Bitcoin... What is it? Why are people like me talking about it? Where did it come from? Why does it keep coming up? I thought it was for criminals? To be honest, I stopped bringing it up to friends and family because every time I did, I got the classic eye roll and comments like "You're crazy" or "If I wanted to gamble, I'd go to the casino!" (yet they proceed to buy a scratch-off at the gas station).
I get it; Bitcoin is different. It’s actually scary. The first time you ever send an “on-chain” transaction to your cold storage, you sit there for 20 minutes making sure every character of the address is correct, then wait for 30 minutes until you get that first confirmation that the funds have moved.
The first time I ever heard of Bitcoin was sometime around 2017-18 while I was working on a pipeline in West Virginia, and some of the workers were talking about it because the price was going up. I said the same exact thing that you are probably thinking: "Bitcoin?! Pshhhh. Fake Ponzi scheme internet money. That junk ain't real! NO WAY I'd ever put money into that!" Yup, that was me. A disbeliever. I was stuck in the fiat money mindset, trying everything in my power to make a dollar, constantly on the hamster wheel trying to outrun the Fed's money printer and the inflation eating away at my purchasing power.
I hit the books: "The Intelligent Investor," "Real Estate Investing," "Stock Trading," "The Millionaire Next Door," "The Psychology of Money," and the list goes on. I absorbed every piece of information I could for about two years. Don't get me wrong, all those books are great, and I see nothing wrong with investing in stocks, gold, or real estate, but they fail to mention that it doesn't matter what you do, those who control the money printer are always 10 miles ahead of you and gaining.
Then, something changed. At the start of 2021, a buddy I worked with mentioned cryptocurrency and that he had bought some Ethereum, suggesting I look into it. He mentioned blockchain, and that was it. I somewhat ignored it, but given the craziness of the world at the time, I thought, "Screw it." I started a Coinbase account, bought Ethereum, XLM, Doge, and some other altcoins, and began researching. I didn't buy Bitcoin out the gate because it was trading at around 30k, and I had a price bias, thinking it was too expensive. Boy, was I wrong.
Then I read "The Bitcoin Standard" by Saifedean Ammous and fell down the rabbit hole. Next, I read "Bitcoin: Hard Money You Can't F*ck With" by Jason Williams, and by April that year, I was all in on Bitcoin. I sold all my altcoins and converted them to Bitcoin because, as the great Michael Saylor would say, "There is no second best."
Now, if you’ve made it this far through my rant, you’re probably intrigued to learn more about this magic internet money. Let me tell you, I've spent between 4,000 to 5,000 hours studying Bitcoin through books, podcasts, and YouTube, and I've only scratched the surface of what there is to know about this asset. I can say without a doubt, IT CAN'T BE STOPPED. PERIOD. Don’t believe me? You’ll wake up one day feeling like those who said they’d never give up their BlackBerry phones, adamant that nobody would ever pay $500 for an iPhone. No government, army, or company can stop Bitcoin. It’s the most secure computer network on the planet. "But what if they cut off the internet?!?!" Then your money in the bank is gone as well, even though it was never really there in the first place. And when they build a new internet, Bitcoin will still be there
Bitcoin gave me hope. Many people predict the end of the world; I'm the exact opposite. There's a fight to be had. Good forces will prevail in the end, but I'm telling you, when you put Bitcoin on your balance sheet and it finally clicks, you’ll never see the world the same again. You'll understand they lied to you. The dollars in your bank aren't real. Your land, gold, or rental property can be seized. They can take everything from you. But you, you can hold 12 words in your head. You can secure all your wealth with your mind. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? It should. You’ve never had to take responsibility for your money before. A bank has always done it for you. Wait until you find out you can be your own bank. You don’t need a banker. You can opt out of their madness.
Study Bitcoin. Notice I didn’t say “Buy Bitcoin.” Bitcoiners usually don’t lead with that. The reason is, we want you to work for it. We want you to open the book, go down the rabbit hole, and study it. If you don’t, you will treat it as some other asset that you just trade dollars for. Bitcoin is far from that. Once you understand it, you will never want to trade Bitcoin for anything else because it is the exit strategy.
I’ll leave you with this. Before Bitcoin, I was always thinking of ways to get more! I always needed more! More money, more land, more livestock, more fencing, more this, more that. It was a perpetual cycle of always prioritizing quantity over quality. Now, I'm focused on building on the quality of the things I already have. I aim to make the land I farm as fertile as possible, to grow the best quality food for my family and customers. It’s not about volume anymore. Bitcoin helps you defend your purchasing power from the sleazeball political elites of the world. It makes you take a long hard look at yourself and realize what your actual goals are in life.
Lastly, here's a quote I borrowed from one of Marty Bent's articles he wrote recently. I think it will drive my point home:
“...Despite what many in the political class would attempt to have you believe, they understand that Bitcoin is better money. This is an undeniable fact. There will only ever be 21,000,000 bitcoins. It is divisible, portable (over the Internet), easy and cheap to verify, extremely hard to corrupt, impossible to centrally control, and it is running in a race with a bunch of chronically ill competitors. Every fiat currency is mathematically destined to be debased into oblivion. Precious metals are woefully centralized and impractical for facilitating day-to-day trade. As Michael Saylor likes to say, there is no second best. Most of the world doesn't realize this yet, but it doesn't negate the fact that it is a fact. Bitcoin is the best money in the world, and that is an objective statement...”
"Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 'It is written,' he said to them, 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it 'a den of robbers.'" - Matthew 21:12-13