On August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced the suspension of the dollar's convertibility into gold—a suspension that was never lifted. Fifty-five years later to the day, artist Lucho Poletti unveiled the first of ten drawings responding to that decree. The series, titled Ten Decrees, reimagines paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder around themes of money and monetary authority.
Old Masters, New Money
Bosch and Bruegel worked during a period of expanding banking, credit, and speculation in Europe, when Antwerp was emerging as a major commercial center. Their densely populated compositions, featuring hundreds of figures, allowed them to examine human behavior, social order, and moral judgment simultaneously. Poletti draws on this tradition to depict what he calls the effects of money: "nobody really sees and everybody feels."
The series consists of ten drawings: four after Bosch and six after Bruegel. Nine titles use fiat as a command—Furia Fiat (let there be fury), Fiat Lucrum (let there be profit), Fiat Palea (let there be chaff), and others—while the tenth, Ultima Fiat, reverses the authority with the meaning "let it be the last." According to Poletti, fiat is Latin for "let it be done," a verb spoken with authority, which he sees as a literal description of how fiat money comes into existence.
Release Schedule and Exhibition
The series follows a biweekly release schedule that began on August 29, 2026, and concludes on January 3, 2027, the anniversary of Bitcoin's Genesis Block. Five drawings have been released so far, most recently Fiat Moria on October 24. The sixth, Fiat Fames, is scheduled for November 7. Each drawing contains hundreds of figures and objects, with inscriptions often visible only at close range. The 30-by-20-inch prints are produced in editions of ten and form a composition spanning approximately four meters when arranged in two rows of five.
Ten Decrees will be on view on the main stage at Bitcoin Amsterdam, November 5–6, 2026, as part of the Bitcoin Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG) programming. Poletti has created a main-stage LED installation for the event, with each piece given fifteen seconds in release order. The center wall carries the center of each piece in a slow pass from left to right, while side screens show the original Bosch or Bruegel source and pull out lateral details.
Historical Parallels and Artistic Intent
Poletti points to similarities between the monetary upheavals of Bosch and Bruegel's time and the present. Silver from the Americas flowed into Europe through Seville and on to bankers in Antwerp, and prices across Western Europe rose sixfold over 150 years. Philip II defaulted in 1557, and the crash spread across Europe. Two years later, Bruegel painted Netherlandish Proverbs, a village where everyone is absorbed in something foolish and nobody can see the whole.
In Fiat Lucrum, Poletti's reinterpretation of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, he introduces a system of waterworks—pipes, reservoirs, and flowing liquidity—to depict the monetary system. The painting includes more than fifty lettered objects, some as blunt as a protest sign: four money presses lettered QE-1, QE-2, QE-3, and QE-∞, and a card on a broker's desk reading "genius, we print, you pay, have a nice day."
Poletti also incorporates his own mask into the compositions, worn by figures such as a crowd cheering a woman holding up a dollar sign under an ETF sign, a man signing a leverage contract, and a woman taking a mortgage. "Knowing the money is broken doesn't make one a saint," he said.
The series includes references to the Netherlands, where Bosch and Bruegel lived and worked. In Fiat Moria, a man wearing a Satoshi mask jumps off a mountain holding his cloak, a reference to the Dutch proverb about changing one's position to suit the prevailing winds. Poletti also notes that the Bank of Amsterdam, founded in 1609, provided merchants with a money nobody could debase, and its bank guilder traded at a premium for over a century until the bank's lending to the Dutch East India Company became public in 1790 and it declared itself insolvent.
"I can't think of a better city to show a series about monetary decrees and trust, two months before the last one lands on the Genesis Block anniversary," Poletti said.
