The Dawn of Regenerative Finance (Part One)

A Short History of Money: From Gold to Biodiversity

Every great civilization is built on a story it tells itself about value — what it holds dear, what it trusts, and what it believes will endure. For most of human history, money was tied to something tangible: gold, silver, land, or even salt. These were assets people could touch, measure, and trade. But over the past half-century, the global financial system has taken a wild detour. We decoupled money from tangible assets and, in doing so, tied it to an idea — a promise — that keeps compounding like a high-interest loan: debt.

Today, that idea is crumbling. The numbers tell the story: the world is $315 trillion in debt, with a global GDP of roughly $100 trillion. That’s a debt-to-GDP ratio of 3.3:1. Think about that: our civilization has built a financial system that owes the equivalent of four Earths for every one we have. It’s unsustainable, self-terminating, and, if left unchecked, could drive us off the cliff of collapse.

But how did we get here? To understand the current crisis — and imagine a way out — we need to start with the decoupling of money from the gold standard, the rise of quantitative easing, and the corrosive effects of compounded interest.

From Gold to Promises: A System Built on Debt

Until 1971, most of the world’s major currencies were tied to gold through the Bretton Woods system. The logic was simple: if every dollar, pound, or yen could be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold, the value of money would remain grounded in something finite and real. But the U.S. abandoned this system under President Nixon, severing the dollar — and with it, the global economy — from any tangible asset. Money became a promise backed by confidence in governments, central banks, and the collective belief that tomorrow would always pay for today.

This was the era of fiat currency, a system where governments could create money out of thin air. At first, this seemed liberating. It allowed central banks to expand the money supply to stimulate growth, particularly in times of crisis. But it also created a monster: a world where every new dollar, euro, or yen that comes into existence arrives as debt.

Bank of England, which clarified in its 2014 report Money Creation in the Modern Economy that:

“Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money.”Bank of England Report

This is because money isn’t created out of gold or goods — it’s created out of loans, with interest attached. And that interest compounds.

Compounded interest is a silent accelerant.

It’s why global debt doesn’t just grow — it metastasizes. Governments, businesses, and individuals take on debt to fund today’s needs, but tomorrow’s repayment always requires more growth, more debt, and more extraction from the Earth’s finite resources.

The Madoff Effect: A Financial Ponzi Scheme

The result is what I call the “Madoff Effect,” named after the infamous Bernie Madoff, who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Like Madoff’s scheme, the global financial system is dependent on ever-increasing inputs to sustain itself. New money must flow in to pay off old debt, which means endless growth is the only viable strategy. But unlike Madoff’s investors, we don’t have an SEC to shut us down. Instead, we have central banks and quantitative easing (QE), a kind of financial alchemy where central banks inject liquidity into the system by buying government bonds and other assets.

QE has propped up the system for over a decade, but it hasn’t solved the underlying problem: we’ve created a financial system so leveraged that it will collapse under its own weight unless we find a new story of value. The $300 plus trillion question is:

What’s the new story?

Nature: The Next Asset-Backed Currency

Here’s a radical idea:

What if the next global currency was backed by nature?

Consider this: according to UBS’s “Bloom or Bust” white paper, 60% of the world’s GDP depends on biodiversity. Everything from agriculture to pharmaceuticals relies on the natural systems we’re rapidly destroying. We’ve already breached multiple planetary boundaries, including biodiversity loss, and the consequences are becoming existential. If we continue to erode the planet’s life-support systems, there will be no economy to save.

The 30 by 30 Agreement, which aims to protect 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030, and the Global Biodiversity Framework are more than international accords — they are humanity’s first halting steps toward acknowledging that our economy and ecology are not separate systems. They are the same system. But protecting nature isn’t enough. We need to create a financial system that rewards its restoration.

Imagine a new type of currency — a “nature dollar,” if you will — that is tied to measurable improvements in biodiversity. Instead of printing money based on debt, central banks would issue currency based on the growth of forests, the restoration of wetlands, or the health of coral reefs. These currencies would be secured by the most tangible and essential asset of all: the planet’s capacity to sustain life.

A Regenerative Economy: From Collapse to Renewal

This shift wouldn’t just stabilize the financial system — it would transform it. A nature-backed currency would align economic incentives with ecological health, creating a virtuous cycle. Investors, businesses, and governments would have a direct financial stake in restoring ecosystems, doubling the world’s biodiversity, and staying within planetary boundaries.

This is not utopian thinking. It’s pragmatic. The current system is failing. Debt levels are unsustainable. Biodiversity loss is accelerating. And as we hurtle toward collapse, the need for a new story — backed by a new asset — has never been clearer.

Nature-based currencies could become the bedrock of a regenerative economy, one that couples the monetary system with the most enduring form of value we have: the living systems that sustain us. In this new paradigm, the economy wouldn’t just extract value from nature — it would create value by restoring it.

A Story Worth Believing In

We’ve been here before. The transition from the gold standard to fiat currency was a leap of imagination, an act of collective faith in a new story of value. Now, as the financial system groans under the weight of its own contradictions, it’s time for another leap. This time, the story we tell ourselves must be grounded in the reality that our economy is inseparable from our ecology.

If we get this right, we won’t just save the financial system. We’ll save ourselves. Because in the end, the most valuable asset isn’t gold, oil, or data. It’s life itself. And that’s a story worth believing in.

In Part 2 Where we explore Moloch as a metaphor for destructive economic systems and introduce Generative AI Agents (GAIAs) as tools to model, value, and restore nature.

By aligning economic incentives with regeneration, it envisions a thriving, sustainable economy.