About Us
The Liberty Dollar Financial Association (LDFA) is based on nearly fifty years of monetary research and the culmination of three years of designing, developing and testing a market-driven monetary model by Bernard von NotHaus and Wayne Hicks.
Fifty years ago, Bernard von NotHaus experienced an epiphany and wrote an economic research paper, titled To Know Value, that led to the founding of the Royal Hawaiian Mint and eventually the Liberty Dollar.
Over the next thirty years, as the Mintmaster at the Mint, it was Bernard’s daily work with gold and silver that gave him a unique perspective regarding coins, money and value. This led to some long days and nights of researching money and thinking about just what it all could mean, and why money seemed to be so hard for many people to understand.
As the essay To Know Value became widely known and its notoriety spread, Bernard learned more about that elusive thing called money. He realized that money was not only the symbol we exchange for items we want, but that —for it to be genuine—money must also have an intrinsic value of its own. To use anything else would be a debt-based system, wherein the monetary symbol only represented a promise to pay. This led to the realization that the US dollar was nothing more than a debt-based fiat money and actually worth nothing!
Fiat money is money that is issued by decree. It has no intrinsic value. Its value in commerce or society has no actual foundation and is only based on the value declared by the government. Such a monetary system only exists as long as the government is trusted. captured that trust ever be in doubt, the money could easily become worthless.
Originally, the United States monetary system was based on money that was 100% backed by gold and silver, just as the US Constitution specifies. Over time and many wars, however, the US government diluted the value of the USD. Now the USD is not backed by anything but the foul hot air of politicians who know no value. The world has been deceived into believing that the US Dollar still has value, but it is backed only by “the full faith and credit of the United States.”
Unfortunately, the problem of a zero-backed USD is worse than zero backing. Now the USD is solely based on debt! That debt now falls on you, me, our children, grandchildren and future generations until the debt-based USD fails as every debt-based monetary system always has.
This realization left Bernard feeling greatly disturbed and he realized that something had to be done. So, on October 1, 1998, he launched the Liberty Dollar—a private, non-government-issued currency that was 100% backed and redeemable in gold and silver. For almost 8 years, the Liberty Dollar organization (http://libertydollar.org) issued beautiful gold and silver Libertys in various denominations and incredibly beautiful paper money as Warehouse Receipts that were 100% backed and redeemable in gold and silver Libertys.
During the following eight years, more than 250,000 people supported the Liberty Dollar by converting over $85 million USDs into gold and silver Liberty Dollars. Dozens of articles followed and even the US government admitted that the Liberty Dollar was a legal private currency. Eventually, however, the government felt the pressure of a value-based competitor and worried that the gold and silver Liberty Dollar might actually become a serious alternative to the government’s zero-based fiat dollar. Suddenly the US government branded the Liberty Dollar currency as illegal.
After the US government declared Liberty Dollars illegal, it manipulated the facts and charged Bernard with counterfeiting. They tried to lock Bernard up for the rest of his life. Luckily, even though the jury convicted him on a Civil War statute (18USC486) that had only three prior cases in over a hundred years, the judge realized that Bernard never had any criminal intent and cut his sentence from 22 years in federal prison to only one year of probation! That is justice in action!
In addition to learning a very valuable lesson, Bernard learned from the original Liberty Dollar and vowed the next currency would remain legal and lawful!
Over the years, Bernard worked to get the Liberty Dollar back in action. He met with many well-intended supporters, but nobody offered the right project. Then on the twentieth anniversary of the original Liberty Dollar, Bernard and Wayne Hicks met again after nearly 15 years. Wayne Hicks was the most successful Regional Currency Officer in the Liberty Dollar organization and had widely distributed the Liberty Dollar throughout his community in Berryville, Arkansas, where almost every merchant accepted the currency just like USD cash. Both he and Bernard were featured in a Learning Channel television program about money.
When the two value based currency proponents met, the conversation quickly centered on the Liberty Dollar and that evening they crafted a plan that led them to form the Liberty Dollar Financial Association. The Liberty Dollar Financial Association allows its members anywhere on the planet to utilize the power of silver, profit from the unavoidable impending hyper-inflation, help return the world to a value-based monetary system and put some real money in their own pockets at the same time.
We look forward to serving you for a long, long time.
Bernard von NotHaus, Chairman / LDFA
Wayne Hicks, CEO / LDFA