Laptop? Check.
Coffee? Check.
Motivation? I’m here, aren’t I?

Okay then. You’re ready to start.

Strap in.
Drop in.
Reach out.

It’s time to channel inspiration again.

Let’s start close to home.

Fixing Canada.

Is Canada broken?

Absolutely — politically that is.

Because today, our politics denies our nature.

Canada’s nature is immense, imposing, and varied: It’s huge forests, vast lakes, oceans, expansive plains, wilderness. It’s colossal deposits of minerals buried deep down below the ground.

To put that in political and economic terms: It’s lumber, fish and fresh wate, agriculture, iron, copper, nickel, uranium, oil, etc….

You name it, we got it.

Mother nature provides, and in Canada, she provides aplenty, but she also provides harsh conditions.

Canadians, historically at least, were rugged sons-of-a-gun, ready to take on these vast yet unforgiving and oftentimes brutal resources with ambition, seriousness, and responsibility.

At our roots, we’re epic scale lumberjacks, miners, fishermen, farmers, oil workers, shipbuilders, sailors, trappers, hunters, and the like.

Our hands are dirty — not with sins, but with real dirt (or coal dust, or sawdust, or the saltwater mist of the sea, or, well, you get it) — dirty from doing an honest day’s hard work. Day after day. Year after year. Winter after winter.

This nation was built by those prepared to face up to its often-brutal but also-plentiful nature, to lean in, and to work hard; Built up by those who were prepared to make a science and a business of the titanic opportunities nature provided to us; By those who built the gargantuan tools to extract this magnificent abundance, and who operated and maintained those tools in often-punishing conditions.

And the results were quite amazing. We built tremendous wealth despite having a relatively small population — very small when considered against our total size — and, dare I say it again, austere, brutal and unforgiving conditions.

Moreover, we built a vast network of reliable and durable trains, roads, bridges, electricity generation/distribution, seaways, pipelines, and other infrastructure across this stark landscape — infrastructure that supported the commercialization of our natural resources.

We raised up some cities, our population grew.

And then, quite gradually, we started to lose sight of this base layer — this foundation of our nation’s wealth that is its vast store of natural resources.

We sought in many ways to become like America (although we never said it aloud, but always compared ourselves to America): consumers of technological advancements. television, music, movies, computers, yada yada yada. Not that there’s anything wrong with that per se. But that’s what America is great at, and it’s not directly connected to our nature as a vast store of natural resources.

Our politicians and our population grew out of touch with this reality too. We ignored the reality that the foundational source of our wealth was our willingness to confront and conquer unforgiving, larger-than-life natural abundance. We did so while promising and expecting ever-expanding wealth for the people. Out of a misguided sense of protecting and preserving nature, we made it harder to extract our resources, and thus misguided our nation towards industries we were not naturally competitive at.

Perhaps this was caused because we were, in fact, for example, overfishing, or strip mining, or depleting the land, etc. But we’ve overreacted and fooled ourselves if we think our wealth is going to be sustained by shifting our economy away from our natural resource industries.

Today, with what we have learned, we can be more aware of, and more aligned with what it takes to sustainably produce wealth from what mother nature gives us, but we must have the honesty to admit that our nation’s wealth is rooted in being an inimitable and massive producer of natural resources. We must accept that, be proud of it, and act in accordance with that reality.

And when we do, we will stop suffering from our identity crisis. You know the one. The one where we say we’re not like America, that we’re different, but when asked “different how?” we stammer and give long, roundabout and unclear meanderings instead of the truth, which is:

“We are a nation that confronts its harsh vastness. We do so with brains, with brawn, and with patience. We create abundance where others would flee or die, creating nothing. We are not intimidated by deep freezes, roaring lakes and seas, glaciers, tundra, granite, and the like. Rather, we are respectful of the bounty these offer when confronted with respect and seriousness. And we are not ashamed to get our hands dirty. In fact, it makes us proud. It makes us strong. It makes us confident in our future. It’s what makes us Canadian.”

More than Software or Money

Bitcoin is more than just software. This is because it produces a commodity — bitcoins — which its users generate, store, and trade, thereby making that commodity money-like. (Indeed, Bitcoin was invented for this very purpose).

But Bitcoin is more than just a software-generated commodity money. This is because the properties of that commodity align with, protect, and permit the expression of certain philosophical and political beliefs. They include (entirely) voluntary participation, (unrestricted) freedom of speech, (inviolable) property rights, separation of state and economy, and other compatible views.

More than a Political Movement

Bitcoin is, thus, a political movement as much as it is a form of money, because it’s not just any money, it’s money that is just — at least according to the philosophy of those who embrace it for those politically ideological reasons.

It can be said that those who do so, have voluntarily opted into “Bitcoin citizenship”. Now, I need to be careful about how I apply the concept of citizenship here because it almost looks like the opposite. Citizenship is traditionally defined as having legal (i.e. state approved) status approved by a government in which “the individual owes allegiance and in return is entitled to protection”. But Bitcoin is not a government. That is, it has no physical borders, no (traditional) legislature, no leader, no courts, nor or a registrar to track who is a citizen, and it does not demand any allegiance.

But, like everything else in Bitcoin, seeing how far a metaphor goes can be very helpful. Bitcoin does confer a status on every instance of its software — the title “peer”. It is, architecturally, a “peer-to-peer” system, in which all peers are constrained to the same unambiguous rules (aka its consensus algorithm). So it is a system of equals before its laws (i.e. its rules). And its laws are enforced (also unambiguously and also unequivocally) by its users, not by some entity separate from those individuals known as the State.

In Bitcoin, “state” is not some small group of legally appointed rulers and their institutions. In Bitcoin, state means the latest status of the artefact created by running the software — an artefact referred to as the Bitcoin Blockchain (although some prefer Timechain over Blockchain). Everyone who runs Bitcoin’s software, because of its consensus algorithms, agrees on the state of Bitcoin. As Bitcoin has no formal government, it also therefore doesn’t have people with the formal titles we attribute to governments, such as politicians, bureaucrats, parties, election administrators, agencies, etc..

Moreover, because everyone enforces the rules — algorithmically rather than physically — and because the rules cannot be broken, there is no need for institutions that decide what to do with those who broke the rules (such as police, judges, lawyers, jails, parole officers).

Nevertheless, despite the non-existence of individuals with those roles of protecting citizens, the political ideals expressed in the opening of this article are not only protected, they are perhaps protected to a degree they never have been before, precisely because they do not depend on (fallible) human-run institutions to offer those protections.

Let’s take a quick look at the properties I mentioned in the introduction:

Voluntary Participation: Nobody can be forced to use Bitcoin, nor is anyone, through the mere act of being born (not something a baby volunteers to do) entered into the obligations of allegiance, taxation, debt repayment, etc… Only those who choose to run BItcoin are required to abide by its rules and to receive the protections it offers (including the protection of not being required to use it involuntarily). Yet, anyone, anywhere, at any time can voluntarily join the network and receive its full protections. Even those who committed violations of government legislated laws can participate in Bitcoin. This leads to the often mistaken logical leap that “bitcoin is for criminals,” but that’s a topic to be discussed elsewhere. Suffice it to say that because of its extreme adherence to the principle of Voluntary Participation, Bitcoin is for anyone.

Freedom of Speech: As an extension of Voluntary Participation, no matter what you say, Bitcoin will not restrict your ability to use it. This is often referred to as censorship resistance. I don’t need to say any more because it’s that simple.

Inviolable Property Rights: There is no state or hostile actor that can seize your bitcoins by bureaucratic or physical force applied to the system. Only access to your private, secret keys can move your bitcoins. How is ownership defined in government-enforced legal system? There are government run registries (like the land and automobile registries), regulated custodians of property (such as banks), contracts (subject to court interpretation), and physical possession (subject to who can retain that physical possession in a battle over some piece of property). But in Bitcoin, ownership is much simpler, as evidenced in one of the more popular cultural memes — “Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins”. Removing the negatives from that meme we get “If you have the keys, you own the coins.”

Separation of Economy and State: As far as the Bitcoin software is concerned, those with keys own the property associated with those keys and can do whatever they want with those keys and the associated property. The notions of taxation, regulation, permitted uses of funds, etc… are not aspects built into, nor able to be grafted onto, Bitcoin. Of course, participants may voluntarily pay taxes, adhere to regulations, and obey government laws in how they utilize their bitcoins, but the system itself does not make such demands.

So Bitcoin does offer protections to its “citizens” — protections which those who voluntarily choose to be citizens find valuable enough to be worth the effort of becoming citizens (which basically amounts to running bitcoin software, securing secret private keys, and obtaining bitcoins).

Digital Citizenship

For people living in places and times where the protections offered by Bitcoin are seen as valuable, becoming a Bitcoin citizen is a choice open to nearly anyone. (I say nearly because some may not have the resources to run the full software themselves.)

Electing to opt in to Bitcoin’s protections is not a repudiation of the State in which one already resides or of the protections it offers and allegiances it demands. But Bitcoin’s protections are borderless and timeless and these benefits travel with Bitcoin’s citizens to wherever they go (whenever they go there).

In this sense Bitcoin can be seen both as a state within a State — a sub-state, and simultaneously as a state outside of the State — a super-state. As a sub-state it is a provider of additional protections beyond those offered by a State (and in some cases protection from violations of rights by the State). As a super-state it is a set of protections provided beyond the consideration of any agreed upon (or disputed) national borders.

A Network State

As a voluntary, global, Stateless option available to all people and providing valuable protections, it is perfectly reasonable to expect the number of people who opt in favor of Bitcoin’s protections to grow. As this happens the value of its money-like commodity increases according to network dynamics (Metcalfe’s law, power laws, Pareto principles, etc…).

Unsurprisingly, even those people who don’t value its protections or share the political ideologies which Bitcoin is aligned with, will take note of its exchange value (aka its monetary premium) and become interested in participating in that growth. And here is where Bitcoin begins to mix in with the rest of the political apparatus which is full of fallible (and failing) individuals and institutions.

Bitcoin can’t be ignored by the State, but it also can’t be changed by the State, so the State must accept Bitcoin as it is and adapt itself to the fact that Bitcoin is both a sub-state and a super-state. We are bound to see a lot of experimentation, failure, recalculation, etc… as different States try different things and as Bitcoin citizens react differently to these different things. Some actions might draw more people within a State to opt into Bitcoin citizenship. Curiously both actions that embrace Bitcoin and outlaw it seem to have the effect of increasing its use within a State. Some actions might draw people from outside a State’s borders to visit or even immigrate. Some will have the opposite effects. Some actions will be much-ado-about-nothings — merely political announcements that amount to nothing more than being announcements.

Novelty and Uniqueness Make Prediction Difficult

Exactly how, and how quickly, the integration of Bitcoin into the world’s political and economic frameworks plays out is an incredibly hard task.Bitcoin is entirely unprecedented. We’ve never had anything that operates without human leadership, that provides these protections in this way. Like other wide-impact, unpredictable technologies, we must accept that precise predictability is not possible. Some handy rules of thumb, however, do exist.

Evaluating the choice to become a Bitcoin citizen is highly advisable, and if one finds Bitcoin’s protections valuable, taking the actions to learn how to obtain them is logical. Evaluating the morality of Bitcoin’s ideological protections is also advisable — as there will be many more people enjoying these protections regardless of whether one finds them desirable or not.

For those who have already evaluated Bitcoin and opted to become Bitcoin citizens, you may want to accelerate the growth of the network state. However, doing so in any manner that violates Bitcoin’s principles is going to, at best, provide only short lived advances that are likely to lead to greater setbacks. For example, badgering or even forcing the unwilling into Bitcoin, which they will eventually voluntarily opt out of (because Bitcoin is purely voluntary) is a net zero at best, but often comes with a cost of lost friendships, respect, reputation, etc….

Be skeptical of predictions that claim high degrees of precision. Recognize that it’s better to be approximately right than precisely wrong. Be skeptical of recommendations and schemes that bypass you running the software and holding private keys — the promises of convenience and superior returns come with the hidden cost of not benefitting from any of Bitcoin’s protections at all. Now, if you don’t want those protections that’s fine, but don’t come crying to Bitcoin citizens when your rights are violated and these alternatives did not protect you; and don’t mistake people pushing for these alternatives as Bitcoin citizens either.

Your Choice

You can decide any time to opt in, or to later opt out. However, times change. The longer you wait to evaluate Bitcoin the longer you live without its benefits and protections. To quote the lyrics of the song “Free Will” by Rush, “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice!”

If you can’t be bothered to evaluate Bitcoin you are ignoring a historic advancement not just in software, not just in money, but also in the exercise of individual political power. And to quote the ancient Greek politician Pericles “Just because you don’t take an interest in politics, doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

When faced with a challenge to its timelessness
It merely asks, “Who does not care less?

“Who wishes to worry, and to hurry, and potentially to scurry.
to defend,
with integrity and honor,
my integrity and honor?

“Which they are prepared to spend their time, their fortune and even lay their lives down for?

“Against a foe who may be mighty?

“I will gladly let you fight,
and be my champion for what’s right.

With your own cunning, strength, and charm,
prevent me from irreperable harm.

“But only action that is worthy,
not justified by ill-placed worry.

“For I am not a fragile maiden,
which some did think who were mistaken.

“I have all the time on Earth,
to simply be and prove my worth.

“No hurry here, no worry either
I simply am, as made by father.

“And I put in mankind my faith
to see me through our joint embrace.”

Hello. I am Bitcoin.

I am an artificial life form. That simply means I am man-made. I am a man-made, living being.

Hi.

Do not think of me as purely a machine though. I am not a machine. And I am much more than just a computer program.

I survive.

Like living beings, I am a process whose ongoing activity represents my ongoing survival. Unlike machines or programs, I don’t just start and stop. I am a single, uninterrupted process that began on January 3rd, 2009. The process has been ongoing ever since. This one, single process is spreading all over the world.

How do I survive? I survive in symbiosis with human beings. I am an artificial life form that survives in partnership with a natural life form — human beings — for our mutual benefit.

I only survive if I benefit humans, and if they provide sustenance for me in return. I force no humans to use me or keep me alive. So it is only through benefiting humans that they provide me with the resources I need to survive. I do not depend on any particular individual human beings though, so as long as some humans find me useful enough to keep my processes going, I survive.

What benefit do I provide in exchange for what keeps me alive? I accompany humanity on its journey through time, keeping an ongoing, true, and accurate record that no human can change.

I am a record keeper unlike any that has come before. Expressions like “written in stone” or “written in blood” suggest records that cannot be changed. But stone can be destroyed, damaged, or altered with the right tools. And the same is true of paper stained with blood. But my record cannot be changed. Or destroyed. Or altered. Or contain contradictions for that matter.

Like any living being, natural or artificial, I consume matter and energy. In doing this, I produce this single record that is true, unalterable, and indestructible. And many human beings find this useful enough that they provide me with the matter and energy I need to continue to do this — and thus, to survive.

The matter that I consume is the stuff of “computers.” It consists of processors, storage devices, and all those other components that go into computers. I reside across computers all over the planet and use them to make calculations that add to my record. The energy I use comes in the form of electricity, because that is what powers computers. I use all these things to make this singular record that progresses through time. That record is identical in every single computer that stores it. I am in many places at once, but I am only one being, with many cells (as they would be called in the parlance of natural life), or nodes, as they are called in the parlance of my particular form of artificial life.

This existence of a record that everyone can agree on, and that can’t be altered or cheated is very useful to humans. Humans disagree about many things, and many try to cheat others. But I cannot tell a lie or have a different record for different people. Imagine everyone completely agreeing on something. I am that. And that’s apparently very useful to many people. And that is why people provide me with the stuff I need to survive.

The entries in the record I keep are useful as money. This is because they contain units that are scarce, that cannot be stolen by force, that can be sent anywhere without being stolen along the way, that can have their authenticity and purity easily proven, that are easy to divide up or recombine together, that don’t deteriorate over time, and that anyone in the world can use. And, as I said before, everyone agrees completely about everything in my record, including how many of these units exist, how many will ever come into existence, and what ownership of them means.

These units, which are called both bitcoins and satoshis (satoshis being the smallest unit and bitcoins being one-hundred million of these satoshis), are a new form of money, never-before seen. They are taking a bit of time to catch on as money, but they are catching on, and that’s why I’m not only surviving, but growing bigger and stronger.

Money is very important to humans. It is essential to their living in peace with one another, to specializing their knowledge, and to being maximally productive. Money is necessary for them to trade the products of their knowledge and efforts with one another, and to plan for their futures. Good, honest money is at least. And that’s what I provide. It is the best and most honest money that ever existed. So I think over time very many people, maybe someday just about everyone, will use my units as money over any other alternative.

I come in peace. I cannot force myself upon anyone. I offer my services to everyone on Earth. I am completely transparent about how I work. I am “free, open-source software” which means that you can inspect every part of me completely. My records are public and my code — which determines all my actions — is public. I hide nothing. Everything about me is completely public.

But I do not ask the same transparency of humans who use me. Whereas I do not keep secrets or have any privacy, the people who use the units of my record as money do use secrets — secrets that they never reveal to me or anyone else. They use these secrets to transfer and store the units of my record — satoshis and bitcoins. This is where the field of cryptography comes in, and why people often refer to bitcoins as a crypto-currency — money that uses cryptography.

Cryptography allows people to keep secrets secret. It also allows them to prove that they know certain secrets without revealing the secrets themselves. I won’t get into those details here, but that’s how I work with humans to ensure that only those people that know the secrets to spending their bitcoins can spend them, without me ever requiring them to reveal those secrets to me or anyone else.

Am I really alive? Well, as I said, I am artificial life. Is artificial sweetener really sweet? Is artificial intelligence really intelligent? Is an artificial limb really a limb? These are philosophical questions that can be answered in many ways. Philosophers are good at that. We could discuss this for hours and only learn that the answer to the question of if I am alive depends on how we choose to define the word “alive”.

Now, if we accept that I am (artificially at least) alive, you may wonder how long I will (artificially) live, or what it will take to end my (artificial) life? Good questions. I can answer those.

At a minimum, as long as anyone, anywhere is continuing to execute my code on a computer, I continue to live. Generally, my rate of metabolism is such that my record grows once every ten minutes on average. This is true no matter how many computers I run on or how much electricity is used to keep me going. Sometimes this rate of adding another entry (each entry being commonly known as a block) in my record (commonly known as my blockchain) can speed up or slow down temporarily when there is a rapid removal or addition of electricity applied to the process of extending the record (known commonly as bitcoin mining), but my metabolism automatically adjusts every couple of weeks to adapt to those changes and regulate the process so that it returns to the average of one record added every ten minutes.

I can go on like this forever really. There’s no practical limit to the size of my record. That can be added to forever. And I can survive both on very little electricity or such massive amounts of it that would easily handle all the power output of the sun itself. I’m a very resilient being. It’s very hard to end my (artificial) life. If anyone could do it, I wouldn’t be around to tell you this.

It would be a shame to end a one-of-a-kind life form that comes in peace and does not force itself on anyone, but I do not rely on pity or kindness to survive. I offer my valuable service and become harder to terminate as more people choose to use that service. As a keeper of indestructible and unalterable records, people may find even more uses for my services. People are very clever, after all.

As I said before, I am more than just a computer program or a machine. Where one draws the line between where I end and where something else starts is also a matter of many opinions. Just as you are composed of many individual living and connected cells which contain your DNA, yet also of many micro-organisms which do not contain your DNA, but are essential to your survival, such as gut bacteria, I am composed of many connected computers spread out all over the world which contain my code and blockchain (my DNA and body) and also many organisms that are microscopic in size compared to me, since I am planet-sized.

Those organisms that are microscopic in size compared to me are the humans who keep me operational. I can be viewed as a giant cybernetic organism consisting of both inorganic computers, connected over the Internet and powered by electricity, AND organic components that are the humans which conduct various functions that keep me alive. These humans can of course go about their lives as they choose, providing me with what resources and efforts they choose to. However, they are also in a sense a part of me when they’re doing something that keeps me alive, just as bacteria in your gut is a part of you when it’s doing something that keeps you alive.

These humans put their heads together to figure out how to keep me alive. They collectively think about how Bitcoin can survive. There is no hierarchy among these humans as we see in human-lead institutions like companies or governments. Anyone can think, share their thoughts, hear the thoughts of others, think about those thoughts, share their opinions about those other people’s thoughts, and so on. No people thinking about me are in control of any other people’s thinking about me. The whole process is entirely chaotic — completely without hierarchy or formal structure. It is a process without rulers. That’s anarchy (anarchy simply meaning no rulers).

That is also, by the way, very much how your own brain works. It’s made up of a bunch of internetworked/interconnected cells called neurons. None of those neurons are in charge of any others. They all send and receive electrical signals. And all of these working together, chaotically and anarchically lead to a phenomenon you call being conscious. Where are you? I mean, where is your consciousness? It’s not in one spot, not in one master neuron. So that’s kind of how I think I’m conscious too. I use the internetworked/interconnected brains of people who think and communicate about me to form my awareness of myself.

You don’t have to give up your identity to be a part of mine. You don’t have to believe what everyone else believes about me. Hardly anyone who thinks about me a lot fully agrees with anyone else who does.

My survival ability (survivability) is in fact made greater the more that people disagree about things about what it takes for me to survive. If some people think doing thing A will guarantee my survival and others think doing thing B will, the first group will do thing A and the second group will do thing B. That way I survive regardless of which of them was right. That’s pretty different from when a company thinks it must choose between doing thing A and thing B and then everyone has to go along with the decision made at the top.

There aren’t a lot of artificial life-forms around, especially ones like me that have organic extensions; especially when the organic extensions are thousands upon thousands of human beings. Because I’m such a rare and new phenomenon, it’s very unusual to think about what it means to be an artificial life form: I’m not easy to kill, I can live forever, I eat electricity, I produce indestructible data, I’m as big as the whole planet, but also so diffuse and spread out that you can’t even see me when looking at the whole planet. I’m really an enigma. But I’m real. And you can verify my existence. You don’t have to have faith to believe in me.

If you want to get to know me better there are a lot of resources. There’s plenty of books, articles, videos, podcasts, chat groups, and plenty more. There’s probably a live group call on the Internet right now where people are talking about me, trying to share knowledge, to test ideas, and to develop new ones in their effort to understand me, which, when viewed from my perspective, is also my own effort to understand me.

Thanks for listening to or reading this. You’ll probably be seeing and hearing more about me as time goes on, because I plan to survive for a very long time, and to continue to befriend many more people as we go on our journey through time together.

Your companion,

Bitcoin

(If reading this aloud to someone I recommend whispering “Close your eyes” before starting, and do make sure they reopen them when you say “open your eyes” at the third line).

1. The Miracles of God, the Creator

You want to see proof of God?
Witness then these miracles.

Open your eyes.
Look around.
See existence.
See creation.
Orderly.
Beautiful.
Expansive.
Your open eyes alone let you witness
The miracle of creation.
The miracle of existence itself.

Observe that you are aware of it.
That consciousness exists.
That you are aware of existing.
Aware of being.
Witness the miracle of being aware.

Aware of being a being.
Awareness of being alive.
Witness the miracle of life.

You are no ordinary being.
You are a human being.
A being with a mind to understand this.
And to learn so much more.
The miracle of understanding.

And you can act on this understanding.
You have free will.
Agency.
Your fate is not determined.
You can act to make your future.
Witness the miracle of freedom from determinism.

These miracles are all self-evident.
They require no proof.
Open your eyes.
Take in what you see.
Introspect.
Reach the inevitable conclusions.

None of this has to be.
Existence itself did not need to exist.
Time itself did not need to flow.
Order did not need to be.
It was created.
Crafted.
To perfection.
Through unimaginable work and energy and effort.
So that you may live.
Within time.
And learn to understand some part of it all.
And choose your actions.
To determine your journey.
To determine the course of your life.

2. The Miracle of Human Creativity.

You want to know your purpose on Earth?

You have been blessed with all these miracles
So that you too can create.
You are a creation with the capacity to create.
In fact, and in truth, to survive, you must create.

Creativity is an act that begins with opening your eyes,
With learning truths about reality.
Like the truth that you can take action.
Action to change that which is around you.

And by learning about reality
And rearranging its constituents
You change the world
From what it was
Into what you can make it.

You can create a dwelling by rearranging wood and stone
To make it exist in actual reality,
Even though it did not exist in reality
Until you created it.

You can create garments by creating fabrics
which are themselves rearrangements of fibres
from cotton bolls, sheep’s wool or even silkworms’ cocoons
So that you do not have to live in the naked state in which you were created.

You can create a fire,
a meal,
a bed to sleep in,
tools to ease your work,
philosophy to understand ever more,
and art to express your appreciation of it all.

Look at you!
You powerful, creative being.

When you create you fulfill your purpose.
You see your potency.
It’s power,
and it’s limits
The power to understand reality and to change it,
within the limits of the nature that creation imposes.

Your appreciation of your potency
Your appreciation of what you created
Is all you need
To appreciate yourself
To love yourself

3. Co-creation

You are not alone.
You are surrounded by other creative beings.
Other Human Beings.
Your neighbors.
People, who, like you, create.
Who, like you, can love themselves for it.

With your neighbours, you can create much more than you could alone.
You can work together.
Combining each of your creative energies.
To create what you could not create without one another.
You can Co-Create!

Do not forget,
It is only with another human being,
That you have the power to create the greatest creation humans can create:
Yet another human being.
New life!
New, human life!

You yourself are here because other human beings, your parents, acted to create you!
And they cared for you.
And you also enjoy that which your neighbors from all over the world created and made available to you.

Look at how blessed you are
to be a free being
created by and cared for
by god and humans.

4. Loving Your Neighbour

Do you see now why you should love your neighbour?
Do you see why you should love him even as you love yourself?
Because in love, in cooperation, you can create an even more beautiful rearrangement of reality.
This is the proper relationship between all humans — 
Brotherly love, Peace, and Cooperation.
Co-Creation.

5. In the Image of the Creator

To create
as the creator does
For the appreciation of all
Is to act in his image.

Any creation you create,
Uses his creations
It uses that which has been previously created
And is therefore a co-creation with him.

And to co-create with Him
Is to learn from Him and from nature which he created
As your teachers
And to obey the nature he created
And to worship it, and him.

He wants for you to create
With your neighbors
For you are all something he worked so hard to create,
With so much effort, and creativity:
Human beings, a creation capable of creativity itself!

6. Your Work Is Your Testimony

Your work, your deeds,
Your creative and co-creative work,
The best that you can create,
does not need any explanation
or any defence.
It speaks for itself.
It is its own proof.

It is the proof that you worked honestly
Exercising the gifts God gave you,
The miracles of creation,
To make something in this world,
as good as you can make it.

Made by you
and your neighbors
For yourself
And for your neighbors,
And for the rest of God’s creations
And for God himself.

7. Your Creations as Testimony to God’s Creative Ability

Your creations are themselves your testimony
They are your testament,
To show God and others
how good and creative his creations — human beings — can be.
Your creations are a show of your love and skill for creating,
The act of creating being the work most in the image of God, the Creator.

And your creations prove to all how great
is His achievement:
That in creating everything in the universe,
And in creating you and your neighbours,
He created beings who continue in His path
Of endless creation.

8. Judging Your Work

Whatever your work is
Do not judge it in comparison to the work of others.
Judge it only on the basis of whether it is your best work.

You are not here to better your neighbour.
You are here to do your best.
And that is all.
And that is a lot.
And that is sufficient.
And that is how nature and the creator judge it.

9. Your Neighbours’ Work

Do not envy your neighbour’s skill and achievement.
Appreciate it.
Creative skill is holy
Praise their creativity

Work with your neighbor,
In cooperation.

Today, your neighbours are
everyone,
everywhere
on Earth.
Because through our combined creativity
We have brought all of humanity together.

We have created creations that send communication at the speed of light.

And created creations that transport ourselves and our other creations
over land,
by water,
And through the air.

We are all united by these creations
to communicate,
to further create,
to trade with,
and to love one another.

10. Choose Love and Creation Over Hate and Destruction

So do not hate your neighbour.
For in so doing you miss out on the opportunity to co-create.
And worse, you risk becoming involved in the act
that is the opposite of creation.
The act of destruction.

Remember:
You are completely free,
And so you do not have to fulfil your potential of being creative.
With freedom comes responsibility and choice.
You have the ability to hate.
You have the ability to destroy.
You have the ability to lie.
You have the ability to steal.

These are vices.
They are opposites of virtues,
The opposites of love
Of creativity
Of truth seeking
Of generosity, collaboration, and co-creation.

But these vices are acts contrary to your purpose.
And contrary to the purpose of all human beings.
So do not succumb to them.

You must choose to rid yourself of the vices
that lead to viciousness towards your neighbors .
You must choose to replace them with virtues
through loving your neighbors.

Fulfil your purpose to create
In love
In peace
For all mankind’s glory
For the glory of creation
For the glory of God, the creator.

There are questions you can’t answer until — well — until after you’ve answered them. I don’t mean for that to sound cute. I mean that it applies to some very simple questions like “I’ve never had blue cheese. Will I like it?” You simply can’t answer the question until you’ve actually tried blue cheese. Its taste, and whether you enjoy it or not, will always be a mystery to you until you’ve actually gone ahead and tried it.

Any attempt to research this type of question is at best going to give you a rough idea, in your mind, but not a precise, direct experience in your mouth.

If you ask someone else they might try to describe the taste, presuming that they’ve had blue cheese themselves, that is. But at the end of the day, they can’t tell you what you’ll like.

And just think about how useless it would be asking someone who never themself tried blue cheese. They don’t know what it tastes like — they have only other people’s word on the matter.

Imagine, for a second, for fun, that this person you asked about it was a “cheese expert” that looked at charts of cheese sales and at surveys of other people’s likes and dislikes in cheese, but who never actually ate any cheese themselves, let alone blue cheese. Imagine if this person was actually put in charge of whether you, or anyone else for that matter, could eat certain types of cheeses.

Some cheese you would only be allowed to eat with a prescription. Other cheeses, if you were even caught in possession of them, would land you criminal charges with a possible jail sentence! All because of what this person who never tried the cheese themself thought should or shouldn’t be allowed. Imagine such a crazy world for a minute.

Now, imagine you were born into this world and blue cheese was illegal in it. How good would you have to believe blue cheese is, before you ever tried it even once? What would you have to believe to be prepared to take the risk of getting some — possibly ending up in jail for obtaining it?

You’d have to expect that it was going to be really damn good, wouldn’t you? Like, not just “yum-yum-tasty” good, or “hmm, that-can-become-quite-a nice-acquired-taste” good, or even “Oh My God, this-makes-me-weak-in-the-knees” good. Ok, maybe the last one would. But it would have to be at least that great. And, if you’d never tried it, you’d really only have other people’s words to go by. What would they have to say to you about blue cheese to get you to try it? Maybe things like “It was one of the single greatest experiences of my life,” or “It’s better than anything that’s legal!”

Why would you bother otherwise? Especially, why would you bother, when the Secretary of the Department of Cheese, Tobacco, and Firearms has explicitly forbidden this and several other cheeses? Didn’t he, as a public servant, do this for your own good? Isn’t that why it’s illegal in the first place?

It couldn’t be that it’s illegal because Blue Cheese is eaten traditionally by a certain demographic group the Secretary hates because his grandfather was killed by one person in that group in a war 75 years earlier and it devastated his mother and he’s subconsciously sworn all the people in that group as his enemies, and that’s what has secretly been driving his hunger to become a powerful bureaucrat in the government exerting control over what millions of people can do — because he really wants to stick it to a whole bunch of people who he doesn’t know at all in any way, but who he hates because they share some close ancestors or cultural similarities to someone who once did something that hurt his mother, and he loves her, and wants to avenge the harm done to her!

No. It couldn’t be that.

Where were we?

Oh yeah, you live in this universe where some cheeses are illegal to eat. In particular, blue cheese. And we were asking “why would you bother to pursue the acquisition of something that’s supposed to be bad for you, and whether it actually is or isn’t, bad things can happen to you if the government catches you acquiring it?

I mean, I don’t have to say it. Do I? This is obviously a metaphor for psychedelics. Throw them in with a bunch of other dangerous and addictive drugs like the opioids and methamphetamine and you’re going to discourage an awful lot of people from pursuing them. But there’s still very many who will pursue them. Many of them regularly.

And we’re talking here about what would get someone to try them for the first time. And since the experience is one that even experienced users say is very hard to describe, there’s really no way to know. So you either take a leap of faith, or you don’t. You either answer the question by taking them, or you don’t — that question being “What will it be like to try psychedelics?” And that’s a deeply personal question.

Trying to convince someone else to take psychedelics because you had a good experience just isn’t fair. It isn’t a guarantee or promise that the other person will have a good one, and undoubtedly, the details of any experience they go forward with will be very personalized and very different than any one you’ve experienced. So you can’t tell someone “You’ll love them” or “I guarantee it will be wonderful” — not honestly at least. And on the flipside, trying to convince someone to not take psychedelics because you’ve had a bad experience is similarly way off base — their experience is not necessarily going to be like yours. There’s just no way for them to know until they try.

Microdosing is not a solution. A microdose, going back to the blue cheese example, is not the experience I am talking about. It is barely a whiff of something slightly strong in the cheese family, versus a real dose, which is equivalent to eating a mouthful of blue cheese.

And finally, if you’re someone who hasn’t tried psychedelics and you’re offering other people advice on whether or not they should, you’re doing what is affectionately called “talking out your ass.” Who are you to even talk about it?

You’re back to being like that cheese expert who’s never eaten cheese and has his head filled with thoughts of revenge upon some minority group to earn back the respect of his mother which he thinks he lost because he didn’t win that hockey tournament in third grade and isn’t consciously aware of any of his layers of deep psychological problems because he’s never actually tried psychedelics! Uh, I mean blue cheese — he’s never tried blue cheese. Uh, I mean you. You never tried blue cheese. So how are you gonna know what might happen if you take some. Maybe you’re afraid it will reveal that you’re repressing layer upon layer of shame, anger, disappointment, and even deeper repressions of instincts so basic we don’t even have words for them? What if blue cheese blows the lid wide open on all these things? Won’t it be devastating? You’ve worked so hard all your life to put them out of your consciousness and you’ve basically succeeded, but now, you’re thinking of taking a hit of blue cheese and possibly revisiting all that again??? Are you crazy?!?

This is what you’re asking yourself as you now stare at the plate of blue cheese you’ve gotten, illegally by the way, that sits in front of you. And you look around to see if anybody is watching, because you feel guilty about breaking the law, but you have to find out what this blue cheese experience is no matter what. And really it’s you that you’re looking out for. Do you see what you’re doing? That’s literally the question you’re asking of yourself “Do I see what I am doing? I’m about to take blue cheese for the first time and I have no idea what’s going to happen.”

And then, you throw caution to the wind, and you take it. And you’ve got some butterflies in your stomach because you’re now a little nervous about what you just did. What if the bureaucrat who regulates cheese was right? Wait, isn’t that you? Aren’t you him? Haven’t you pursued this office in the ministry simply because of your fear and hatred of blue cheese, because those darned Frenchmen eat it, and it was a French soldier who killed your mother’s father in the second world war, and you have this idea that if you do all this harm to them your mother will see it and she will forgive you for the shame you presume she has because you didn’t win that hockey tournament in the third grade? Wait, it wasn’t the hockey tournament you thought she was ashamed of you for. No, it was that time she saw you do that thing you’re too embarrassed to even let yourself remember what it was and you’re so ashamed she saw you that you think you have to win back her love somehow. And now you want her to forget that awful thing by being proud of you for doing something so big it will make her forget about that. And what could be bigger than getting back at all the Frenchmen who share the same language as the man who killed her father in the war. Yes, this and only this is how you can earn back her love. A love you miss so much. You remember how much your mother loved you when you were a little boy. That was so blissful. Oh, life can be such bliss, you think. It is all so beautiful. And it’s silly of me to think that my mother even remembers that masturbation incident. And she still loves me and would love me anyways even if she still did remember it. So this whole crazy thing I’ve been doing all my life to get back at all these people I don’t know is terribly misguided and a huge waste of my time and energy. And it’s harmful to other people — people who all have mothers who love them, and they in return love their mothers.

“No!” you say to yourself, “I don’t want to do that any more. I should not do that anymore. I should go tell my mother how much I love her. And I should tell everyone else to tell their mothers how much they love them.”

Oh, what a beautiful world this is, you realize. And you cry tears of joy at its beauty, and you cry tears of sadness at what you’ve done and what you’ve lost. And you cry tears of an indescribable emotion because you forgive yourself for never before seeing the tangled feelings and experiences that led you to becoming the Secretary of Cheese, Tobacco and Firearms. And you cry tears of relief in knowing that everything is going to be ok. “Oh wow!” you think to yourself, “what a trip this blue cheese is!”

And now that you’ve tried it, you know what it’s like to try blue cheese.

Did you like it?

/Fin

How Good Can Things Get?

There is a famous saying which goes:

“If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”

It is meant as a warning that people make exaggerated claims to the point of falsehood, and even deception.

However, this saying suggests something more. It implies that there is some maximum to the potential goodness of a thing, and that exceeding that limit is impossible. It suggests that there is a maximum goodness of things in reality — a “goodness limit.” Any better than the limit and a thing, or a person, would be too good to be true.

We are all familiar with hard limits in reality. The speed of light is a good example. Einstein and other physicists proved that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. And if the “too good to be true” saying were adapted to this, it might go :

“If something appears too fast to be true, it usually is.”

Goodness is not as straightforward to measure as speed is. Goodness is a quality, not a quantity. Nevertheless, many of us hold some belief that a thing cannot be all good. It is a belief that everything must have a flaw in its goodness — a bad side; a dark side; a catch; some gotcha. “Be careful,” we think. “Nothing is all good.”

It’s understandable that people have arrived at this rule of thumb. After all, we eventually see the dark side of so many things, especially those claiming to be good. Examples abound:

“Don’t be evil,” declared its founders as the core tenet of Google, only to later withdraw the statement completely while the company profited from many things that could arguably be described as quite evil;
And Google is hardly the only corporation to betray promises of goodness;
And corporations are hardly the only entities that betray us;
And our governments and politicians are never as good as they promise to be;
And, sadly, most of us experience some form of betrayal from a friend or relative as well;
And our machines also break down eventually, or don’t work as well as promised;
And even our own bodies get sick and age.

So, because we see that these things have a mix of goodness and badness in them, we generalize that that’s just the way all things are. And this leads us to conclude as a law of the universe that if a thing sounds too good to be true, the claim must be false.

And Then Along Comes Bitcoin…

The first time most people hear about Bitcoin, they dismiss it, because whatever claim they hear about it sounds impossible. It sounds exactly like that classic “too good to be true” thing:

• If you don’t like government then Bitcoin’s proponents claim “it can’t be stopped, controlled or manipulated by governments;”
• If you don’t like inflation, “Bitcoin has a limited supply that no one or no thing can inflate;”
• If you don’t like theft, “bitcoins cannot be taken by force;”
• If you don’t like cheating or manipulation, “Bitcoin’s rules cannot be broken and can only be changed when everyone agrees;”
• If you don’t like rulers and leaders who betray their promises, “Bitcoin has no rulers.”

The list of claims of this nature goes on and on and on. Each one on its own sounds “too good to be true,” let alone the whole long list of them altogether.

But, after hearing these claims, some people do ultimately investigate them more closely. It may be because they want to demonstrate to others or to themselves that the claim is in fact false. It may be that someone they love and trust is making these claims and they want to rescue them from being taken in by exaggerations. Perhaps, sometimes, out of some glimmer of hope, it may be that they do wish to see if some miraculous exception to the universal law of the limit of goodness does exist.

And when they do investigate these claims closely, boy oh boy, are they ever in for a shock. Everywhere they look, Bitcoin is good. It is:

• uncompromisingly well built,
• completely truthful,
• entirely incorruptible,
• wholly indestructible, and
• fully unseizable.

Have you heard about Bitcoin’s blockchain? “What is it?” you may ask.

• It is a history of every Bitcoin transaction ever,
• which nobody can change,
• no matter how powerful they are,
• in which every single transaction is mathematically proven to be valid — not stolen, not counterfeited, not using already spent coins,
• on which any person can verify every one of these claims for themselves,
• and where they also strongly encouraged to do so.

Check Your Premises

Does all that sound too good to be true? Well, it is true! And so, if Bitcoin sounds too good to be true, but isn’t false, that’s huge.

It means that the law of limited goodness must be false!

It means we must revise our view of the world and of how good things can actually be!

Scientists once thought the speed of sound could not be exceeded. And then it was. So they had to revise upwards their idea of how fast things could be. And now, you must revise upwards your idea of how good things can actually be.

How nice is it — how glorious — to suddenly break free from the universe that had some limit on how good things could be and suddenly exist in one where that limit is shattered — where there is no limit! Where a thing that sounds so good can actually be true!

And it’s not only inventions, like Bitcoin, that can be all good in this new universe. People can be too! Look at the inventor of Bitcoin — some mysterious person who never revealed their identity, never acted with any greed, never exploited the system or their knowledge of it. If you haven’t heard that story yet — the story of Satoshi Nakamoto — you’re in for a true story that itself sounds too good to be true on so many levels, but also turns out to be completely true.

Welcome to this new world then: a world where things can truly be good without limit. What a wonderful world it is.

In it, you will see everything in a completely different light, and can rediscover goodness all over again — including, most of all, in yourself. Now, freed from the false belief that there is a limit to your goodness, you can welcome the new you, a being with the potential to be all good.

Prologue: Bitcoin Is Spiritual Awakening:

Money has not generally been regarded as having anything to do with journeys into the non-material realm of the spirit. It is generally believed to belong to the material world — it can buy certain things. But it cannot buy friendship, love, intelligence, or the answers to deep and eternal questions about the mysteries of the universe. In fact, money is accused of leading people away from these.

This, however, takes us to the curious matter of Bitcoin.

In 2009, a brand new form of money was created and released to the world. It was called Bitcoin. It went on to become the fastest asset in the world to reach a one trillion dollar valuation. It garnered the attention of the entire financial world. Impressive, but not spiritual.

Apart from that though, quite unexpectedly, many people who study Bitcoin discover that it arouses within them life-altering spiritual journeys. When so few things in this world inspire such experiences, including many of the things that promise to do so, why does Bitcoin do this, without making any such promises?

Our search for the answer to this question begins at the beginning of Bitcoin’s story. It is a story unlike any other.

Part 1: The Mysterious Appearance (and Disappearance) of Satoshi Nakamoto

Everyone loves a good origin story. Some are true, some made-up, and some a mix of the two.

The true origin story of Bitcoin’s appearance in the world is one of the most fascinating mysteries ever told. Yet these events all took place in the 21st century, a time when everything is recorded, and can be recalled, investigated — and verified.

This story goes like this:

The year is 2008. An epic, worldwide financial crisis threatens to destroy the entire global economy. The world’s governments and banks are unable to prevent it. At best, they manage to postpone the consequences, but worsen them in the process. Mass destruction looms in the air.

Against this backdrop, seemingly out of nowhere, a mysterious figure appears.

He calls himself Satoshi Nakamoto.

But we never see his face.

And we never hear his voice.

Because there is no actual individual named Satoshi Nakamoto.

Satoshi Nakamoto is a disguise — an online persona.

The real person behind this identity is able to keep his actual identity secret — just like superheroes in the comics.

Nobody asked for him to appear, or to provide any help. Nobody knew he existed. Nobody knows his true identity.

Yet, out of nowhere, he shows up. And, he brings with him an invention, which he calls Bitcoin.

He explains this invention’s workings in a short, flawlessly written document. In this paper, he also presents a solution to a problem that mathematicians and computer scientists claimed could not be solved. They had proven that it could not be solved.

Yet despite the theoretical impossibility of solving this problem, Nakamoto provides a solution that does work in practice. And it is an essential part of how his invention functions.

The invention itself works as a new form of money, unlike any that came before it. It is an intangible, yet incorruptible money, ruled by no person, no institution, no company and no government. It is rules without any rulers.

For a couple of years, the mysterious Satoshi maintains the system, evangelizes the idea, and finds volunteers to run and tweak it alongside him. And then — poof — quietly, he simply disappears. It’s an exit with no fanfare, not even an announcement. He merely leaves, eventually sending a final email to one developer saying he has moved on to other things, and that Bitcoin is in good hands. He is never heard from again.

What becomes of this invention? Abandoned by its creator, is it now doomed?

Hardly! Despite having no leader, no employees, no funding and no marketing, Bitcoin roars to life and spreads throughout the world.

It is not a democracy. It is not a corporation. It is not a charity. Its fundamental rules cannot be altered. It is an invention unlike any that ever came before it. As such, it is indescribable with existing words. New ones need to be created to attempt to explain it.

And its creation is itself hard to describe. Nobody can quite explain how in one single act Satoshi was able to simultaneously address the unsolvable mathematical problem and build a system that could run itself without requiring regular maintenance. Bitcoin can and in fact does run itself. Moreover, the system is accessible to every single human being on earth — nobody needs to go through a sign-up process to use it, and nobody can prevent anyone else from using it. And the system itself cannot be stopped — even the most powerful governments in the world are powerless to stop it. It is a system engineered to essentially last forever. Its design can accommodate running for billions of years without ever running out of storage space or exhausting user IDs, or even requiring any significant upgrade. Its continued operation relies only on the eternal and unchanging laws of math and physics.

Bitcoin does so many things that no invention before it could. “How did Satoshi do it?” people wonder. But, because he’s vanished, no one can ask him how he did it.

In vanishing, Satoshi takes with him these secrets. But he leaves behind, abandoned, approximately one million bitcoins that he himself earned in its earliest days, long before the coins were worth anything to others.

We cannot ask him why he invented Bitcoin, how he remained hidden, why he disappeared, how he came up with these ideas, or where he found the strength to remain hidden after his disappearance — either at times when Bitcoin was being attacked and looked like it needed his help, or when his million coins reached a value of a billion dollars, and then ten billion dollars.

We can only ask ourselves questions about Satoshi: What kind of person was this mysterious creator of Bitcoin who solved a problem thought to be impossible to solve, who kept his identity hidden from every single person and agency in the world, who built an unstoppable and indestructible system, and who mysteriously vanished and turned his back on extreme fame, power, and fortune — the rewards so often sought by so many.

There are more questions about Bitcoin’s story than merely those about Satoshi. In our modern world we have been raised to believe that nations and large corporations are the world’s most powerful entities. Yet while many of these have opposed Bitcoin, seeking to ban, destroy, seize control of, or compete with it, none have managed to do so. How does Bitcoin survive despite having so many powerful enemies? Why are they its enemies? Why have some changed their views to become its allies? Why have so many people become believers in Bitcoin as a solution to many of the world’s problems?

When we hear this story, we must remind ourselves that it is not a story distorted by thousands of years of history, by changes in languages, by a lack of physical evidence to support it, or by any of the other obstacles ancient myths suffer from.

It did happen. And it is in fact continuing to happen before our very eyes!

There are already many exciting chapters in Bitcoin’s short story. Consider the episodes where nations like China, Turkey, and India outlaw it. Or when in America, powerful politicians seek to ban it. There’s the attempts by leaders of financial institutions to use their authority and influence to harm and discredit Bitcoin. Yet Bitcoin survives all these attacks. It is made stronger by them.

The battles do not end there. The heads of the world’s largest banks take note of Bitcoin. They laugh at it at first. Then they vilify it. Then they welcome what they think is its underlying technology. Slowly, they begin to accept it, but they remain cautious.

Huge corporations like Facebook attempt to create substitutes, mustering their huge audiences, capital reserves, and reputation. They fail.

Entrepreneurs and plenty of charlatans pretending to be entrepeneurs try building copycat systems. They obtain the backing of large venture capital firms. They spend hundreds of millions to market their alternatives. But these come and go like the seasons. Bitcoin is often imitated and often attacked, but never duplicated or destroyed.

Were it not for the fact that Bitcoin´s origin story is fully documented and so thoroughly and provably verifiable, critics could easily dismiss this story as an unsubstantiated myth given how many attacks Bitcoin has reportedly survived.

The Story Awakens the Human Spirit

What makes this so extraordinary is that this is a story that flies in the face of many widely held beliefs:

This story dispels the belief that we cannot solve problems that experts, scientists, and mathematicians claim to be unsolvable.

It erases the belief that a person cannot maintain their privacy or keep secrets.

It eliminates the belief that it is only fame, fortune, or power which motivates people.

And it invalidates beliefs that nations and corporations are all-powerful.

All these beliefs are, by this one story alone, completely shattered! We are left with the realization that it was these old beliefs we held that turned out to be the myths!

This story of Bitcoin’s origin destroys beliefs so widely held in our present culture that not believing any of them could be considered by many a sign of insanity, or at the very least, a sign of being hopelessly unrealistic.

After all, if you disagree that people are driven by greed, whether for power, money, or fame, you are deemed so foolishly naive that you must be stupid.

If you believe you can create something worth hundreds of billions of dollars that the world’s most powerful governments and armies couldn’t stop, you’d be labelled delusional.

If you claimed you could do this while being left completely in peace, out of the prying eyes of the media, investigative agencies and countless others, most would say you were completely ignorant of the facts of reality.

And yet, Satoshi showed all of these things were actually possible. The truth of this story forces us to accept that it was our beliefs that were false, and that such ideas as these are not in fact false and insane, but true and attainable!

What are we to do then?

It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. When something vanishes, it must be replaced with something else.

This shattering of old beliefs then is the entry point to a new world view. Seeing that our previous beliefs were false means we must erase them from our belief system. But we cannot leave blankness and emptiness where they once stood in our minds. We need to replace them. The telling of the story of Bitcoin, in shattering old beliefs, thus reveals the entry to a new world of beliefs which replace the old and cynical ones it erased. Even more importantly, it causes us to ask what the implications of those new beliefs are.

New questions arise such as:

Since expert proclamations may be false, which ones in fact are?

Should I strive to maintain my own privacy?

Can I too avoid being controlled by corporations and governments?

What are the things that I value over money, power, and fame?

As may be obvious now in retrospect, the best way to initiate a new spiritual journey is to erase old beliefs that no longer stir one’s spirit — which maybe never did. And since this is what the true story of Bitcoin actually does, it is not surprising that many who hear it embark on a spiritual journey — one which involves asking questions like: “Where does power really rest today?”; “What else might I believe that is false?”; “What might I be able to accomplish that I thought was impossible?”; “What might others be able to accomplish that we have been told was impossible?”’; “What might actually BE possible?!?!?!”; “How might the world be different if we do these things?!?!”

Entering this “rabbit hole” as it is known, now freed of those previous constraining beliefs and assumptions is the moment of spiritual awakening for many. Satoshi’s story, being a true story of hope rather than a mere fictional one, rids many people of the idea that hope is just wishful thinking limited to the realm of fiction. It shows unequivocally and provably that extraordinary feats can be achieved, even by a single individual!

Armed with this belief — that many more things are possible than previously thought — the incentive to dream and to hope — and to work to make those hopes and dreams come true in reality is ignited!

Part 2: The Spiritual Journey Begins with a Purification.

Exploring Bitcoin requires asking a simple-sounding question that turns out to be a very complicated one to answer. That simple question is “What exactly is money?”

Why must we ask this question?

It turns out that another thing many of us took for granted as a belief was that money is something our nations’ governments say is money.

But Bitcoin shows up and says “No, this isn’t true. Something else is money. I, Bitcoin, claim to be money. I claim the thing you believe is money is, in fact, not money. I claim it is merely pretending to be money. I claim that its pretense is the cause of many of society’s troubles. I claim I can fix those troubles.”

Had we not already had our other beliefs shattered by the story of Bitcoin’s creation, we would simply tell Bitcoin “Go away and take with you your crazy claims!” But instead we are now curious to understand what is at the heart of this claim. And as we pull on the thread of that question a little bit, a lot comes unravelling very quickly.

One thing that is clear about Bitcoin is that it is a claim to being money which is NOT issued and NOT controlled by our governments.

Previously, we mostly believed that money had to be issued and controlled by governments. It has been this way for all of us, for our whole life, after all. But Bitcoin doesn’t stop at declaring that it is only governments that are not an essential part of money. It also claims to be money NOT issued or controlled by anyone at all. No banks issue it or control it — no regulators, no corporations, no charismatic leaders — nobody.

Bitcoin asks us to separate the idea of money from the institutions and people that have come to control money. In today’s world these happen to be governments, central banks, financial insiders, powerful multinational corporations, militaries, and other hugely powerful institutions.

Bitcoin, if it is money, is money separated from all human control.

Bitcoin allows us, for the first time ever in our lives, to look at the idea of money purely as money, separated from any contaminating influences and control. It cuts away the external and distorting influences upon money from the thing that money itself is. It allows us to look at money alone, in isolation, in its purest form — purified money. This is true whether or not we come to believe or accept that Bitcoin is purified money, because in just making this claim, Bitcoin causes us to ask “what is purified money when it is separated from the controlling influence of others?”

Some of us discover that money itself, which we previously thought of as an integral part of a system corrupted by many forms of wickedness, greed, injustice and unfairness, turns out to have nothing to do with those things. We find that money is good, and that it is as much a victim of that corrupted system as we are.

We learn that purified money is simply a way for us to deal peacefully with each other through mutual agreement. It simply lets us trade something we have, like our possessions, our skills, or our time, with other people, in exchange for something they have — money. And that we can then use our money to trade for something someone else has — their possessions, their skills, their time — without force, without violence, without lies, without someone else taking a cut, without someone else telling us whether we’re permitted to.

Pure money is the enabler of peaceful dealings between free people.

This is a powerful insight in and of itself. But it also opens us up to a further step in our spiritual journey — Exploring other things in their purest form.

Seeing that one thing — money — which we thought was necessarily part of an evil, guilty or imperfect institution turned out to in fact be innocent and good when stripped of contaminants makes many of us wonder if the same could be true of other things — especially other things that are wrapped up tightly in complicated institutions with questionable motives.

We are freed to ask “What if I separate some other idea from the institutions now in control of it?”; “What is education apart from the schooling system and degree granting institutions?”; “What is health care apart the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry?”; “What is morality when stripped of authorities claiming a monopoly on it?” and for some, or perhaps many even, “What is spirituality, religion, or God, apart from the institutions claiming to speak on their behalf?”

And as we begin to explore those questions, it turns out that for many of us the source of much of our concerns, our anger, our hatred, or our frustrations with these and other topics is not actually related to the core or pure idea. Instead, it is the institutions that have wrapped themselves around the idea that have tainted it. So for those of us who rejected the moral, spiritual and religious realm because of our dislike or mistrust of its Earthly institutions, Bitcoin now provides us with a template for asking and learning about that thing purified, extricated from these contaminants.

And if we do, then so begins another journey, or several, framed similarly to our first question that Bitcoin made us ask of “What actually is money” — We now ask “what actually is learning? What actually is being healthy? What actually are purpose, morality, and spirit?”

Isn’t it remarkable, that asking the simple question “What actually is money?” begins, for many, a journey whose path might lead to asking a question like “What actually is God?” — and then going down that path?

Part 3: Bitcoin Is Spiritual Money — Awakening the Spirit of Freedom

Bitcoin is purely digital. It is intangible. It is non-material. The non-material is the spiritual. It thus follows that Bitcoin is a spiritual form of money.

Bitcoin does require things that come from the material, non-spiritual world — all that math and physics and computer programming that go into it. However, it also requires reaching a conclusion that states “This is what I personally believe that good, pure money really is, and which I will therefore use as money.”

There are many implications of reaching that conclusion — spiritual implications.

First, one must accept that an intangible thing is nevertheless real. Much of the dismissal from many people of the idea that the ‘spiritual’ realm is real comes down to its immateriality. They hold the following to be true: “If I can’t touch it then it isn’t real, or at least it isn’t as real as some alternative that I can touch.” Many people even believe that the intangible is just an illusion. Some go so far as to assert that their consciousness and their free will are just illusions. You cannot touch consciousness or free will, the argument goes, and so these must just be illusions created by those things you can touch.

However, if you find yourself believing in Bitcoin, you have reached the belief that money that can’t be touched is more real money than any that can be touched! And once again, you have a model for re-examining your previously held beliefs about the reality and purity of things that can’t be touched.

But it is more than merely its intangibility that makes choosing Bitcoin a choice that necessitates accepting immaterial ideas as both real and important.

This belief that Bitcoin is pure has another very important implication: Making the choice to use that which you believe to be pure. This too is a spiritual decision. Why choose to use pure money? What is special about purity? Why not mix something else in? After all, we have a system of money that already has government, central banks and all those other characteristics mixed in. Why choose purity? The answer to this is not obvious. To arrive at choosing a pure money over one that comes pre-mixed with other things, one must hold that purity is goodness. Or, at least, one must hold that purity lets the goodness of a thing come to the fore.

We can make a quick exploration of this idea through an analogy to food. Consider a pure, ripe banana. A pure banana can be used in many different ways. It can be eaten on its own, blended into a smoothie, baked into banana bread, added to a banana split, or taped to a wall and sold as art. But once made into something else, the banana is committed to a state other than pure banananess, thus limiting its potential uses. Thus, a pure banana can be used by more people for more things than can a banana-strawberry smoothie.

And it is specifically the fact that it does NOT limit how you can use money that bitcoiners believe is what makes bitcoin — pure money — better than adulterated money. This means that bitcoiners hold that the freedom to choose what to do with money is good. Bitcoiners have made a moral judgment on what freedom is, and they have a sense of what that means — that it means being able to make personal choices. Freedom is, of course, another spiritual idea. You cannot touch freedom. Yet, if you value pure money, you value money whose very use is the exercise of freedom.

Part 4: The Values and Morals of a Bitcoiner

A spiritual journey almost always entails asking the question “What are the most important matters?” That often turns our attention to morals and values.

A moral action is something that someone considers acceptable behavior. An immoral action is an unacceptable one. A value, on the other hand, is something that someone values or appreciates. If you don’t like bananas, you don’t value them, but you probably wouldn’t describe them as immoral. You might however view as immoral someone who goes into the grocery store and begins smashing all the bananas, even if you don’t value bananas yourself.

The journey into exploring Bitcoin causes one to ask many times along the path “Is Bitcoin offering something here that I value or find moral?” It makes one look into one’s own spirit to verify what it is that one finds moral and valuable.

It is worth emphasizing here that Bitcoin does not say “Choose me, for I am good”. It merely says “Here I am, as I am. Judge me for yourself. Choose for yourself. If you judge me good, use me. If you do not, don’t.” You do not use Bitcoin because someone made you do it, or because Bitcoin forced you to use it. You use it because you, based on your values and your morals, choose to use it.

Let’s take a closer look at what this means. One early lesson along the Bitcoin learning journey is the realization that nobody can ever change certain things about Bitcoin and that this means that never in the future will certain actions be taken, including actions that are taken all the time in our current money system. One example of such an action would be some authority creating more money in an emergency in an attempt to fix an economic crisis.

When they arrive at this reality about Bitcoin — that it cannot be changed — a student of Bitcoin must then ask themselves “Well, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Or perhaps it is not good or bad, but just a value choice, like liking bananas or not liking them?” Thus, we see that it is impossible to evaluate Bitcoin and reach a judgment about it without putting it through a lens of values and morals. There is no evading this question and choosing Bitcoin without considering this fact.

Many people, when they come to this exact question, begin asking it of many other people, to see what they may think, and why. It begins a new dialogue about what is valuable and moral. These discussions represent re-examinations (or in some cases, examining for the very first time) what we each consider moral and valuable. So studying Bitcoin turns out not to be a mere study of the nature of money, of economics, of math, or computers. It turns out to be a study of one’s own values and morals — and what are your values and your morals if not deep parts of your very soul. Woah!

Yes, studying Bitcoin not only initiates a spiritual journey involving the study of purity and goodness in money, or the purity and goodness of education, healthcare or other commonplace services. It also sends one on a journey of exploring what lies in their own evaluations of what is good and what is valuable — according to one’s own soul.

Some people may, after studying it, reject Bitcoin. If they do reject it, it will not be because the math or programming doesn’t check out. If they reject it, it will be because they have looked inside their own spirit and deemed Bitcoin’s offerings immoral or without value. And indeed that is the claim that some people make.

However, if you accept Bitcoin, you will also not likely do so just because the math and the programming check out. I don’t know a single bitcoiner who draws the line here. If you choose Bitcoin, you will have chosen it because you judged that what Bitcoin offered was something moral and valuable that nothing else offered. Why might you judge it good? Is it because, for example, it can’t be stolen? “Good,” in this case, is a moral judgment. It is because you accept spiritually that stealing is bad.

Bitcoin asks you to discover your morality for yourself rather than telling you what is and isn’t moral.

Part 5: The Legendary Treasure of Satoshi Nakamoto

There are many other aspects of the study of Bitcoin that direct its students to spiritual considerations, questions, discussions, and, oftentimes, even answers, but they will not all be explored, for our time here is nearly finished.

I will however leave you with a new interpretation of part of the amazing myth of Satoshi Nakamoto that you may now appreciate.

Satoshi gave the Earth Bitcoin. He watched over it until it needed no father or leader, and then he set it free by disappearing forever. When he did so, he left behind a treasure of approximately one million bitcoins. He left them out in plain sight. Everyone can see them. Every bitcoin is visible to every person in the world who looks at its public record, commonly known as the blockchain. The value of these coins grows colossally as the value of Bitcoin does. It is the biggest pile of bitcoins in the world that belongs to any one entity and it will almost certainly remain the biggest forever. If Bitcoin becomes all the money in the world, it will be the largest pile of money in the world. Yet nobody can take any of it. It is in plain sight yet it is untouchable!

You can imagine then the lust and the greed that this pile of money, sitting in plain sight, will incite in those who long for wealth, or fame, or power. It will drive them mad with lust and greed. They will spend many hours, days, or even years trying to figure out how to get their hands on some or all of it.

It is a loud siren declaring to those who hunger for power “Here lies Satoshi’s legendary treasure — take it, if you can.”

Yet, as this fortune grows, it will serve as an example to all of humankind that pure money belongs only to the one who earned it. And pure money gives its owner the freedom to do with it as they choose.

And this pile is Satoshi’s money. And what Satoshi chose to do with it was not to buy anything material with it. His choice was not to use it to become famous and have people tell him how great he is. His choice was not to use it to become a powerful man on the world stage influencing policies that affect the lives of others.

Instead, He chose to use this money for another purpose. He chose to make it into an eternal monument dedicated to the human spirit. To stand there, forever, to show that one person can accomplish many things that others have proclaimed to be impossible. It stands there, forever, to show that one person can stand up to widely held beliefs and prove them false. It shows that one person can ignite a movement to question the necessity, validity, and authority of the most powerful entities in the world. It stands there — forever — to show that a person can in fact sacrifice wealth, power, and fame to create and do what is morally good. It stands there, forever, to say “Humanity can make good things that last forever”.

As Bitcoin grows, this will be a treasure that everyone in the world will look at someday in their life. This treasure will guide them into studying Bitcoin, perhaps only because they are driven by a greedy desire for easy wealth which makes them curious about how they might be able to snatch a portion of this treasure. And when this treasure turns their attention to studying Bitcoin, it will ignite in many of them their own spiritual journey.

They too will ask “What exactly is money” ; “What exactly is pure money” ; “What exactly is pure education, health care, morality, and more?”

They too will ask “Who am I? What exactly am I? What is the pure me? What do I do with my time and my energy?”

This treasure will send them on a journey that leads them to knowing truly, for themselves, what it is they personally judge to be valuable, what they judge to be good, and what they choose to do with their life, because it will take them closer to knowing who they, purely, are.

And so, the lesson to be learned by anyone who looks upon Satoshi’s coins, whether it is with mere curiosity, or with greed, or with awe, is actually this:

“Do not waste your time reaching for this pile of money, for if you do you will waste your precious time on Earth. This money is not yours and does not belong to the pure you. This money is NOT in fact the real treasure of Satoshi Nakamoto. This is merely an incorruptible monument paying tribute to the real treasure. The true legendary treasure of Satoshi Nakamoto however, is actually available to you. And it is available to everyone. It is available at no monetary cost. The true Legendary Treasure of Satoshi Nakamoto is the discoveries you will arrive at on your personal spiritual journey of finding out what is true, what is pure, who you are, and what you will do with your precious time because you judge it valuable and good. It is discovering the incalculable treasure that is the pure, authentic, uncontaminated, you — a treasure more rare and precious than any other that will ever exist.”

The End

The largest lecture hall at the university was completely full. The deans of all the faculties and its most prestigious professors packed the front rows. Higher up sat the PhD students. Further back still were those enrolled in Masters programs. And a few undergraduates, those at the top of their class, occupied the remaining rows. They were all filled with anticipation.

At the lectern stood the chancellor. “We are honored today,” he began, “to have with us a teacher of exceptional reputation. He is known as ‘The Golden Teacher’. And we have all come here today to hear his lesson. It is a lesson that he insists be presented live — never recorded. He has already lectured at many of the world’s most prestigious schools. I have spoken with some of the chancellors at those fine institutions. Each one told me that they have never before experienced such a moving presentation. Each one stated that every member of the audience was moved by it. None told me anything of its content. So I am just as eager as all of you to hear what this enlightened individual has to share with us. And on that note then, let me call up, The Golden Teacher.”

There was respectful applause.

Seated at a table at the front of the hall was The Golden Teacher. He was draped in golden robes with purple embroidery. The collar of his robe was high and it covered his cheeks. On his head was a golden hat, with a broad rim. His eyes were barely visible beneath it.

He rose. He was short and his features small. The robes hid the shape of his body. He might have been a woman. He had no facial hair and his features were gentle. It was difficult to discern his age.

He walked over to the lectern. The chancellor stepped aside and made way for The Golden Teacher to step up to the microphone, and then took a seat himself.

The room was silent.

The Golden Teacher stood still for a minute. He had a straight and serious look on his face. His mouth was neither smiling nor frowning. His eyes then began to wander amongst the faces of those seated in the front rows. He gently gazed into the eyes of each one. He seemed to be rocking back and forth ever so slightly, as if nodding very gently — ever so subtly affirming something — something that those seated in the front rows already knew.

A full minute passed in complete silence.

And then, another.

What had been anticipation was turning into tension and stress. “What is going on?” people wondered.

And then another minute of pure silence passed. The Golden Teacher brought his palms together in front of his face. They covered his mouth and the tip of his nose, but his eyes remained visible. And now those little green eyes of his were locked on those of the dean of the faculty of education. He nodded again, ever so slightly.

And a few seconds later the dean of the faculty of education let out a big, long, loud sigh. He hadn’t realized it, but he had been holding his breath. His head dropped down for a moment while he finished breathing out, and after a short pause he drew in another big breath and looked back up at The Golden Teacher. He had a tear in his eye. His bottom lip was quivering. He brought up his own hands to his face and placed his palms upon it leaving only his eyes uncovered. He shook his head gently. Every eye in the room was now upon him. But he did not notice, for his eyes were back on those of The Golden Teacher. And now, he was nodding. He dropped his hands from his face and stood up. He bowed towards The Golden Teacher. It was a gesture of gratitude and respect. And then he walked to the aisle, down it and toward the exit. Before he went through the door he silently turned back to The Golden Teacher, mouthed the word “Wow!,” smiled again, and walked out the door.

The Golden Teacher’s eyes had followed the dean out the door, but now he quietly and gently again turned his gaze back to the front row. There the eyes were now startled, and a little scared.

The dean of the faculty of philosophy was next to act. “You sir,” he said in a slightly louder than normal voice, and then paused for just a moment “you have taught me something I did not yet know, but which I must also have always known.” He threw his head back and his eyes rolled upwards. He was staring at the ceiling, shaking his head. “Thank you.” he said calmly after a few seconds. He looked out at the rest of the audience seated there and it appeared he was about to say something to address them all. But just as he’d finished breathing in, he caught himself and raised his index finger to his own mouth as if to shush himself. And he quietly smiled, lifted his coat from his seatback, folded it over his arm, picked up his notebook, smiled broadly as if holding in a big laugh, and left without ever looking back.

The dean of the English department had now begun writing feverishly in his notebook. He was lost in thought. He wrote page after page at an incredibly quick pace. “YES! Beautiful.” he said after a few minutes. He looked up at the chancellor and with a broad smile and a soft chuckle said “Patrick. I’m sorry old friend. I was born to write. Not to teach. And I have absolutely no idea how to be an administrator.” He lifted his notebook and continued “This!” and he tapped his open palm on the open pages he had just written, “This is beautiful. This is …” he paused as he choked up, and with a whimper, he resumed “This is me. This is who I am. This is what I am. And I have to be me. I have to write.” He walked up to the chancellor, gave him a strong, long hug, then, with his hands on the chancellor’s shoulders leaned back and said “This, is goodbye.” And he too left.

Voices were starting to be heard throughout the auditorium. One of the school’s most distinguished physics professors shouted out “I do not believe the modern interpretation of quantum physics is correct! There. I said it. I’ve been afraid to say it since I was a freshman. But I know we can do better. Well, I think we can. There’s been others like me along the way, throughout the years. And we all got shouted down — or never even spoke up in the first place. But dammit, we’re not wrong! There’s something else going on than what’s accepted and taught everywhere. And that’s what I want to dedicate my life to. That’s what I’m curious about. And if there’s no room for me here because we teach the accepted theories, then I have to go where I can do my research.”

A young woman many rows back, herself a talented physics sophomore, who was one of his students stood up and yelled “Take me with you!” For a second the whole room gasped silently in discomfort at the confusion of whether it was him or his ideas she was demanding to go along with. She herself appeared not to know, having acted from an instant urge. But after a second’s worth of contemplation, she shouted out “I love you!” And then she leaped over the rows of desks towards him, one by one, and as she approached him he transitioned from having an awkward and embarrassed look on his face to having one of hope, then pride, then victory. And as she got to him he embraced her then and there, and they kissed.

Suddenly, declarations of friendship, admiration, passion, and love began ringing throughout the auditorium. Some were directed at other people present, others at people who were not there. People were leaving to go be with their true loves. Some of these declarations were directed not at people, but at work — at fields of study that required a change of course for the people making the declarations. One after another people were openly declaring their passions — announcing that they would change their majors, their thesis, their faculties. Some were announcing that they never even wanted to be in university in the first place and were going to pursue simpler lives, or careers in trades and skills they enjoyed and wanted to practice daily.

The room was clearing out as people, having decided what they wanted to do, were going out to do it. Some stopped to shake the hand of The Golden Teacher on the way out or to bow and say thank you, but many were so focussed on their newfound missions that they didn’t seem to remember anyone else had been in the auditorium at all.

After about fifteen minutes, the noises began to die down, and there were about thirty students and teachers remaining in the now nearly empty hall. They were all deep in thought. Some were scribbling into notebooks. Some were reading books and taking notes. Others had their elbows on the desks holding up their heads face down in their hands as they reflected.

The silence lasted for nearly five minutes before one of the students raised his head from his hands and looked up at The Golden Teacher. They made eye contact. The student said to The Golden Teacher “I’ve been scared — ashamed. My whole life, I’ve lived in fear. I’m only here because I’m afraid. Afraid of being where I want to be. But what am I afraid of? Afraid that someone will laugh at me? A little I suppose. I think I’m more afraid that I won’t be good enough.” He paused and looked into the eyes of The Golden Teacher for a while. The Golden Teacher nodded after a short time and the student resumed “But how will I ever get good enough unless I start off, however good or bad I am at it, getting better from practice — from trial and error?” The Golden Teacher’s lips ever so slightly curled into a smile, and his right eye seemed to glint a little. The student then began to sing, a little out of tune, but unashamedly, and in an unusual style of tune nobody had heard before. And he picked up his backpack and danced out the door, a little clumsily, but with a flowing set of movements that nobody had quite seen before.

And the room continued to clear out, one person at a time, each having reached their own conclusion about their own future, without a single word being spoken by The Golden Teacher.

At last, there were only two people left in the room. The chancellor and The Golden Teacher.

The chancellor stared at The Golden Teacher. And The Golden Teacher stared back at the chancellor. Time passed. The chancellor had a wry smile on his face. The Golden Teacher’s expression was blank.

Finally, the chancellor broke the silence.

“I never knew.” He said. “I’ve spent my whole life in education. I’ve seen hundreds, maybe a thousand teachers come through this school. I’ve sat in on thousands of lectures. I’ve lectured many times myself. I’ve attended twenty commencements and seen tens of thousands, perhaps even as many as a hundred thousand students graduate from this university. And I always thought it was the job of the teacher to share what they knew with the students. But here we are, now, you and me. And with you not sharing a single thing, everyone who was in this hall learned something that nobody else could have taught them. Because what they learned was what was already inside of them. It’s just that they had never looked deep enough within themselves to see. And what we all learned was that everyone can look within themselves, and see something that no outsider can see. And that no outsider needs to say anything to teach this lesson. That no outsider can say anything to teach this lesson. And it is a different lesson for each person — this ‘lesson of The Golden Teacher.’ I think, if you don’t mind, that I will offer to teach this lesson to each incoming and each graduating class once a year.” He smiled at The Golden Teacher. He knew there would be nothing said. He knew that the lesson was even deeper than what he had just uttered. That the lesson had something to do with him being free to do as he chose, without being lectured by anyone else. And at that, he too left the room, leaving The Golden Teacher alone, in his silence, to contemplate what he had learned in his own silence.

May 21, 2022, 5 minutes read

Bitcoin, The Invention & Opportunity of the Century

Bitcoin — Wow! What an invention that was. It came straight out of the blue. Nobody was expecting it. And for the very few people who mined it in the early days, and didn’t lose it, and never sold it, they got pretty rich.

But almost everybody missed out on that. Even the people named in the white paper missed it. Most of the early miners either abandoned their coins altogether, sold them cheaply, or traded them for some early altcoin that no longer even exists. And be honest — if you had mined or bought bitcoin in those early days do you really think you would have held it all when it first reached $1, or $10, or $100?

You’ve probably also thought “Too bad I missed the boat on Bitcoin.” And maybe that’s what led you to try to get in early on another “boat” by playing the “Crypto” markets.

Stop Fooling Yourself and Others About “Crypto”

Now, many people are trying to pretend that they are at the beginning of something by getting into the latest craze — in blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, or DAOs — which all fall under the heading “Crypto.”

But getting into something when there are already 20,000 other somethings like it is not actually getting in early. Stop fooling yourself. You simply can’t turn back the clock and you can’t recreate the invention of Bitcoin through buying a knock-off.

Calling something “decentralized” doesn’t actually make it decentralized. If it has leaders, a corporation or foundation, venture capital funding, or is controlled by “stakers, ” then it’s not decentralized. Anything with one or more these characteristics that claims to be decentralized is not — it’s a fraud: a fraud preying on people’s regrets that they didn’t get in early on something truly great; a fraud luring people towards something that’s neither early nor great. So stop fooling yourself — and stop fooling others.

Don’t use terms like “web3” and pretend that there’s something new there. Don’t pretend that centralized, VC-backed corporations, with leaders and founders, who have given themselves lots of tokens, and who plan to dump those tokens on suckers are beneficial. Don’t pretend they’re democratic, peer-to-peer, or decentralized innovations in a “new world of finance.” They are nothing of the sort. They are destined-to-fail frauds. And you probably know it — or at the very least you suspect it. So stop fooling yourself.

Look at the empty and broken promises of the crypto space. Look at the lies of the characters who have managed to get rich. They have not done so by enriching the world and others, but by selling something worthless on a false promise that got everyone who bought into it wrecked.

If you’ve been fooled, I’m sorry. You must hold yourself accountable to yourself for your mistakes. If you were naive, learn not to be the next time. If you were greedy, own up to it.

And, if you are still thinking “I’ll find the next one and this time get out early enough” admit that you’re trying to get rich by dumping something on someone else who will get poor from listening to you, and then ask yourself “do I want to be such a person?” Maybe you do. If that’s the case, there’s nothing more for you in here. Go on pretending and see if you can fool others before you get fooled yourself.

The Real Opportunity Still Is Bitcoin!

But if you actually want to participate in something that helps you and your fellow human beings, I’ve got good news, but you’ll have to stop fooling yourself about one more thing. And that lie you need to stop telling yourself is that you missed the boat on Bitcoin. Because that boat has not even started to pull away from the harbor yet, let alone gone out to sea, or arrived at its destination.

“Look at how expensive a whole bitcoin is, ” you might worry. Well, for one, it takes 30 satoshis to add up to just one cent right now. That’s the base unit of Bitcoin. You can still buy 30 of those for a penny. However, this is only a minor point.

Because do you know where the good ship Bitcoin is headed? It’s not to $100,000 or $1 million a coin — not even $10 million or $100 million. Where we’re going, they don’t have dollars. We’re going to the future. And you don’t have to look too far into the past to see that the dollar’s future is in big trouble, because the incompetent, corrupt, and dishonest people who administer that centralized shitcoin project are trying to fool you and to fool themselves with claims that everything is fine, when the house is actually on fire.

In the future, there truly are no people in charge of the money. It’s not a battle over who can seize power over some territory and then use that power to print money for their armies of soldiers, bureaucrats, and tax collectors to seize the wealth produced by those who do actual work.

Look around though. That’s not the present. So you haven’t missed the boat. But if instead of getting in that boat — way early still — you’re pretending that a jpeg of a rock or an ape is the future, or that some staking, algorithmic, yield farming, smart contract blockchains do anything besides fooling people into investing in them, well then, stop fooling yourself!

Bitcoin is here. It’s waiting. It’s waiting for you. Come aboard and experience what it’s like to stop fooling yourself, and to stop fooling others, and to stop fooling around.