How did the Bitcoin penny drop?
Or maybe you’re already a Bitcoiner and you just don’t know it yet?
Bitcoiners are often asked to pinpoint the exact moment during their rabbit hole journey when things finally fell into place for them.
It’s a very tall order, much like trying to establish which snowflake caused the avalanche or which drink in a heavy session made you behave like a fool.
The boring reality, at least for me, is that there was not a single a-ha moment.
A common theme amongst Bitcoiners is that you don’t change Bitcoin – Bitcoin changes you. There is plenty of truth in that, but I have found that Bitcoin also rekindles and strengthens parts of your character that were already there, perhaps lying dormant like flickering embers waiting for a sudden gust of air.
Bitcoin makes you realize that some of your weird character traits aren’t weird, and that they might even be healthy. Away from Bitcoin for a moment, to illustrate this point: for as long as I can remember I have always made my bed as soon as I have got out of it. I used to think it was just my thing, and I didn’t really talk about it. Whenever there was a conversation about bed-making I would try and excuse myself from it, or just look awkwardly at my feet while I waited for the subject to change.
Then a few years ago, thanks to a viral video, I discovered I was in the esteemed company of Admiral McRaven, former head of US Navy Seals. All of a sudden I didn’t feel so weird. It was a nice feeling. A rare feeling. Hooyah.
Back to Bitcoin. I have always liked the principles of decluttering, cleanliness, simplicity and minimalism. I just don’t like having a lot of stuff. As Tyler Durden told us: the stuff you own ends up owning you.
Fig. 1: the first rule of Bitcoin Health Club is to stay humble and stack abs
As for the stuff I do own, I like taking care of it so that it lasts a long time. I have had the same belt since the 1990s, the same bed since 2006, the same sofas since 2006, the same car since 2009, the same fridge since 2009 and the same phone since 2016.
I am closer to fifty than forty now, and until recently I still had clothes from when I was in my early 20s. I donated them to the charity shop recently because they were too big: I recently lost a fair amount of weight through intermittent fasting (which also appealed to my principles of simplicity and minimalism).
I buy a good proportion of my clothes from charity shops. It saves me money, it’s for a good cause, and I don’t like the idea of being responsible for the creation of more and more new stuff. I don’t like mindless consumerism. It turns out that these traits of mine align nicely with the Bitcoin ethos of staying humble.
Bitcoin is the financial embodiment of decluttering, cleanliness, simplicity and minimalism. How much more minimal can you get than storing your wealth in your head?
Being able to tune out so much noise from the broke and broken financial world is a liberating feeling. Knowing that you have a form of savings that defeats the inflation monster that everyone else is frantically running away from gives you Zen-like calmness, and strength. Like intermittent fasting, it’s a superpower.
Certain things in life are very simple in principle but difficult in the execution, such as eating healthily, keeping yourself in shape, and getting enough sleep. From a technical perspective they are easy to achieve but their difficulty comes in the form of sticking to a long-term objective. There are endless temptations and excuses along the way, but you need to make sure your commitment doesn’t bend. You need to keep your eyes on the prize.
Once again Bitcoin offered parallels here. Long-term good health requires a dollar-cost-average strategy, rather than thinking you’ll get lucky with a boom and bust approach of clueless trading. The principle of hodling is extremely simple in theory. It’s literally the doing of nothing. It’s embarrassingly simple. It’s an exception to the financial rule that if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is. But actually keeping your nerve when you find yourself deep under water in your first Bitcoin tour of duty is not so simple. It requires a big pair of orange balls.
I had always been sceptical of financial advisers and their endless caveats. I can’t be too hard on them because, look, I’m a lawyer, and I get it: I recognize when someone is scared to commit to an answer and has to cover their ass because I’ve been there a hundred times myself. In their weakness I see my reflection.
When they’re selling you a financial product your adviser will try to impress you with its past performance. In the next breath they will helpfully tell you that past performance is no indication of future performance.
If you buy the product and it performs badly your adviser will have no shortage of explanations. But if the product does well they will give you just one explanation: it was due to their expertise.
Even before I understood the broken and unfixable mechanics of the fiat system I suppose the financial world had always felt a bit scammy to me. I resented playing financial games. Reading Parker Lewis’s piece Bitcoin is the Great Definancialization (part of his excellent Gradually Then Suddenly series) felt like a vindication of that resentment and scepticism.
I have a streak of the early adopter and heretic in me. I also have a healthy hatred of power. Bitcoin appealed to these parts of my character.
For example, I went low-carb in 2002 when it was very much a fringe idea. I remember the look of horror on people’s faces when I explained to them what I was doing, and the mad arguments I would get into. I got an internet bank account (in the sense of an internet-only bank) very early on. I like to think I’m a reasonably early adopter of Bitcoin. At least I hope so, because my stack ain’t big enough yet.
In the same way I rejected the lies of the food pyramid and the demonization of fat and meat, now I reject the lies of our financial system and the demonization of Bitcoin.
As for hatred of power, I have taken part in political activism that literally put my life at risk. I don’t like Goliaths, and Bitcoin is my David.
Even though as an adult I had never seriously considered the question of what money was before I came across Bitcoin, I do remember thinking about it as a kid. I clearly remember learning the word “barter” at school and how money replaced the need for it.
I also remember thinking about the concept of a physical money printer. I remember someone at school telling me and the other kids that he knew where to buy one but that it was really expensive. Instinctively we all knew this couldn’t be right.
I think every kid goes through the stage of thinking about what money is. Imagine the kids who become politicians in later life and who now actually have access to a money printer. It must give you a God complex. Now imagine what the prospect of a CBDC does to that God complex.
Money seems like magic to a kid when it enters their world. Kids understand the concept of scarcity. It is said that one reason a child gets jealous at the arrival of a new sibling is that they assume the love of their parents is finite. At the very least they quickly come to understand that more tangible resources such as food, toys and living space are finite.
Kids also instinctively understand the concept of a collectible, which precedes money’s other roles as a store of value, medium of exchange and then unit of account. Walk along the street with a kid as they happily kick stones about without a care in the world. Then observe how their eyes immediately zero in on any stone that is out of the ordinary (like laser eyes). It triggers something primal in them. Watch them grab it. Watch them take it back to the cave for safe keeping. What is this, if not a primitive form of hodling?
This innocent inquisitiveness as to what money is and how it is created only lives within children. Unfortunately this endearing instinct gradually withers as life happens. Eventually it is extinguished completely. The madness and complexity of the fiat system deranges us all. We assume it is our fault that we can’t make sense of it, when the reality is that it does not make sense. We file the task of understanding the system into the Too Difficult or Later drawers. And we outsource it to the so-called experts.
The bottom line is that the vast majority of humans work for paper which a miniscule percentage of humans have the power to create an endless supply of. When that is the foundational layer of your monetary system then everything else is destined to not make sense, and to get worse, forever. Don’t be too hard on yourself for not understanding the legacy financial system. Instead, be grateful that Bitcoin has rekindled your childish curiosity for what money is. Be optimistic that we now have an escape hatch. Go through that goddam escape hatch.
Maybe this is one of the reasons why Bitcoin is so endlessly fascinating. On the one hand it’s a journey of discovery: finding new things. But it’s also a journey of rediscovery: unearthing things that were already deep within you. To some extent it’s educational déjà vu.
If you need something more tangible, certain videos stick in my memory:
The Saylor Series on Robert Breedlove’s What is Money? podcast
Michael Saylor’s discussions with Lex Fridman, Tom Bilyeu and Tucker Carlson
Robert Breedlove’s discussions with Lex Fridman and Tom Bilyeu
Anthony Pompliano’s discussions with Lex Fridman and Tom Bilyeu. I know Pomp doesn’t have the best reputation amongst some Bitcoiners now but I don’t care - he played a big part in my orange-pilling and I think he is a great communicator
But perhaps what made the penny drop most of all is how consistently and brutally accurate the memes are.
Everyone really does get bitcoin at the price they deserve.
You really do need to stay humble and stack sats.
And Bitcoin really is hope.
You can follow me on Twitter @OnlyBitcoiner.