined focus and efforts, they have both continued to research, and take active interest, in the question whether truly self-sovereign digital money is possible.
It wasn’t until Lluís reached out, presented his research, and eventually joined RDX that the foundations of a potential road forward started to become clear. To be viable, such a solution must at least address the following key challenges faced by all the current decentralized, stable value currencies:
Politically influenceable purchasing power: In any monetary economy, currency represents half of nearly every value exchange. Whoever regulates a system's base money therefore influences 50% of every “free” exchange. This is why anchor indicators for monetary policy of both stablecoins (linked to central bank policies) and flatcoins (tied to centrally managed sets of selective price indices) are vulnerable to political influence and manipulation. Meanwhile, history shows that centrally managed currencies, including major ones like the U.S. dollar, have continually lost purchasing power over time, punishing saving and forcing everyday citizens to constantly play catch-up.
Conclusion 1: The only way to truly eliminate purchasing power debasement is by executing monetary policy autonomously, without human intervention.
Failure to respect local sovereignty: Fiat value referenced models, whether hard or soft-pegged, depend on centrally managed policies tied to economies like the U.S., Japan or combinations of them. This means they can’t adapt independently to the local economic conditions of the communities that adopt them. These communities vary by the availability of natural resources, physical and human capital, their culture, climate, and demographics. These variations create value imbalances that can lead to the draining of both local purchasing power and resources. In addition, fiat referenced stablecoins amplify the political and fiscal dominance of the fiat currencies they’re pegged to—mainly U.S. dollars—by supporting undisciplined government debt issuance, rather than respecting local financial sovereignty. Dollar backed stable coins are now between the 15th and 20th largest buyers of US government treasuries.
Conclusion 2: Money is a local phenomenon. Maintaining local purchasing power requires autonomous monetary policies tailored to each community's specific conditions, with a related need to coordinate instantaneous primary currency exchange.
Dependence on centralized liquidity: Fiat value referenced stablecoins face another significant problem: as central banks vary the supply of base money, money markets move through cycles of liquidity and illiquidity. These cycles often cause significant swings in the liquidity and price of assets used as reserves or collateral—especially when these assets aren’t base money themselves. To safely scale fiat-pegged stablecoins (hard or soft) without limits, they require direct borrowing access to base money liquidity—the ultimate asset that anchors currency value parity for settling payments between banks and stablecoin issuers. This eliminates slippage and liquidity risks from fragmented secondary markets, ensuring monetary value unity (“singleness of money”), crucial for true stablecoin adoption as currency. The only truly risk-minimized solution is stablecoins with direct central bank access, effectively creating wholesale CBDCs by proxy, as reliance on commercial bank deposits, as shown by USDC, is insufficient.
Ultimately, when big enough, these stablecoins require government-backed safety nets to prevent bank runs, as even the safest short-term government securities can become illiquid during financial crises like those in September 2008 and March 2020. However, access to these safety nets are subject to political discretion and come with no long term guarantees.
Conclusion 3: A truly independent monetary system can only be achieved by relying on a highly liquid, permissionless and instantly redeemable neutral base money, like bitcoin.
Before a solution to these challenges can be properly presented and discussed, it is first necessary to fully establish the basis of the current monetary system and the key drivers behind the issuance and management of money. The first published article in Lluis’ coming series on the foundations and economics of money can be found on the main Hard Money Project Substack.
The Hard Money Project - Why on Radix
In Lluís’ own words:
Capturing and scaling an economic state without bottlenecks requires a specialized distributed ledger system. After evaluating various infrastructures, Radix emerged as the platform meeting all five key criteria for monetary sovereignty and property rights tokenization.
Object ownership: Radix's asset-oriented model securely handles each tokenized asset discretely, unit by unit, ensuring true ownership of property rights.
Linearly scaling consensus and execution: Radix's state sharding allows for atomic transactions on a unified network that scales with demand, potentially supporting billions of simultaneous users without bottlenecks.
Safe asset-oriented execution: Radix enables secure, intuitive programming of smart contracts aligned with its data architecture. It supports building on existing foundations with an incentive model for creators, fostering innovation and collaboration.
Native wallet components: Radix secures self-custody and identity across all technology stack layers, from the data model to the execution environment, avoiding reliance on third-party smart contracts for wallet abstractions.
Democratized network requirements: Radix supports both vertical and horizontal scalability, allowing for an unlimited number of validators without restricting participation to expensive, specialized hardware or a fixed set of data centers as validators.
These combined features create a significant competitive advantage for Radix, as replicating this framework on other platforms would require extensive redesign of core primitives.
The Hard Money Project aims to be a public good that revolutionizes monetary systems. It's not just a development initiative but also an educational platform for monetary and economic literacy. The project breaks down complex concepts for all levels of understanding, from beginners to experts, so that anyone can engage in critical reflection on these topics.
Success depends on community engagement and understanding. That is why Lluis is asking Radcovates and the wider crypto community to join the discussion on the project's foundations and mechanism design principles. By joining, you become part of a group of critical thinkers and builders collaborating to drive meaningful change in the digital age's current Bretton Woods moment.
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