What Bitcoin Taught Me
An exploration into something I rarely talk about publicly, but that I am very passionate, and endlessly curious, about. Topics include millennial spending, saving, technology, energy, & more.
DiPartures is my chance to write about things apart from my SoEV project which has thankfully brought most of my readers to this Substack.
If you are new to this Substack, you can check out my other sections INS(oev)IDE, where I write about the stories of being a street photographer and some commentary on clothing and style or GENEs, interviews about clothing, on my main page.
This is by far, my longest post ever, and I appreciate you being here and taking interest!
Pre-Introduction
To be honest, I’m incredibly nervous to publish this. I haven’t shared much publicly about my fascination with Bitcoin. If you’re in my small circle of close friends, you’ve definitely heard me sneak in an endorsement here or there, but it’s not something I’ve talked about on social media apart from one or two reposts of podcasts that I listen to, which were met with mixed reactions.
After four years of reading, watching, listening, and investing, I feel like it’s time to share my thoughts.
A lot of this writing has also been prompted by an exploration of my past and my position as a millennial now, and where I think we need to go in the future.
This is, by far, the longest piece of writing I have produced since my Masters of Arts thesis. If you’d like to jump around, I’ve included a Table of Contents below.
Before we Start: Warning: While it feels ridiculous to have to write formally, financial podcasts, YouTube videos, and blog posts seem to start with some version of this disclaimer, so I’ll say it too: This is not financial advice. I am not selling you a get-rich-quick scheme, I am not telling you to go “all-in”. You need to do lots of your own research, but this could be a great launching point. What I will say is you owe it to yourself to understand how your money works. We commit the majority of our lives working, trading hours of our lives for a paycheck, and I strongly believe you should understand what that paycheck means in terms of what that money can get you, why it’s getting you less lately, and how you can potentially mitigate that drop in purchasing power.
I’ve wrongly viewed investing as a quick way to get rich quick scheme in the past and have definitely learned a couple hard lessons. I don’t recommend putting money into anything you aren’t prepared to lose entirely. I’m an amateur at best, and this piece is an exercise in testing my own understanding and a chance to contribute to the conversation around Bitcoin and my generational role in shaping the future of finance, among other things.
Please don’t make any financial decisions based solely on this article, or any one source for that matter. At the end of this writing, I have also included some links to get started in a way that I believe is low risk, at least to dabble with accumulating some Bitcoin passively, as well as a bunch of other resources from people way smarter and more knowledgeable than me.
Table of Contents
ii. My Financial Beginnings: Saving, Investing, and Learning
iv. Scarcity: Hard Money for a Digital World
v. Volatility: A Test of Conviction
vi. Work = Money: A New Paradigm
vii. Environmental Critiques: A Path Forward
viii. Conclusion, Resources, and Entry Points
PART ONE: MY HISTORY & BIAS
Introduction
I’ve dabbled in investing over the last 12 or so years. I’ve had some lucky wins, but also some humbling losses. Everything I’ve learned about investing has come from things I’ve learned on my own. My degree is in chemistry after all, a far cry from a lot of my friends who went to “business school”. From reading transcripts of earnings calls to getting lost on r/wallstreetbets and everything in between, I’ve tried to consume a steady stream of information with regards to markets. The internet has been a great teacher but also has led me down some wrong paths. Investing my own money and seeing it grow (or shrink) based on the effort and research I put into my investment strategy has been the best learning experience. As I’ve become more and more interested in the market I’ve also become increasingly engaged with trying to understand money. What is it? Where did it come from? Why is it continuing to become harder to get for some, and easier to accumulate for others?
These are some of the questions that I’ve been faced with multiple times over the last decade or so, and every time I’ve encountered them, they’ve led me back to Bitcoin.
I believe the current system is very flawed, but I also think we might be on the verge of a potential solution.
To explain why I believe Bitcoin is superior, it’s important to share the experiences that shaped my views.
My Financial Beginnings: Saving, Investing, and Learning
Identifying bias is an important aspect to any research based story and I will still try to add some context here.
In Neil Howes' newest book “The Fourth Turning is Here” he describes the generations which are currently alive in such perfection, it summed up my entire experience thus far and I thought I would just include the excerpt here rather than try to explain the general Millennial experience for you. I believe this excerpt does a great job outlining what my generation has experienced, and some main points will be reemphasized within my own experience as well.
For Millenials, as for older generations, the dominant challenge of the last fifteen years has been coping with economic duress. Only for them, wall-to-wall retrenchment has literally defined their entry into the adult workplace. Millenial first-wavers came of age with the dotcom bust and 9/11 and were just settling into budding careers when the Great Financial Recession altered their life trajectories. For the last wave, youth hiring improved for two or three years in the late-2010s, but that respite too was upended by the pandemic lockdown of 2020.
Like Xers, Millennials have fallen behind their parents in real earnings at the same age–and, by some measures, they have fallen behind Xers alone. They’re also lagging in wealth accumulation. Young couples have the lowest homeownership rate since their Silent grandparents in the early 1950s (though at that time, unlike today, the rate was rising rapidly). Today’s gap in self-reported “economic satisfaction” between thirty-somethings (low) and all their elder family relatives receiving Social Security (high) is the widest ever measured.
These are very frustrating results for a generation, which, unlike Boomers, or Xers, worked hard to make themselves “career ready”: following the rules, staying safe, remaining upbeat, and earning so many credentials. Their parents expected so much of them, and they of themselves. So confident have Millennials been in their bright collective outlook that many are haunted by the fear that this inadequacy is personal and doesn’t affect their peers. Surveys show that when adults are asked why they’re reluctant to talk about their personal finances, 5 percent of Millennials cite shame over perceptions of failure– verses only 28 percent of Xers and 13 percent of Boomers. (Howe, 2023).
This describes my relationship with money perfectly, it shows exactly how my ideals and perspectives around saving and accumulating wealth were shaped especially entering my late teens and early twenties. My parents were children of immigrants and they learned valuable lessons on how to be thrifty, save money, and work hard to provide for their families. I grew up watching my (Boomer) parents squirrel money away, teaching me that if you saved enough, those savings would compound safely as they were doing so in an initially high interest rate environment. They saw that if you work hard and save money you could buy a house with that money that was accumulating slowly in a safe, higher yielding savings yields. The difference is, when I tried, it seemed to never accumulate. Watching that happen made me want to spend my money rather than save it. Added to that, through the media and my peers, I was generally sold the narrative of “what’s the point of saving, you’ll never afford a house, might as well use your money for experiences rather than saving for anything”. We were sold this narrative on social media, watching people delay starting a career to travel, spending money on music festivals, touring Europe, or partying multiple nights a week. Economically I saw this narrative become a familiar pattern in every job I have ever entered as well. I always seemed to be in a “post-glory days” phase of whatever workplace I was entering. From an uncharacteristically low tipping environment post-GFC in the restaurant industry and a “tight job market” as I was graduating university, it always seemed like my generation was just a few years short of catching the really good opportunities, so we might as well enjoy partying in our youth as well never catch up to the generations ahead of us anyways. All the good days were gone and we were being told there was nothing good on the horizon. Combine all of that with the general feeling that it was impossible to save money since any money you did put away was making 0.5% interest, not even beating inflation. Turns out super low interest rates were great for people who had lots of capital to work with, but as someone who was just starting to enter the workforce, all this did for me was tell me money wasn’t worth having in the bank. You could look into investing, but being children during the dot-com bubble and then teens during the GFC, there wasn’t too much trust in putting your money into the market.
When I first started “making money” I was working restaurant jobs. I was trying to save enough for the next year of expenses, draining my account to zero by May, working my ass off all summer and then start the cycle all over. My university expenses were low as I attended school on a scholarship and in my last two years of university I had secured a job as a “Residence Don” which meant my living expenses were free as well. The money I was making was simply to pay for food, entertainment, and travel at that time. It was in this comfort that likely led to a few bad spending habits, combined with the narrative I was sold about saving in general.
I definitely bought into the “savings useless” narrative for in early to mid-twenties, travelling, drinking, and “buying experiences” rather than saving or accumulating wealth. But as I got older, I started to pay more attention and this was catalyzed by a few key events.
After paying rent for almost 10 years, I continued to see prices become more out of reach with my savings strategy. I became a bit more serious about saving and realized that simply having some savings in a low yielding savings account was not going to get me anywhere. I started to look for a DIY approach to try and grow what little money I had. I landed on online platforms that allow you to trade on your own at low fees. In hindsight, this was a risky approach. I had no real experience trading, but I had committed to only starting to invest money that I was willing to lose. A couple thousand dollars would have made life a bit uncomfortable for a month or so if I had lost it all, but it wouldn’t have changed my life. I was working full time, I had no student debt, and my rent was low, I figured it was time to dip in. Luckily I also have a partner who aligns financially with my, we live well within our means and she has taught me a lot about living sustainably and being a bit more thrifty.
Around this time, I had noticed a particular trend with the cannabis grey market living in Vancouver. Shops kept opening up and it was getting easier and easier to walk into a shop and buy cannabis like any other product. There were rumblings that the grey market was quickly going to turn into a legalized market with a “medicinal” market starting to get traded on the stock market. Things were really heating up as Trudeau was running for his first stint as PM, with a promise of legalizing Cannabis. I took a few thousand dollars I had saved and put it into two or three cannabis companies. Then, Trudeau was elected Prime Minister, and the cannabis market took off. I was lucky enough to capitalize on the early cannabis stock boom, but I also made mistakes, I cashed out some positions “near the top” but my greed got the better of me with some other investments. I kept buying cheaper companies, hoping for the same “boom” I experienced initially and none of them really paid off. I unfortunately decided to double down on some and ended up losing a bit of my initial earnings. These early mistakes taught me to keep researching, to think more critically, and to approach investing with more strategy, rather than the hunches and hype I entered my first couple of years with.
Even still, after making some decent money and seeing my savings grow, I was still priced out of the housing market in the lower mainland. I diligently kept saving, putting time and energy into researching new markets, trying to live within my means, and hopefully save for a down payment one day if the market had a bit of a correction (I’ll return to this in a bit)…
With my investing stage set and a bit more money in my pocket, I started to look for the next opportunity to hopefully continue to grow my knowledge base and capital.
Getting “Orange Pilled”
They say it takes a few exposures before you finally get into Bitcoin. I ignored the first few signals that Bitcoin was for me, but eventually I came around.
Being a first year university student mid-GFC (2007-2008) meant I was watching the occupy wall street movement closely. It has been suggested that Bitcoin was born from this movement or at least, in parallel given the things people were seeing happen socially and financially at the time. It was too early for me to really grasp it, being mostly talked about on forums and in small communities. I recall hearing about it, and finding it interesting, but I was never able to sink my teeth into it, being too busy with trying to survive the first couple years of university. Bitcoin was just starting to pick-up main-stream steam (for the first time) as I approached the end of university (2011). I had a few “techy” friends in my residence who had mentioned Bitcoin to me (exposure one). I think at some point I had even made a wallet. But with no real money or technical knowledge and not enough interest to want to “risk” in a “speculative” asset at the time which was primarily tied with the Silk Road dark web site, I didn’t dive in too deep. I had watched it on the periphery over the years, never paying too much attention to the booms and busts as I was too focused on getting my career started and essentially living paycheck to paycheck when I first moved to BC without too much focus on trying to mine or invest (regrettably).
A few years later, a colleague of mine would engage in casual conversations about Bitcoin with me (exposure two). He knew I had an interest in stocks so he had mentioned some thoughts on the value of Bitcoin as a solid hedge against inflation, but at that time I had my “risky” money tied up in the weed stocks. I didn't really have wiggle room to invest in another volatile asset, nor did I really understand inflation or financial markets deeply enough to care about something I thought was still a “fringe” concept.
My third exposure was the one that has brought me here though, passionate, educated, and frankly, obsessed. Mid-pandemic 2020.
By this point, I was frustrated with the current system. I was watching the government print money like crazy, when we (the taxpayers) weren't consulted. I thought it was clear that it was going to lead to inflation, that excess money printing and government debt would erode the value of the money I had been saving in cash, but, granted, there also seemed like no other choice at the time. You can read conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory of how big government uses a crisis to manipulate the people, and the money, which may have some aspects of truth, but I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. I realize our hands were tied with the pandemonium created by a virus which seemed to be threatening and the lockdowns may have been necessary, this will not be an opinion piece on the COVID procedures…
Through both the GFC and the pandemic, we saw the government, central banks, and big banks make massive decisions placing every citizen in more and more debt by simply kicking the can down the road. I don’t know about you, but I never agreed to any of the debt that they have signed us up for, regardless of what ended up happening. While I understand the government is pressed to make fast decisions, I still believe there should be some pause when it comes to making trillion-dollar decisions.
But it’s nothing new, it’s the system we currently live in, regardless of a pandemic or crisis.
To put it simply, the entire financial system is set up to “spend now, pay later”, with no real ability for the latter. If you’ve never looked at the deficit our countries are currently running, I encourage you to check out the World Debt Clocks. You must start asking yourself, how will we pay for all of this spending, and who will pay for it? The largest generation currently alive (Boomers) are now ending the earning phase of their life and will become more and more reliant on the younger generations to pay for their pensions.
When COVID-19 hit, I supported helping people whose businesses were shut down and ensuring the economy could recover. Money would end up being wasted ($54 million dollars for a border app…), stolen, or misused during that time.
At first, I didn’t fully understand what was happening, and I don’t think many of us did. I started to look into these concepts further, and it led me to Bitcoin (exposure three).
Even though I had been familiar with Bitcoin, I still didn't quite understand its value and how its economics were so vastly different from the fiat (CAD, USD, EURO, YEN) system we are currently living in. As I started to question how money works, it seemed like a different kind of solution—one that might offer an escape from the broken financial systems I saw around me.
It was through these three exposures that I finally decided to invest. I downloaded a few apps, transferred some cash, and made my first purchase.
For many people, their first encounter with Bitcoin comes through something negative: a skeptical news article or an overly technical explanation that leaves them overwhelmed. That’s unfortunate because Bitcoin offers so many perspectives to explore. After four years of learning about it, I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface and below I will try and outline the main aspects of Bitcoin that appeal to me and solve some of the problems I have outlined above.
PART 2: WHAT BITCOIN TAUGHT ME
Above all, what I’ve hoped to make clear thus far, is my interest in Bitcoin has driven me to learn more about our financial systems on a macro-level, but personally, its taught me what it means to save, why it’s important to save, and how to resist spending frivolously.
At this point, I will present an obvious caveat to some of my arguments below, and that is, I am fortunately in a position where I find myself with “left over” income at the end of every month that I can decide where I want to put it to save. I understand that this is not the reality for many, but I believe many of the principles I’ve learned can be extended to anyone. The entire ethos of Bitcoin plays into many of my own personality traits and biases as well. I have been known to be slightly anti-authority, anti-establishment, I love DIY and the punk ethos, counter culture, technology, futurology, and many of the other aspects which maybe make me susceptible to fall in love with a narrative that Bitcoin provides.
That being said…
The following sections will outline some arguments why I am so pro-Bitcoin, within the sections, I will hope to explain why I find each aspect so intriguing, but also what I’ve learned in digging deeper into each concept.
The different aspects I will cover are:
Scarcity/Fixed Supply
Volatility
Work = Energy
Environmental Concerns
Scarcity: Hard Money for a Digital World
As I outlined before, in my own lifetime, we’ve seen the governments print record breaking amounts of money and take on further and further debt. People are starting to realize this is unsustainable, but I feel using the fiat system is going to become increasingly difficult to maintain as people lose faith in our currencies.
The government’s ability to print money, quantitative easing, or lowering interest rates drastically has felt like a safety net, shielding us from economic disaster, but this only works if you ignore the consequences of maintaining the "status quo" through these manipulations, especially when mismanaged—such as inflation, poor resource allocation, funding endless wars, zombie corporations and encouraging excessive debt. Like a healthy ecosystem, there should be ebbs and flows, highs and lows, death and rebirth.
Unfortunately we are stuck in a system afraid to take on new challenges or changes.
As I mentioned above during my “third exposure to Bitcoin”, it was during the pandemic that I finally started looking for something different than what we were currently subscribed to. During the lockdowns, I was waiting on the sidelines with the money I had been patiently saving to have a healthy market correction. Thinking I would potentially capitalize on people who were over extended, just like the generations before us did during their market downturns. Instead, it was just the same old story. We socialized the losses, dropped interest rates, and backstopped everything from mortgages to business loans and simply paid everyone to stay home. Everyone got relief, and those closest to the money printer ended up benefiting the most. Of course, I was supportive of relief measures at the time, the “unprecedented” nature of a global pandemic triggered many fast decisions to be made, but if we were in a stronger and healthier financial position, both as a country and individuals, we’d be able to handle these types of situations in more productive ways. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case, since we’ve been in this gluttonous situation for so long, the only relief is to take on more debt. We see it on a personal level, with people always having to “keep up with the Joneses”, taking on more and more debt to live outside their means and on a national level. Canada, for instance, has the highest level of personal debt in all the G7 counties. We also see it on a national level, with the debts ballooning to unsustainable levels.
With more time at home, I began to dig into what "printing money" really meant. This curiosity naturally led me to the question, "What is money?"—which I believe is the best way to start understanding Bitcoin.
The way I see it, every time the government adds more money into the system, the money you currently own becomes worth less. It is hard to see if you aren’t looking, but most of us have felt the effects greatly over the past few years with inflation that has risen sharply, and prices that will never come back down. You can find many sources online saying this is more complex than that, but if we strip these concepts down to their simplest form, we realize how easy it is for the system to be manipulated. A situation was triggered that should have put stress on the system, making savers and more “conservative” spenders in a better position, but instead, because the rules and supply is rigged, it ended up inflating away any chance of your hard-earned money being worth something. Enriching those with the abilities to take on more debt and causing the disparity between the haves and have nots to accelerate faster than we’ve seen before.
For me, the key to solving this problem of endless money printing, is to find a money that cannot be printed. In my opinion, one of the prime functions of money (which I will explore further below) is to transfer work into goods. When the money is manipulated by excess printing, the work you do is worth less. A popular saying amongst Bitcoiners being “fix the money, fix the world”.
Bitcoin is immune to inflation caused by overproduction because no one—not even the creator, Satoshi Nakamoto—can alter the supply. Its scarcity mirrors precious metals like gold but goes even further because Bitcoin is purely digital, divisible into tiny units called Satoshi’s, and impossible to counterfeit.
In a world where money printing has become the norm, Bitcoin offers an alternative: a form of money that values fairness and a finite amount that can be tracked openly through a strong network of validators (people who continue to maintain the ledger, who owns how much, protected by encryption). As opposed to how our current “ledger” is maintained, behind closed doors, hidden beneath complex systems of REPO markets, bond markets, debt-to-GDP ratios, FED meetings, unelected Bank of Canada representatives, CPI reports that don’t include some sectors but include others, it’s all quite unfair and frankly, shady.
You work hard for your money; no one should be able to devalue it by simply printing more.
The “fairness” of a fixed supply is appealing of course, but it also then changes your approach to what that asset means. If you start to think about owning Bitcoin like a rare collectible rather than a “money”, you start to realize how important it may actually be.
Bitcoin’s scarcity is one of its defining features and what makes it a form of "hard money." Unlike fiat currencies Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million coins. This cap is hard-coded into Bitcoin’s software and enforced by the decentralized network around the world. Every four years, the amount of new Bitcoin that can be mined is cut in half in an event called the "halving," which ensures the supply grows predictably and eventually will stop altogether. This scarcity is unlike anything humans have seen before. While we have had other “hard moneys” such as gold, humans have always found a way to manipulate it, with evidence dating back even to Roman times. While I don’t have the time or space to explore the history of “hard money” further in this writing, if this is something you are interested in, I highly recommend reading “The Bitcoin Standard” where Saifedean Ammous (links in the conclusion) covers the entire history of money and how we got to where we are right now, finishing with why Bitcoin is the ultimate form of “hard money”.
This fixed supply is what makes Bitcoin fundamentally different from fiat money. In fiat systems, central authorities can inflate the money supply at will, devaluing everyone’s savings, sometimes it happens in times of crisis, other times it happens just to “meet” budgetary requirements. While we haven’t seen anything too drastic happen yet in Canada or the USA, our debts are continuing to increase dramatically, which has led other countries to “hyperinflation”, essentially making their currencies worthless.
Holding onto a currency (CAD or USD) that is so heavily manipulated behind closed doors, with no input from the citizens, is something I don’t really want to participate in anymore. That is why I chose to go with Bitcoin. I know exactly how many there are, and how many there will be. At this point, individuals own way more of the supply than any country, company, or individual, which keeps the power in the hands of the network, and the chance of manipulation lower as the network grows in both price and size.
With only 21 million Bitcoin and 8 billion people on Earth, the instinct then is to accumulate as much as you can. It’s a competitive drive that aligns with capitalist principles, which some people may push back against, but I believe is an asset when learning what it means to save and grow your personal wealth.
What I find fascinating is how Bitcoin shifts the focus away from hoarding physical resources, like land, to accumulating something digital, tied to energy. If society adopted this mindset, I think it could even help alleviate crises like the housing shortage. Instead of bidding wars for real estate, people could invest in a digital asset with a fixed supply that has historically better returns.
If you’ve read this far, but are still skeptical, it may be the “volatility” of Bitcoin that has made you weary of its usefulness as a savings vehicle. In the next section, I will outline how the volatility is actually advantageous to re-thinking how we think about saving and spending.
Volatility: A Test of Conviction
If you’ve been exposed to Bitcoin in the mainstream feeds, it is likely to be when it is rocketing upwards, or when it is “dead”...again. Its volatility (its likelihood to spike or fall quickly) is often an argument against using it as a savings vehicle. People often cite its characteristic to drop drastically as the reason that they won't invest, and why they tend to stick to “safer” bets like investing into broader funds which can “promise” a decent return for less risk. I think safer financial plays are still valuable, I personally allocate money into the more “traditional” investment vehicles as well.
But, for me, it was the volatility that taught me how to think longer term about saving, forced me to think twice about spending, and made me continue to research and invest in the network that I was starting to become so passionate about.
Like many first time investors in Bitcoin when I first started buying in 2020 I thought I would take advantage of these swings in price. I watched the charts for a while, seeing the moves up and down within a close range before things started to get too crazy and for some reason, I thought I could outsmart the market and trade it. As most naive newbies, the goal is always to buy low and sell high, thinking you could cash in some quick returns. I purchased a bit, telling myself I would cash out when it hit a certain gain. I saw my initial investments gain value over the first couple of months, and as I continued to research I decided I would hold on a bit longer, I was definitely interested in the idea of a scare supply, but making a quick buck was still kind of appealing as well. Maybe it was my continuing education in the ethos or maybe it was greed, but as the momentum near the end of 2020 continued I kept holding onto my Bitcoin and the price ripped upward. I started buying more, feeling like I had it all figured out. Sending my friends screenshots of my gains and feeling like I had timed the market like a pro. But as fast as Bitcoin can rise, it can fall just as quickly. Luckily, I did not invest any more than I could afford to lose, and I did not over lever myself to attempt to gain more.
At its peak, I felt like a genius. The euphoria at the end of 2021 was palpable to say the least, when BTC reached 50K USD people were calling for 70K, and at 70K people were calling for 100K. I kept buying with any spare cash, stopping investing in my more “safer” bets and the fire of my enthusiasm was fueled by random YouTube pundits and analysts.
And then, as predicted by some of the smarter YouTubers I was watching at the time (Thanks Ben Cowan), I watched the price drop almost 60% in a matter of months. Instead of panicking and selling, I started learning deeper. A few months after making my first purchase, despite seeing a 100% increase, followed by a 60% decrease in a short amount of time, I decided that I would put a 3-5 year time horizon on my purchase as I started to understand the market cycles. I am glad I had committed to this mental model early. It was through learning about Bitcoin that continued to give me conviction about my purchases. I had put in a decent initial investment, but my plan was to accumulate slowly and buy throughout the next few years. I knew if I was able to “weather the storm”, I would come out the other side with more Bitcoin than I started with, at a lower cost.
After seeing the peak, and subsequent drop, the more I dove into Bitcoin’s fundamentals and held on to my investment, trusting my thesis; this was a superior form of money, and nothing about the network had changed—it was still decentralized, immutable, and scarce. If anything, the volatility just tested my conviction. Again, because I did not invest more than I was willing to lose, I was able to stomach seeing my portfolio go from up 100% to down 50% in a matter of months.
Living through that downward trending market also changed the way I thought about money. I started to view unnecessary purchases differently because I was focused on trying to get more Bitcoin. For example, if I wanted a new phone, TV, sweater, but didn’t truly need one, I’d ask myself: What if I put that money into Bitcoin instead? A year from now, my current phone would still work and my Bitcoin might have grown enough to afford an even better phone, or maybe find a cheaper phone and pocket the difference. Up until this point, I was pretty loose with spending, thinking that money didn’t tend to accumulate or grow anyways, I might as well spend it. It was the fact that I was looking at a massive drop in the Bitcoin price that allowed me to question what would be better to purchase, cheap Bitcoin, or some new tech. That shift in mindset—from high time preference to low time preference—was transformative. It’s one of the greatest lessons Bitcoin has taught me: patience in investing pays off.
This new way of thinking about an investment and money in general was totally against what I was conditioned to believe. Most true Bitcoiners tend to adopt a low time preference for investment, meaning, they prefer to hold their investments long term, thinking in four, eight, and even twelve year periods. This longer term way of thinking allows you to think past needlessly spending and the reward is then seeing your wealth actually accumulate rather than the temporary dopamine hit of getting some new piece of tech.
Again this lower time preference, this is not how millennials were conditioned though, so it took me some time to really relax into thinking about things longer term. Now I look at my Bitcoin as an investment I want to save to pass down to my kid, rather than something I will make a quick buck on within a year. For me, this is my way of accumulating some sort of generational wealth. It may be small at this point, but I truly believe that the energy I put into working and saving, is stored and maintained if it is held in Bitcoin.
At this time of writing, you can go back any four year period in the history of Bitcoin, and if you were to purchase, and fast forward four years later, you would have seen a good return on investment. Yes, there will be times within that four year period that you would have to stomach anywhere from a 20-80% drop in price, but if you wait long enough, it has always come back. The return of price appreciation can be seen for a few reasons; the growing network adoption, the limited supply, and now game-theory playing out as many have predicted.
Now that I was fully committed to continuing to work towards “stacking sats”, it also changed the way I looked at work in general. Being a scientist myself, the relationship between the first law of thermodynamics (energy cannot be created nor destroyed) and money really started to become clear. What if we applied that understanding to our own lives, our own energy, rather than just the laws of the universe.
Work = Energy: A New Monetary Paradigm
While most of my arguments thus far have been based on economics, this last aspect of learning/thinking is more of a philosophical/idealistic view of the subject.
Bitcoin made me rethink the relationship between work, energy, and money. It may sound cliché, but our number one sacred asset as a human is time. It is finite and there is no way of getting more, therefore, we should we rewarded for the time we put into our work, as work takes away from our time to be with our friends, family, and hobbies. In our current system, money often feels disconnected from the effort it takes to earn it. It is no surprise, that more and more people are unsatisfied with work. How can you be satisfied with something that may be difficult or strenuous, if the reward for your time does not match the effort. Not to mention, more people are having to work multiple jobs just to keep up with the cost of living. Government and banks can print trillions of dollars with the push of a button, devaluing the labor of millions of people in the process. That doesn’t sit right with me. The accumulation of wealth in small pockets of our society, advantaging a few who can use their generational wealth to take on debts to avoid taxes or continue to compound their assets is a hard pill to swallow for someone who works diligently to save what little we have. The frustration of the disconnect between money and the work required to earn it was really emphasized when I started to apply for a mortgage.
During the time I was trying to put a downpayment on a house, I dove into learning how a bank “backs” that mortgage. In Canada, when you sign up for a mortgage, because of the fractional reserve banking system, a bank essentially “makes” that money up. You are not borrowing the actual value of the mortgage, rather, they are able to add that mortgage to both a deposit in the borrower's account, and an asset on their own. All the while, they will continue to collect interest on that mortgage, extracting your time and energy in the process. This unfairly advantages the banks, as they technically now own your property, can charge you interest, but did not actually put any work into accumulating the wealth to purchase said property, rather, they added a few zeros to their balance sheet and away they went.
What I love about Bitcoin is that it ties money back to energy. The network runs on proof-of-work, meaning that the Bitcoin miners have to expend real energy to secure the system and earn Bitcoin. This creates a monetary system that fundamentally reflects the energy put into it. I believe eventually humans will evolve to think of every process in terms of the physics of energy involved, and moving to a Bitcoin standard will help facilitate that move. How much energy does a task cost? How much Bitcoin is that worth? Currently, the relationship between the energy it costs to produce something and the damage it does to keep things so cheap is totally disconnected. In the future, I hope there will be a better understanding and things will be priced more appropriately, and this movement will be facilitated by Bitcoin and our understanding of the energy involved in mining and maintaining the network.
There are also advantages to the proof-of-work network, which I will not dig too deep into here. Although it expends lots of energy, miners will have to continue to find cheaper, and more sustainable ways of getting the energy required to mine the Bitcoin. There are many use cases for a proof-of-work system, like stabilizing the grid, or using flared byproducts to run miners.
I think this framework could revolutionize how we evaluate costs across society. Gas prices, production of goods, meat and produce, and the value of services could all use some insights using expended energy as the base argument. Tying money to energy could make everything more transparent and fair. It’s a paradigm shift, and while it’s still early days, I believe this concept will play a big role in shaping the future of money.
Environmental Critiques: The Path Forward
As an environmentalist, I’ve thought a lot about Bitcoin’s energy and water usage. It’s true that the network consumes a lot of energy, but I believe right now, the tradeoff is worth it. Securing the most reliable financial network in the world requires energy, just like securing any critical infrastructure. The question isn’t whether Bitcoin uses energy, but whether that energy is being used productively. I am still conflicted at times with the carbon emissions and water usage of the network, but, what I do know, is that when there are financial incentives to make things run cleaner, and more efficient, they tend to happen quicker, and I believe the Bitcoin network will continue to become more sustainable and also help manage the load of our continuing growing and changing electrical grid, both in North America and around the world.
In fact, I think Bitcoin could play a key role in the clean energy transition. By providing a cost-effective use for excess energy, Bitcoin mining can help make renewable energy projects more viable. For example, technologies like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) could use Bitcoin mining to offset costs during periods of low demand, allowing them to operate more efficiently. This kind of synergy between Bitcoin and clean energy is exciting, and I believe it will only grow in the years to come.
Conclusion, Resources, and Entry Points
Bitcoin has taught me so much about money, technology, patience, and the future of finance. It’s made me think long-term, question old systems, and explore new possibilities. While it’s not a perfect solution, I believe it offers a path forward—a way to build a fairer and more transparent financial system. Within this final section, I would like to add a few resources that have helped bring me to this point, as well as some entry points for anyone who wants to dabble with Bitcoin.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that Bitcoin rewards patience and conviction. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme; it’s a tool for those willing to think differently and act deliberately.
Like with everything, I believe education is the first step, here are some of my favorite resources for learning about Bitcoin.
I have ordered them in order from “entry level” to “complex” in both media resources and “Entry Points”.
YouTube & Podcasts:
Tetragrammaton Episode with Jack Mallers
While this is not a Bitcoin podcast, Jack Mallers is considered the “prince of Bitcoin” and on the Rick Rubin Tetragrammaton podcast, they do a great job opening up Bitcoin for beginners. Tetragrammaton is one of my favorite podcasts in general and I was so stoked to see Jack on the podcast as Rick has hinted in the past of his curiosity with Bitcoin. Everyone I have suggested this podcast to tells me how it’s helped them grasp certain aspects of Bitcoin better and is a great starting point.
Preston Pysh (The Investors Podcast, Bitcoin Fundamentals)
The Investors Podcast is a greater network of podcasts started by Preston and a few other people, but a few years back Preston started to focus solely on Bitcoin. He is an incredibly intelligent host who has some of the brightest minds in the Bitcoin space on his podcast on a weekly basis. I take the opportunity every Tuesday/Wednesday to listen to his episodes regardless of who the guest is or what they are talking about. I can honestly say everything I know about the technology, network, and potential future of Bitcoin, I’ve learned through Preston and can’t thank him enough. I would strongly recommend starting with BTC 001 if you are interested at all in listening to his work and tune in every week to see what is being built in the Bitcoin space.
Matthew Kratter (Bitcoin University)
Matthew is one of the OG Bitcoiners who is Bitcoin do or die, or as we like to call them “Maxis”. He covers lots of macroeconomic factors as well as adding his own opinion. He brings a very…American perspective to some things, but I really enjoy his simple videos and his opinion makes me laugh sometimes. He also runs a few tutorials with regards to software and hardware wallets.
Benjamin Cowan (Into the Cryptoverse)
This is one of the first (and only) “technical analysis” YouTube channels I watch. He mostly focuses on Bitcoin and uses Trading View and his own website to show indicators and charting to analyze where he thinks Bitcoin is in the market cycle as well as where it could be going. I have been watching his channel for four years now and he has never led me astray. I find him incredibly honest and humble and never sets unrealistic expectations of where things could potentially go. I have also learned a lot about the relationship between macroeconomic factors like Treasury Yields, unemployment numbers, bonds, interest rates, rate cuts, the FED, and many other things through watching his videos.
For any Canadians who read this, this guy has been an amazing resource to learn what is happening in our own economy and has explained some really complex things, quite simply. And, he’s a Bitcoiner!
Once you get to the point where you are looking into hardware wallets, mining, the lightning network, or some of the more nuanced things in Bitcoin, BTC sessions is a great resource to get tutorials on any topic related to Bitcoin. I’ve referenced his work a bunch and really appreciate his channel.
Books:
The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous
This is the ultimate Bitcoin book. It contextualizes and gives a historical background of many of the concepts I talk about above and really allows the reader to understand money and the history of money. Saifedean doesn’t even really touch the topic of Bitcoin until the last third of the book. I highly recommend this book and have purchased many copies for friends in the past.
Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth & Broken Money by Lyn Alden
These two books are by two very influential writers in the Bitcoin space. Like The Bitcoin Standard, they do a great job laying out some of the current issues in our financial and societal systems, and look to Bitcoin as potential solutions. Both books really challenged the way I understood things and are both on my “to read again” list.
The Bitcoin Leap: How Bitcoin Is Transforming Africa by Charlene Hill Fadirepo
While I haven’t read this book yet, Charlene was recently on The Investors Podcast and I loved hearing what she has done and learned with regards to growing Bitcoin in Africa. I immediately purchased the book and can’t wait to dig in more.
Entry Points into Bitcoin:
I personally use an app called Shakepay to buy my Bitcoin. While you may not always find the best price, the incentives are worth the slight premium you might have to pay. If I were just starting out, I would open up a Shakepay account and apply and activate their Visa. They offer 2% back in Bitcoin for the first few thousand dollars spent, and then 1% there after. I also use the top-up feature, to add a few bucks on every purchase that gets converted into Bitcoin. I think it is a great way to accumulate a few Satoshis (again, satoshis is like the “cents” to Bitcoin) at a time, and at least you are gaining some exposure to Bitcoin, and passively at that. Once you start accumulating a bit, you can also buy Bitcoin directly from the app. You can also start a “Shake Squad” where you and your friends can earn sats as you use the card as well. It works like a pre-paid Visa, and you can use the balance in your app to also buy Bitcoin. They are now insured just like a bank, so the cash you hold in the app is as safe as any other institution. While its nice to have some Bitcoin accumulate in this app, I strongly would suggest getting a hardware wallet after some time and going down that path. Finally, another fun feature of the app, is that if you shake your phone while the app is open, you can accumulate a few satoshis at a time, and, the longer your streak, the more satoshis you can accumulate. If you use your Visa weekly, your Shakes are also worth more. My personal streak is 400 days, and I am getting close to 365 again! (If you use any of the links above, and make a Bitcoin purchase, there is a small incentive for both of us!)
Fountain is a podcast app that allows you to gain satoshis just for listening to podcasts. While their incentives to listen used to be better, once in a while you get a nice surprise here and there after you’ve finished listening to a podcast. Once you are comfortable with accumulating Bitcoin, you can also zap sats (tip creators) for their work, which I would love to see integrated into all sorts of apps in the future.
Bitcoin ETFs
While I am not 100% convinced the ETFs are the way to go if you believe in the decentralization, becoming your own bank, and “sticking it to the man”, the ETFs are a great place to invest in a tax-free account if you want to move some of your savings into Bitcoin. Personally, I’ve purchased some of the Purpose BTCY ETF, which offers a decent monthly yield on your ETF holding. Again, not financial advice, there are lots of ETFs out there and if you want to go this route, it’s best to check with a financial advisor to see what strategy is best for you.
I am assuming 99.9% of people won’t make it this far, and that is fine, this was totally a selfish piece of writing and my way of trying to contribute to the greater Bitcoin community. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to DM me on Instagram, leave a comment, or click the “Message Mike Di” button below. I would be happy to help clarify or point you in the right direction.
This was a great read Mike. I've never treated Bitcoin with anything more than minor curiousity, and outside of buying a tiny amount of ethereum in 2020 I haven't thought of crypto since. It's a great perspective, and I can certainly relate the millenial malaise of feeling left behind economically - especially as a canadian feeling the looming threat of tariffs that are likely to impact the power of our dollar for the foreseeable future. Maybe next time I see you on the drive we can chat some more about it. Thanks!
Great read thanks for sharing your experiences!