I got orange-pilled in 2023 and became a Bitcoin maxi – this is my Bitcoin journey. It was a long road getting here: 13 years in the making with many twists and turns. But now I know the true value of Bitcoin and am looking to create a future of hard money.
Courtesy of: Blockchain News
2010 Zeitgeist
In 2010 when I was attending university, a friend showed me a popular documentary going around called Zeitgeist. It was the first time I ever questioned everything I’ve been taught. TLDR; Zeitgeist shows how everything we know is a psyop by the government for control.
Credit to: The Daily Beast
It freaked me out to know that major historical events were planned by governments. One thing that stuck out was the role of central banks and how the value of money is all fictitious. I only saw the problem and didn’t know there would ever be a viable solution, besides a bloody revolution. Little did I know this was the beginning of my Bitcoin journey.
2014 Bitcoin Offered as a Gift
The first time I ever heard about Bitcoin was in 2014. A friend at my church was a Software Engineer and a techie through and through. He offered to gift me some Bitcoin for my birthday.
“Bitcoin? What the hell is that?” I exclaimed when he offered it. It sounded like a scam – some fake internet money that no one uses. So I rejected it because I didn’t know what it was.
Credit to: Business Today
In hindsight, this was one of the stupider decisions of my life. My friend offered me half a Bitcoin as a birthday present.
2017 First Bull Market and Speculation
The masses heard about Bitcoin in 2017 during the first crypto bull run. Every week, there was another crazy story of high school kids becoming multi-millionaires “overnight” because they invested in Bitcoin. Stories like Erik Finman’s drove me insane with speculation.
Courtesy of: CryptoMoney.com
I wanted in on the fast money. I “invested” about $3,000 into Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Bitcoin because it was the big one, Ethereum because a friend recommended it, and Litecoin because the name was cool. Note the double quotes around invested – because I didn’t invest, I speculated.
One week after the speculation, the bull run ended and the price of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin dropped by half. I experienced my first crypto burn. I said “It was a scam. I’m never investing in crypto again.”
By the way, I HODLed the Bitcoin I bought back then and still have it.
2019 Exposure to First Use Case
In 2019, I left my home country and moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand as a Digital Nomad. As someone brand new to the city, I attended as many meetups as possible. One of those meetups was a crypto meetup at a local restaurant.
Teams of crypto programmers presented their projects trying to garner interest and investment. One presentation stuck in my mind – a Lightning Network payment terminal.
Courtesy of: Happy Cow
The presenters talked about how no one would actually wait 10 minutes for a transaction to be confirmed on the Bitcoin network while paying for a coffee. So by using the Lightning Network, this problem is solved. The team demoed their Lightning Network hardware payment terminal and it actually worked live.
Courtesy of: BitPay
I was impressed that the Bitcoin fairy tale I heard in 2017 could actually be a reality. But I didn’t do anything about it because I still thought that crypto was a 2017 trend and dead.
2020 Meeting Crypto YouTubers
During the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, I was in Koh Phangan, Thailand. My small group of expats essentially had the tropical paradise to ourselves with little tourists and restrictions. Good times.
Courtesy of: Booking.com
A few crypto influencers were in the group. These guys made money online by making YouTube videos about crypto and Bitcoin. I’m not going to name who they are, but some of them are huge in the online space. I met them only three times but this was the second time I took notice that crypto is larger than a 2017 trend.
Courtesy of: Coinpedia
It was all still opaque to me. My interest peaked again out of speculation. I wanted to get in on the action and earn freedom for myself too.
2021 Bull Run and First Understanding
I stayed in Thailand through the entire pandemic. At the start of 2021, I found myself in Phuket, Thailand. For the first time in years, I attended church to reconnect with my faith. At church, one of the members stood out to me because he was super knowledgeable about crypto.
Meeting an Ethereum Maxi and Altcoin Staking
This member became one of my closest friends in Phuket over a few months. Let’s call him John for simplicity. I learned that John was retired and living off of staking because he invested in Ethereum early.
John seemed to have the freedom I wanted for myself. It was the first time I got close to someone who “made it” in crypto. But again, everything was opaque and I didn’t understand a thing.
Courtesy of: Crypto.com on X (formerly Twitter)
John was making passive income by staking Cronos (CRO) on Crypto.com. He showed me the yields and it was way higher than what I can earn with interest from banks. I bought $7,000 worth of CRO and staked it that year. In hindsight, it was a complete sham and today that $7,000 is worth basically zero.
Crypto Traders in Phuket
I was attending one of the most popular martial arts gyms in Phuket. The gym attracted a lot of larger-than-life personalities, including some pretty successful crypto traders.
Through Muay Thai classes, I became friends with some of these traders. Naturally, we ended up discussing all things, including crypto.
Photo by Jonathan Tomas on Unsplash
My friend explained the history of money. He started all the way from the barter system to the gold standard. A turning point in the conversation was when he explained the 1971 Nixon Gold Shock. If you don’t know about the Nixon Gold Shock, you can read about it here or check out this article.
Understanding Fiat is the Root of Evil – My Bitcoin Journey Begins
My mind was blown. I learned what Fiat is and how unethical it is to print money. For the first time in my life, I recognized absolute evil in the world. The demons in the Bible walk around in the material world in the form of central banks and money printing. This was the real emotional beginning of my Bitcoin journey.
Courtesy of: arheofutura.rs
But I wasn’t there yet – I didn’t know the difference between shitcoins and Bitcoin. Some friends were investing in Ripple (XRP) as a hedge that Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are the inevitable future. I literally bought into a dark and “more likely” future by buying XRP myself. What I didn’t know was that by buying XRP, I was propagating the dark future I didn’t want even more. More on that later.
2022 Working in Web3
My main web development client at the start of 2022 was PrimeLab. PrimeLab was building Dapps (decentralized apps) for the NEAR Foundation. For readers who don’t know, NEAR is a self-proclaimed “Ethereum killer” due to fast transaction speeds and low gas fees.
Work with PrimeLab and NEAR Foundation
The NEAR Foundation was building Dapps for a Web3 ecosystem. “Web what?” It was the first time I ever heard this term. Many believe blockchain technology will revolutionize the current internet by decentralizing data and transactions. Web3 is a term used to describe this next stage.
Courtesy of: NEAR Foundation
I was a Senior Frontend Developer for PrimeLab and I worked on the frontend for certain Dapps. The ones I remember are: a NEAR wallet, a decentralized version of Google Docs on NEAR, and an NFT minter. Ultimately, my contract with PrimeLab came to an end.
Coincidentally, a friend of a friend was in Chiang Mai, where I was. Let’s just call him Bob for simplicity. We were at the same co-working space and talked about how he was working on a Web3 start-up on Solana.
Work with Solana Web3 Startup
TLDR; Bob’s startup building Web3 tooling on Solana to drive mass adoption of crypto. Their thesis was that gaming and the metaverse would onboard the masses to crypto. So they were building their own Web3 game. NFTs would be playable characters and traits would affect in-game mechanics.
I always thought NFTs were kind of useless. People really didn’t care about unique artwork before the NFT craze, so why the buzz? But with being able to use the traits of NFTs as character stats in a game, I saw some utility.
Bob was super excited when he found out I was a Senior Frontend Developer because his team was still looking for a frontend developer. After my contract with PrimeLab, I had availability so I worked on a contract with Bob’s team. It was a lot of fun as I built out the initial board for the game. After the contract, we decided to explore a partnership. I hopped on a call with the rest of Bob’s team.
Courtesy of: MarTechSeries
An Act of Faith and Moving
There are very few moments in life where one feels like something is destiny – this was one of them. Bob was someone I heard about for years through our mutual friend. The sales partner on the team I met, believe it or not, 11 years ago at my university. There are other details that are too personal to talk about, but the coincidences are undeniable.
The revenue model was to charge a percentage of transactions made through the Web3 tooling built by the team. At any rate, I saw a bunch of dollar signs at the opportunity to make passive income. My speculative juices flowed again.
In an act of faith and speculation, I decided to go forward with the partnership. I moved from Thailand to Medellin, Colombia (where the partners were living) to work on the project.
Courtesy of: Nomadic Matt
My time in Medellin was a blur. I spent most of my days working on building the game and barely explored the city. We finished a playable, version 1 of the game within 3 months. I was excited to print money but the project itself didn’t match my values. A metaverse seemed so dystopian and I preferred life in the real world. I went against my own values for the sake of getting rich – disgusting.
After finishing the game, we wanted to make connections in the Solana community. So we attended a Solana Hacker House and went to Breakpoint in Lisbon in November.
November 2022 Not Seeing Utility in Web3
Solana Breakpoint opened up my eyes to how big the Web3 space is. I understood the gravity of the industry as I saw the grand venue and literal thousands of projects. But something seemed off…
We spoke to hundreds of people in a span of four days. I spoke with enthusiastic, money-hungry investors to complete nerds who spent their entire lives writing code. Everyone seemed to be so excited and showing off NFT collections and cool games.
Courtesy of: Irene Lee on Medium
At dinner on one of the nights, one of the attendants asked a few questions. “What’s the point of in-game assets being on-chain?” The only answers anyone could think of were: game developers not being able to take away in-game assets and interoperability with other games (being able to use NFTs as playable characters in multiple games). However, interoperability was a far-cry away because different games needed to agree on a standard of NFT traits.
Here’s the rub: playable characters across games can be implemented on central databases. For example, a Warcraft character can be used in a crossover Starcraft game if Blizzard wants. They don’t need NFTs to do that. As the “safeguard” of in-game assets, let’s use an example of weapons. If a game developer wants, they can make a weapon unavailable for use. That on-chain asset is now useless. Games, by definition, can’t be decentralized because there’s a central team developing them and calling the shots.
In Reality: There is No Utility
Long answer short: I realized there was no real use-case of an on-chain game. It really didn’t matter at the end of the day. I’ve been working hard on a project for months that had no real use case. The only difference is developers and investors getting rich off the budding industry.
I also realized that the entire Web3 space, including DeFi, was a sham. Value cannot be created out of thin air. Founders, developers, and investors built projects with no value to sell tokens or NFTs at higher prices than they bought. They were Ponzi schemes.
Courtesy of: The Nation Newspaper
Bob saw my lack of passion for the project and the team voted me out at the end of 2022. I was lost and had no idea what my next steps were. I just knew I had to get back to Thailand, which felt like home for me.
2023 I See the Light
In Chiang Mai, I have an amazing group of friends there who are more like family than friends. One of those friends is a Bitcoin maxi that I’ve known for years. When I got back to Chiang Mai, I started hanging out with him. For the interest of this article, let’s call him Sidd.
I explained what happened in 2022 and he had a very strong opinion on the matter. He insinuated my work in 2022 was on projects with no real value. It irked me because I didn’t want to admit to myself that I wasted a year of work.
The Hook: “Thank God for Bitcoin” by Jimmy Song
Coincidentally, John (the Ethereum investor) from Phuket came up to Chiang Mai for a short trip and we linked up. He mentioned how he met a Christian Bitcoiner in Phuket named Jimmy Song. He recommended I read Jimmy’s book, “Thank God for Bitcoin”, to link crypto to Christianity. Being busy working full-time, I didn’t take action to buy the book.
Courtesy of: Goodreads
Then one night, Sidd and I hung out and it turns out he also met Jimmy Song. That was my call to action. I read “Thank God for Bitcoin” within a few days and got orange-pilled.
The need for Bitcoin hit home as I saw the corruption and immorality that fiat causes. And I came to understand that even the Bible talks about the evils of money printing. Rulers of the past have always had the temptation to print money. Every time they do, society suffers and falls into a state of corruption.
Money is Not Evil, Fiat Is
From an early age, I was taught by my family and church that money is evil. Naturally, I always separated spirituality from finances. After “Thank God for Bitcoin”, I finally linked finances/money back to my core belief system of Christianity.
Courtesy of: CoinsWeekly
Hard money incentivizes people to be moral because they have to provide value to other people to get paid. A fiat system inevitably creates immorality in people because value is stripped secretly from the entire population. Corruption starts from the top down.
The final kicker was why churches are watered down. Churches usually finance themselves with loans from banks (with interest) as a result of Keynesian culture and the normality of debt. There is pressure to keep membership at all costs to have adequate tithing (donations) to pay bank loans. Thus, pastors become people-pleasers and focus more on making churchgoers happy than preaching what is true.
Further Learning with “The Bitcoin Standard”
After reading “Thank God for Bitcoin”, I wanted to learn more. I picked up “The Bitcoin Standard” by Saifedean Ammous. My Bitcoin maximalism grew even more as Saifedean explained the ripple effects of fiat in every aspect of our lives.
Courtesy of: Goodreads
Some of my takeaways were: that the garbage nutrition we consume, crime, fraud, and long wars all result from fiat. Because our central banks are robbing us from under our feet, everyone feels an underlying anxiety. People end up lusting after more money, cheating others, and borrow/spend money they don’t have.
Bitcoin solves the issues of portability that made people entrust their money (gold) to banks in the first place. It can; therefore, be a new and improved gold standard.
Understanding Why Altcoins are Shitcoins
The last step in my journey was finally understanding why altcoins are shitcoins. Up until this point, I thought Bitcoin can be the new Gold Standard and altcoins serve different purposes. For example, I thought Ethereum could be used for DeFi and lending protocols and Solana for gaming and metaverse. I wasn’t seeing the larger, fundamental issue: “altcoins” go against the ethos of Bitcoin.
Courtesy of: Mr Robot on Medium
All these other supposedly “decentralized tokens” are super centralized. Sure, someone can take the fundamentals of Bitcoin and improve upon the technology. The reason why Bitcoin is unique, however, is its adoption. Satoshi Nakamoto was anonymous and Bitcoin was adopted quietly and organically over 8 years without a central team.
For instance, someone forks Bitcoin and makes their own version (many have done so). The only way this new version of Bitcoin would be adopted is for a team to market it. There’s no way to do that in a decentralized way; a central team will undoubtedly do it. Every altcoin has a central team behind it; I saw it first-hand with Solana at Breakpoint.
The Ethereum DAO Hack
The 2nd largest cryptocurrency by market cap is Ethereum. I used to not consider Ethereum as an altcoin because of trade volume and adoption. But the market cap doesn’t change the fact that Ethereum is flawed fundamentally.
The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) was launched in April 2016 as an investment fund. Two months later, the developers of the DAO noticed someone had hacked the source code and was siphoning funds. The response from the Ethereum team is key.
To prevent further hacks, a hard fork was proposed to move investor funds to another smart contract. If you don’t know, a hard fork is a radical change to a network’s protocol. Ethereum was changed overnight. The old Ethereum was rebranded as Ethereum Classic and the new, hard-forked version was called Ethereum.
Courtesy of: Bitpanda
So what’s the big deal with changing the network a bit? It means that at any time, the Ethereum developers can change the Ethereum network. It means the network is centralized, meaning it is corruptible, just like central banks. Someone can theoretically put a gun to Ethereum Developers’ heads and demand to change the network.
There is no central authority in Bitcoin, hence it is incorruptible. Bitcoin’s protocol hasn’t changed since its inception (15 years) while being the largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Solana Network Crashes
The Solana Network crashed 11 times to date. To fix the network crashes, engineers had to restart the Solana main network. Just like Ethereum’s DAO Hack, this means fundamentally there is something wrong with the Solana network.
Courtesy of: AltcoinBuzz
There is a central team that can change the network. The fact that engineers can restart the network means the network is prone to corruption, just like Ethereum.
Who Owns the Nodes?
40% of SOL is considered in “non-circulating supply” – it is locked up or held by the Solana Foundation itself. A huge portion of the nodes are owned by the very people who develop & market them, or investors close to them. So essentially, the Solana Foundation is the central bank of the Solana network.
Courtesy of: GhostVolt
Devil’s advocate: “Who cares? Solana is still fast and has a use case.” Well, Visa and central databases are also. The Solana network is no different anyway.
Shitcoins are Fiat Masqueraded as Decentralized
The key fact is that shitcoins are the same as fiat systems but masqueraded under the coattails of Bitcoin. Shitcoiners are duping people who want a decentralized world but don’t know better. They are getting rich off the value creation of innocent people when they shill projects, sell high, and jet off with money.
I mentioned earlier that I bought XRP as a “hedge” thinking it’s okay. My thinking on this has changed. Like I was propagating a dark world of CBDCs by buying XRP, by buying shitcoins, I’m investing into Ponzi schemes myself. I’m just another link in the rug-pull chain.
The devil’s advocate I hear from shitcoiners is that Bitcoin doesn’t innovate. Well, that’s the point. That’s what makes Bitcoin valuable – it doesn’t change as it shouldn’t.
Takeaways from my Bitcoin Journey
My Bitcoin journey was messy but organic. There’s no way to artificially force people into becoming true believers of Bitcoin – it just happens.
Hooks
What drew me in (my hook) was “Thank God for Bitcoin.” Everyone has a hook, something about the fiat world that bothers them specifically. Here are some “hooks” I’ve noticed recently:
- Health issues – someone may be suffering from health issues due to diluted nutrition from fiat.
- Wars – the war in Russia and Ukraine is a hot topic. When there is hard money, wars can’t last too long because governments run out of money. With fiat, governments can drag wars, like in Afghanistan, out because they can print endless money.
- Inflation and rising prices – another hot topic at most dinner tables. The root cause of inflation is fiat – prices should be deflating with technological advances.
- Consumer Spending – because value cannot be stored long-term in dollars (due to printing and fractional reserve banking), the modern world has developed high time preference. High time preference means caring more about the short-term present than long-term value. This is what drives empty shopping sprees and materialism in the modern world.
Courtesy of: VeryWellMind
Hit Them Where It Hurts
The best way to reach someone and orange pill them is to “hit them where it hurts.” Find what the person cares about and relate it to fiat. Because the fiat monetary system really touches every aspect of our lives. It’s a virus that plagues all of us and the clear solution is Bitcoin.
Next Steps in My Bitcoin Journey: Working in Bitcoin
Knowing what I know now, I can’t just sit idly and not do anything about it. My greatest purpose is to support a future running on the Bitcoin Standard.
Developing for Bitcoin Companies
I am looking to partner with Bitcoin companies to build sleek frontends and user experiences. If you are a Bitcoin project looking for front-end development, I’m your man. Book a call with me and we can discuss your project.
I’m excited to work alongside you to build this better future.
Orange Pilling like an Evangelist
I’m also evangelizing the good news of Bitcoin to my personal network. In passing, I talk about the problems with fiat to my friends and family. I know a lot of them don’t understand but each conversation drives them closer.
Men’s Coaching
Another way to orange pill is to remove the blindfolds the fiat system has placed on us, particularly in regard to health and mindset. Recently, I started coaching men around sovereignty in physical fitness, mindset, and holding wealth in Bitcoin. A few individuals already want to work with me and I am working to bring sovereignty in the mind and body. My hope is that they can be awake enough to see the macro picture by first improving their personal holistic health.
Courtesy of: Leadership News
Well, that is my completely unabridged Bitcoin journey. I’m excited and optimistic for a future free from the evils of fiat currency – Bitcoin is the way to get there. For more information, check out the Call to Stack website.