Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Imagine the Stanford marshmallow experiment in reverse. Instead of getting a second marshmallow for waiting, the children are told that every 15 minutes they wait. The marshmallow in front of them will shrink one tiny bite at a time until nothing remains.
[00:00:17] Naturally, they eat their marshmallow immediately. Not out of impatience or hunger, but common sense. Delaying would only guarantee them less marshmallow in the future.
[00:00:29] That's exactly how our money works today.
[00:00:33] The longer you hold onto it, the less it's worth. In this way, fiat systems incentivize a high time preference lifestyle.
[00:00:44] The best in Bitcoin Made Audible I am Guy Swan and this is Bitcoin Audible.
[00:01:01] Foreign.
[00:01:06] What is up guys? Welcome back to Bitcoin Audible.
[00:01:11] We've got a really cool piece today.
[00:01:13] It's not very long and was shared around on X.
[00:01:20] And this is a great concise examination of why and how bitcoin is actually attached. The idea of sound money is actually attached to how we see ourselves, how we see and relate to the things around us, and importantly, how we see and relate to our life and our investment in our future. Like our relationship to time is actually deeply rooted in our relationship to money. They feed back on each other.
[00:01:55] And I know we've read a number of different pieces about this topic over the years on this show and I thought this was a really good combination of the various, I guess you could say, disciplines. Really it's really a personal story. It's a personal story of how they reached this conclusion, how they came to this realization and how it affected them. Like what the results are, what the why was behind all of it. And honestly, I think those are generally technical papers are great. Philosophy is really fantastic. But those that closer more closely resemble a story, a personal story, I think have more impact because it's somebody getting to share what was happening inside of them, what change in perspective was occurring and why they saw that occurring at some stage in their life. And it's always just really fascinating to see where other people are coming from and how people, how so many in bitcoin coalesce or come from so many different directions but land on the same ideas and the same philosophy. So this is a Twitter or X note or article, whatever you call it, by Connor Dolan. A quick shout out to the HRF and their incredible work, the Oslo Freedom Forum. They have tickets if you want to actually talk to. Speaking of narratives, you want to hear people tell their story of how they fought authoritarian regimes, the tools they needed, the, the downfall and or the, the breakthroughs in the culture or the state in their countries. The Oslo Freedom Forum is it. It's the place where everybody around the world trying to bring freedom and sovereignty to everyone, share their stories, share the tools, share the means by which this is possible. And the HRF does incredible work on this front.
[00:03:58] The tickets are it's in June 1st to 3rd this year and the tickets are on sale now. You can find the details right in the show notes, as well as their amazing newsletter, the Financial Freedom Report, which is basically my source for keeping up on all of that. With that, let's get into today's article and it's titled Bitcoin Stoicism and Our Relationship with Time Written by Conor Dolan When I was growing up, my biggest hobby, if you can call it that, was playing video games. While other teens spent their weekends playing sports or partying, I spent most of my time alone playing Xbox late into the night. If I've come close to amassing 10,000 hours in anything, video games is probably it.
[00:04:47] Every so often during a late night session, my mom would lean over the upstairs railing that overlooked the living room and called out, half joking, half serious, is this really how you want to be spending your summer? I'd laugh it off and dive back into my game.
[00:05:01] Looking back, I see that she didn't really care about the games themselves.
[00:05:05] She just saw how much time I was pouring into them and wanted me to think about what I was giving up in the process.
[00:05:12] She wasn't really ribbing me about wasting my summer as much as she was challenging me to ask myself a bigger question.
[00:05:19] Is this how I want to be spending my time?
[00:05:23] Back then, it certainly felt like it was. But it stings now to think about how much free time I squandered during the one stretch of life when I had nothing but time.
[00:05:35] If only bitcoin had been around then. If only I had discovered stoicism. Of course, as Marcus Aurelius once wrote, everything that happens, happens as it should.
[00:05:47] And so my path began smaller, closer to home with a kitchen counter and a jar of coins.
[00:05:54] Bitcoin and the Future As a kid, my dad noticed I had a knack for saving and struck a deal with me. Any change he accidentally left on the kitchen counter was mine. As you can imagine, I hovered around that counter like seagulls over a trash can. Over three years, I diligently stored my coins in this big yellow plastic piggy bank and was able to save over $100, which felt like a small fortune to a nine year old.
[00:06:22] Years later, I learned that My dad was going out of his way to break bills and inconveniently forget to leave his change on the counter, committing to the bit far more than he ever had to, just to keep nudging me towards saving.
[00:06:35] And it worked.
[00:06:37] By 10, I had opened my first savings account at Sandy Spring bank, the only option available in the little town I lived in. Boy, did I feel like a big shot with my very own bank account.
[00:06:48] Each week I'd save up my cash from doing chores and odd jobs around the neighborhood and then walk into the branch to make another deposit. At 14, I was bussing tables at Waffle House and putting my paychecks into stocks. Eventually, I studied finance and landed a job at Capital Group and then BlackRock. By then, I assumed I had a solid grasp of money.
[00:07:09] But as Epictetus once said, it's impossible for a person to begin to learn what what he thinks he already knows.
[00:07:18] For years, I had believed I understood money simply because I worked in finance. In truth, I'd never examined its foundations at all.
[00:07:27] Like many, I had run into Bitcoin a handful of times in the 2010s, but each time I never spent more than a few minutes researching before confidently declaring it a Ponzi scheme. But in 2017, a colleague insisted that crypto was the future, and I finally caved and bought my first sliver of Bitcoin. Not because I understood it, but because I didn't want to miss out on the gains everyone else was bragging about.
[00:07:52] One month later, the crypto markets went into free fall, and over the next year, Bitcoin suffered one of the worst crashes in its history.
[00:08:00] I remember refreshing the charts in disbelief as the red numbers kept piling up. My portfolio down more than 8, 80%.
[00:08:09] I can still feel the remnants of that knot in the pit of my stomach as I paced my apartment, trying to figure out how to tell my wife that the investment I've been touting as the future of finance had gone up in smoke. But I'm a stubborn investor, and when I'm in the red, I double down. So I kept buying small amounts, unaware that I was actually stepping into a monetary revolution.
[00:08:33] Months later, I picked up the the Bitcoin Standard by Seyfedin Amus, and my eyes were opened. Despite my finance background, it wasn't until I learned the history of fiat banking that I realized I'd never truly understood how money worked its story, purpose, or what makes it sound.
[00:08:51] That book also introduced me to time preference, the value we place on receiving something now versus Receiving a return of greater value in in the future.
[00:09:03] The classic illustration of time preference is the Stanford Marshmallow experiment. In the 1970s, Austrian American psychologist Walter Mischel gave kids a choice. Eat one marshmallow now or wait 15 minutes and get two.
[00:09:18] Some waited, others didn't. And the children who waited tended to perform better in adulthood. In multiple facets of life, the ability to delay gratification or exercise a low time preference mindset wasn't just a childhood quirk. It was an indicator of long term success.
[00:09:40] But modern monetary structures degrade this way of thinking. When your money loses value each year because of consistent debasement and inflation, saving feels pointless. It's not impulsivity, it's survival logic in a system that penalizes patience.
[00:09:58] That small fortune of $100 I saved as a kid today, it barely covers a night out at the movies.
[00:10:05] Imagine the Stanford marshmallow experiment in reverse. Instead getting a second marshmallow for waiting. The children are told that every 15 minutes they wait. The marshmallow in front of them will shrink one tiny bite at a time until nothing remains.
[00:10:21] Naturally, they'd eat their marshmallow immediately, not out of impatience or hunger, but but common sense. Delaying would only guarantee them less marshmallow in the future.
[00:10:32] That's exactly how our money works today.
[00:10:35] The longer you hold onto it, the less it's worth. In this way, fiat systems incentivize a high time preference lifestyle. Bitcoin flips this dynamic on its head. With a fixed supply of 21 million and a transparent deflationary issuance schedule, Bitcoin actually rewards those who save.
[00:10:57] The system enforces a money that gets harder or more difficult to inflate or debase over time. And the incentive to spend is replaced with an incentive to hold or hodl. Because when your money is going to be worth more tomorrow, spending today becomes much more expensive.
[00:11:18] I read the bitcoin standard at a critical point in my life. A time when a high time preference mindset had quietly seeped into everything.
[00:11:27] The boundless hope I had carried for my future back in college had faded. If I'd never be able to afford a home, why bother saving? If the world seemed unstable, why plan a life inside it?
[00:11:41] Little by little, I stopped seeing the point of planning for anything at all.
[00:11:46] The months and years slipped past as I navigated my life without any sense of direction. But the more I went down the bitcoin rabbit hole, the easier it became to imagine a future I had quietly written off.
[00:11:58] Suddenly I could picture a life where I wasn't chained to a desk for 70% of my week, where I woke up without an alarm clock and traveled the world with my wife. And for once, it actually felt possible.
[00:12:12] Bitcoin lit a fire under me. For the first time in a long time, I wasn't just daydreaming about freedom anymore. I was building a plan to secure it. The equation was simple. If bitcoin continues down the path to becoming the global reserve asset and I can accumulate enough before it gets there, I'm free.
[00:12:33] I started cutting back. No more eating out. I sold what I didn't need. I stopped buying dumb stuff. Because once you understand bitcoin, you see every dollar differently. Back when I lived in San Francisco, brunch was practically a sport, and I was on the varsity squad. Every weekend, friends would text about getting together, and I was always game. I've never met an eggs Benedict or bottomless mimosa I didn't like. But once I discovered bitcoin, I wasn't so quick to accept these invites. I'd do the math in my head. 40 or $50 wasn't just brunch anymore. It was a stack of SATs, hours of my life at work that I was trading for overpriced food that felt good in the moment but left me sluggish the rest of the day. It started small, like saying no to brunch. But soon I was weighing every dollar against my time and finding a quiet satisfaction in my choices. Saying no didn't feel like deprivation. It felt like practicing voluntary restraint, trading fleeting indulgence for something sturdier.
[00:13:36] Bitcoin pulled me into a low time preference mindset. Instead of giving the office yet another rewatch, I began spending my evenings with a book in hand or listening to bitcoin podcasts. While I knocked out my daily chores, I picked up the drums again, a creative endeavor I hadn't indulged in since college. I traded my favorite spot on the couch for my favorite seat seat in the local sauna. Little by little, I chose growth over gratification.
[00:14:02] Bitcoin is more than just money.
[00:14:04] Bitcoin, like a mirror, reflects back the choices we make with humanity's most finite resource, time.
[00:14:13] If I value bitcoin because it is perfectly scarce, why wouldn't I treat my hours with the same reverence?
[00:14:21] Trying to understand bitcoin's true value forces you to zoom out.
[00:14:25] And the deeper I went, the further my horizons stretched. Weeks stopped mattering. Even years felt small. I caught myself thinking in decades what it would feel like to retire young, what kind of world my kids would inherit and the kind of legacy I was building.
[00:14:43] Most importantly, I rediscovered something I hadn't felt in years a belief that the future was worth building toward.
[00:14:53] After diving into bitcoin, I couldn't go back to living on autopilot. The way I worked, spent, and thought about time had all shifted. It is why so many in the bitcoin community compare the journey to waking up from the matrix. Once you see it, it cannot be unseen.
[00:15:10] And bitcoin didn't just change how I spent money. It changed how I carried myself, how I approached work and treated people, even in the smallest choices. Each day my focus expanded beyond financial sovereignty to a broader pursuit of personal growth. I wasn't just trying to secure a promising future anymore. I wanted to become the kind of person worthy of one.
[00:15:33] Bitcoin forced me to confront what I truly control, what I don't, and how much of my life I'd been living on autopilot. That realization ultimately led me to to stoicism, not through abstract philosophy, but through lived experience and an emerging desire for mastery.
[00:15:53] Stoicism and the Present in my first week working at Unchained, I had an intro call with a co worker, Jose. At one point in the conversation, he mentioned he was into stoicism. Up until then, my understanding of stoicism had started and ended with Marcus Aurelius the making a brief appearance in Gladiator. For those unfamiliar, Stoicism is an ancient school of thought dating back over 2000 years, widely regarded as a cornerstone of modern philosophy. At its core, stoicism teaches you to focus on what you can control your thoughts, actions, and responses, and to let go of everything else. Simple in theory, but hard in practice.
[00:16:38] It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. Epictetus Hearing Jose talk about the impact the philosophy had on him piqued my curiosity. He recommended the Daily Stoic podcast by Ryan Holiday. When I saw most episodes were only three to five minutes long, I figured it was low effort and gave it a shot.
[00:17:00] I got hooked. Each morning I'd scroll through the catalog for a quick listen and try to apply the day's stoic lesson to my own life.
[00:17:07] Before long, stoicism seemed to be popping up everywhere, and it was noticeably prevalent within the bitcoin community. Whether it was meetups, chats with co workers, or references within Bitcoin essays, I couldn't get away from it. And it made me wonder, why do so many Bitcoiners also identify with stoicism?
[00:17:27] The deeper I pulled on that thread, the clearer it became. Bitcoin and Stoicism are both tools for for confronting the scarcity of the one thing that binds us all time.
[00:17:39] Over and over in my studies, I kept running into the same warning from the Stoics that even though we know it's finite, we go on squandering the one resource we can never get back.
[00:17:52] As I sat with their words, it struck me how much of my own life I'd already given up to worry, regret, and distraction.
[00:18:01] Most people go through life constantly thinking ahead about tomorrow's meetings, next month's vacation, overdue doctor's appointments.
[00:18:10] Working for the weekend is a mindset that is all too common in today's culture. But a Stoic would argue that the weekend isn't promised to you, only this moment is. So don't waste your time and energy worrying about the future.
[00:18:24] Instead, focus on today.
[00:18:27] The whole future lies in uncertainty. Live immediately, Seneca.
[00:18:34] As I immersed myself in Stoic teachings, my relationship with time continued to evolve and mature. Where Bitcoin made me zoom out, Stoicism made me zoom in. Where Bitcoin taught me to think in decades, Stoicism reminded me that today is all I ever really have. And much like my Bitcoin journey, adopting Stoic values into my life kicked off a chain reaction of positive consequences. I stopped spending hours upon hours setting the perfect fantasy football lineup and beating myself up when I inevitably started the wrong players. I stopped replaying old mistakes in my head at night, the kind that keep you awake tossing and turning over something stupid you did a decade ago.
[00:19:17] Instead, I began giving my attention to the day in front of me.
[00:19:21] It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
[00:19:27] Marcus Aurelius Contrary to what I expected, adopting a mindset of live for today didn't push me towards indulgence and imagined urgency. It did the opposite.
[00:19:42] I slowed down.
[00:19:44] I became a better listener. No longer just waiting for my turn to speak. Instead of racing around like someone whose mile time was being tracked, I moved with a newfound ease. Moments and opportunities I would have previously ignored or missed began to stand out.
[00:20:00] Simply because I was present in my surroundings, I felt calmer, clearer, and more aware.
[00:20:07] Stoicism made me examine each and every hour and ask, am I spending my time wisely?
[00:20:15] And the more I asked that question to myself, the more centered I became. My values and my actions started to match. My habits stopped drifting. My purpose became clearer. And just like with Bitcoin, once I saw the world this way, there was no going back the same question Bitcoin and stoicism came into my life from opposite directions. One as a tool for financial sovereignty and the other as a framework for inner discipline.
[00:20:48] But they both led me to the same how am I spending my time?
[00:20:55] There are only two perfectly scarce resources in this world, time and bitcoin. Their scarcity gives them immense weight and forces us to confront how we use them.
[00:21:08] That's where I believe stoicism and Bitcoin can help provide orientation, a compass, and a map for how to live a virtuous life.
[00:21:18] Bitcoin is the map stretching your horizon and helping you see the route ahead. It asks you to think generationally and value your future.
[00:21:27] Stoicism is the compass keeping you oriented in the moment and ensuring your current step is pointed in the right direction. With both, you're not just staring at the horizon or the next step, nor wasting time looking in the rearview mirror. You're navigating your life with direction and purpose. Bitcoin and stoicism form a rare kind of synergy, a way of living that honors both today and tomorrow.
[00:21:57] Stoicism has helped me stay grounded through Bitcoin's volatility, and Bitcoin has given me a daily training ground to apply stoic values like patience, discipline and emotional control.
[00:22:09] No longer do I feel the urge to check my portfolio during every wild price swing. I've done the research, am confident and committed to the long term vision for bitcoin, and now accept that even if the price is heading in the wrong direction, there's nothing I can do about it. And besides, any dip is just another buying opportunity.
[00:22:27] That balance has helped free me to focus my energy where it actually matters. Bitcoin and stoicism don't just complement each other, they sharpen each other. And together they have pushed me further than I could have gone with just one or the other.
[00:22:44] So it's no surprise that so many bitcoiners are drawn to stoicism.
[00:22:48] In many ways, they are two sides of the same coin. The real question is whether you'll recognize its value or let it sit on the counter waiting for someone else to pick up.
[00:23:01] The choice is yours.
[00:23:05] You don't need to be a philosopher to read Seneca, and you don't need to be a computer scientist to understand Bitcoin. What you do need is a willingness to question the default path and the courage to walk a different one. If you're into Bitcoin but haven't explored stoicism, there's a lot waiting for you there a way to stay grounded, clear headed and principled in a turbulent world. If you're into stoicism but haven't explored Bitcoin, you might find it's not just about money. It's about sovereignty, discipline, and aligning your time with your values. And if you're into neither, getting started is as Easy as buying $10 of Bitcoin and a copy of Meditations.
[00:23:46] Or you could continue to ignore both and carry on with your life, but that's probably not the best use of your time.
[00:23:55] This read was brought to you by the Human Rights foundation. Their amazing work and I encourage you to check out their Financial Freedom Report for news for the fight for freedom around the world and importantly the tools and the stories for how we win.
[00:24:10] You'll find a link right down below in the show Notes I want to add a little bit of something to this conversation because I've talked about this a number of times on the show. I had a very similar experience when it comes to video gaming and my realization of the time that was being lost while work, while doing that.
[00:24:39] And if anybody's ever heard me tell this story is this is relevant to why Bitcoin audible even exists to begin with.
[00:24:49] I used to spend an enormous amount of time playing League of Legends. It was kind of my default thing when I got home from work.
[00:24:58] And I always had, I always have way, way, way too many plans, too many intentions to do things and projects to start then I can ever actually get finished. That is time is the universal limiting factor to all of it.
[00:25:20] And so I would get home and one of the things that League of Legends has, which a lot of games have these days, like it's funny, I've been actually playing a little game more recently and I'm already just like, man, this has already taken up too much, too much time for other things.
[00:25:40] But I found myself trying to do it in a situation where I'm trying to keep myself awake because when I'm putting rad to sleep, I actually lay down with him in his bed to help him get to sleep. And then after he falls asleep, I get up and just sneak out of the room.
[00:25:59] But when I do that, I'm sitting in bed for I'm trying to help him get to sleep for, I don't know, an hour or so. And I very, very often fall asleep and then I wake up like midnight to climb out of the bed and get out of the room. And I've been trying to figure out how to keep myself awake.
[00:26:16] And one what I'VE done more recently was, okay, let me get myself a game, something engaging that I can actually do while I'm sitting there and just kind of like, you know, put it under the, under the COVID or whatever and have my red light on the screen so that, you know, it's not disruptive or like super bright.
[00:26:36] And I've been playing Clash of Clans but I've already gotten to a place where I'm spending too much time on it. I'm finding myself like trying to open it to get the, you know, the quote unquote, first win of the day. Because if you, if you play it for a little bit every day, you get like, your chest has more stuff in it. You get like a special, you get special rewards.
[00:26:54] And it's been kind of fun too though is, you know, trying to be self aware of the whole, like you'll get way better rewards if you spend 299 on this thing. Like it's, it's an upsell at every single turn and to, you know, kind of have the mental fortitude to realize that, you know, this is, this is a waste of capital. Like, like how do I think about the, the cost of what I am about to do?
[00:27:23] And I've only, I've literally only been doing this for like a week, maybe a week and a half and I've enjoyed playing games. Again, it's a Clash of Clans is a fun little simple strategy game that's like three minute, you know, matches and stuff every time. But I'm already just like, God, how much time is being lost? And so one of the things I've done is I Vibe coded A.
[00:27:46] It's still not, it's still not perfect, but it's getting there. I want to be able to do it so I can have multiple tabs open and I can actually work inside this on my, on my Linux machine specifically.
[00:27:57] But instead I have shifted over to remote Vibe coding. I've used wholesale in my little tool.
[00:28:07] I call it Bashy just because I like naming things.
[00:28:11] But it's a remote Vibe coding, a remote terminal app so that I can log into it through a webview on my phone and I can essentially any Vibe coding that I'm doing on my Linux machine, I can vibe code in the exact same session with the exact same history and in the exact same folder from my Mac or from my phone. So I'm trying to shift over so that rather than having to play a game, I can literally vibe code while tucked into bed with Rad and you know, trying to Type it out. But it is also kind of clunky. It's much more.
[00:28:47] It's not a situation or an environment conducive to typing a lot. And vibe coding is an enormous amount of typing.
[00:28:54] So I'm trying to figure out, like, the sweet spot to, okay, what. What can I actually do that's most engaging and most profitable from a productive. From a perspective of how much time it takes.
[00:29:08] But going back to the idea of the show is that League of Legends had the same thing of like first win of the day.
[00:29:15] But those. Obviously the matches in League of Legends are way longer. You know, you get lucky if it only takes 15 or 20 minutes to finish a game. Sometimes games go into 30, 40 an hour, even just to. Just to get a match and specifically to get the extra experience points and the extra, you know, money or whatever, the fake game money to get your skins and all this stuff. For my fake game character, I had to win a game.
[00:29:45] And the night that.
[00:29:49] So I've been thinking about doing a podcast for a long time, and in fact, we had a couple of false starts. My brother and I tried to do a podcast for a while, and I think we got like four or five episodes in. We never even published them.
[00:30:02] And it was more. It was very like kind of Plan B esque. For those who know the OG podcast from back in the day, it was like the 2014 and 15 era.
[00:30:12] And really love the Plan B podcast. Those guys were dope. Eric and somebody. I can't remember the other guy, but didn't last super long. But it was a really fun show.
[00:30:23] And same Bitcoin Knowledge podcast was. Was kind of king back then too.
[00:30:28] That was Pierre and Goldstein. Oh, no, that was.
[00:30:34] Maybe that was the Bitcoin Knowledge. There was another podcast back then too. Who cares?
[00:30:42] I came home one night. So I've been thinking about doing a show for quite some time.
[00:30:48] And I came home one night and I constantly have this, why am I not getting done? Why is everything false starting? Why am I, you know, doing half completed projects?
[00:31:00] And I came home one night straight from work, and I was like, okay, let me sit down. I was really motivated. I was like, really motivated. And I was like, I'm gonna do the podcast. I'm like, kick this thing off. I'm gonna set up my. My workflow to get this thing working.
[00:31:20] And I was like, I'm gonna start. We're getting first win of the day on League of Legends. Knock that out real quick. And then I'm gonna get to work and I Lost the first game and then like the second or third game, I can't remember when. I swear we were, we were, I was used. I was doing an Aram, which is. It doesn't matter. It's a, it's a model or it's a type of match that's usually a lot easier and shorter.
[00:31:47] But we, I swear we had won the game. We had basically won the game and somebody just completely flubbed, like almost like he had gotten up from the computer or something and come back, like just completely ruined us at like a critical moment. And then we spent 15 minutes trying to catch back up the momentum and then we ended up losing the game. And I was like, oh my God, I was getting like angry because my focus, what I wanted to do was to get the show. Let's just kick this up and get some work done.
[00:32:19] And I could not get the first one of the day. And I remember I played, it was eight or nine games and I lost every single. It was one of the worst losing streaks I had had in that game in a long time.
[00:32:31] And I was so unhappy. I was so frustrated that I could not just get my stupid first win of the day so that I could go do something else so I could get something productive done.
[00:32:43] And I think it was, I can't remember exactly what time it was, but it was like 11 o', clock, midnight, it was late, the whole night was done and I still had not gotten my win.
[00:32:59] And I just stopped.
[00:33:01] I just stopped. And I've been in bitcoin for a couple of years, like a number of years at this point.
[00:33:07] And I was just realizing the trade off that I was letting entire cycles of bitcoin go by without feeling like I had contributed anything. Like I wanted to be a part of this thing. I wanted to be a meaningful contribution to moving this thing forward, to explaining it to people, to whatever it is that I thought I could contribute meaningfully.
[00:33:33] And I just like I was sat there, I was still in my work clothes, I was still in my, my Internet technician outfit. I had not eaten dinner, I had done nothing but this stupid game.
[00:33:48] And I just sat there and I had this moment of reflection and there was so much of like, what this article was going through my mind of like, what am I doing here? What's the, what's the return on this?
[00:34:01] How much time did I just lose? Like, this could have been the night that I started the show, you know, this could have been the night that, okay, I finally start picking something up and I give this a shot I at least try to make this happen.
[00:34:18] And what happened to the night?
[00:34:20] How many nights do I have like this? Really? How many do I have left?
[00:34:25] And how many will be wasted trying to work up the nerve or trying to get past my first win of the day to attempt to start a thing, as opposed to, you know, day three of actually succeeding at the thing or performing something or trying out a new idea. Because it's not like I'm just going to have a podcast overnight and it's going to be doing great. No, it's a. Like, I need. I need thousands of days on the back end of this to actually get anywhere with it.
[00:34:53] And I was. The worst thing of all is that I was unhappy. I was so mad that I could not even get the stupid fake experience points that were the bonus for the night, for my fake first win of the day to get my fake character upgrade.
[00:35:14] And I uninstalled it right there. I was like, I'm deleting this shit out of my life. I cannot.
[00:35:22] I cannot let this be the thing that I quote, unquote, accomplish.
[00:35:29] I cannot let this be the thing that consumes me. And I'm already having these thoughts with just a little game on a phone that's like, you know, 1/30 of the time and focus investment that something like League of Legends was just because I'm realizing that I'm actually spending what is significant amounts of time, significant in the sense that, like, you know, if you lose an hour and a half, you know, playing a game, even if it's piecemeal all over the place, it adds up really, really quick. And I need to find something better to do with my time to get the.
[00:36:03] The use out of it or to get that purpose of staying awake and staying focused, you know, while I'm putting rad to sleep, or when I just have a couple of minutes, I'm already finding myself wanting to go to the game and being like, let me just knock out a thing real quick. And it's like, you know, I could. I could have it written a page of the book in, you know, the 12 minutes or 15 minutes that I just used on this game.
[00:36:27] In fact, just talking this out may get me to go install it again, because I've installed and uninstalled the clash of clans, and in particular, like, I don't know, like four times, maybe over the last however many 10 years or whatever that it's been out. I don't know, maybe it's not that old, but I'll go Through, like, little spurts where I'm like, I want to have a game. I really am excited about the idea of a game. There's some deep nostalgia in playing it. But then all I. When I'm playing, it's really fun for like a hot minute. And then all I can see is the time cost.
[00:37:02] And I'll also say that bitcoin hasn't.
[00:37:07] It's not merely that, oh, I see the cost of things going out, and I recognize them in bitcoin.
[00:37:16] And so I don't want to spend anything because I think this is a misconception or an easy thing to extrapolate or to assume as to what it's actually meaning when I don't think that's actually the case. Yes, it makes you more frugal, but I think it's less about pure frugality. And seeing that, oh, this cost x amount, how much am I getting out of it? It's more about the trade off because I actually am spending a lot more in what I'm trying. But my focus is on how much value can I get out of it, and importantly, how much time can I save myself so that I can accomplish more and I can be here with my family and do the things with my family and travel and actually be present for my kids. And that's like, we're. We both are at home all the time and we are raising our kids. We are not outsourcing that to somebody else. And that's a big deal to me. And there are moments where I have, man, we're spending a lot of money on this, or this is costing an enormous amount. And I have to adjust my. My thinking of like, okay, but what am I getting out of it in time? Is this really saving me time? Am I. Am I purchasing the right amount of time for what I am getting out of it or for what it's costing me? Excuse me.
[00:38:42] And it has absolutely shifted my thinking on a lot of things.
[00:38:50] 100% my time horizon. 100% my time horizon. And part of me wonders, you know, was this my age?
[00:38:57] Is this the era of life that I'm in?
[00:39:01] But I will say that before bitcoin, even when I thought I was old enough and when I compare it to other people who are my age that are not into bitcoin, I do kind of feel like they're in the same mindset that I was 10, 11 or 12 years ago, even though they're my same age or they're extremely close in age.
[00:39:25] And there's a whole lot of thinking about, you know, what happens next week and what happens tomorrow and what will I be able to do and what's going to be in my way and can I, will I be able to go out and do this and that sort of thing? And very much, much less time and serious thought, thinking about, okay, where am I going to be in 10 years? What am I going to be able to do in 20 years? What kind of a family am I going to have?
[00:39:54] Because when I start putting the pieces of the long term perspective of my life, I, you know, I think when I'm 70 or 80, if I don't have kids, I'm, you know, who's going to take care of me, who am I going to be alone?
[00:40:11] And I don't know if, you know, I don't want to project myself or my situation on other people, especially people I really care about.
[00:40:23] But I'm shocked at the number of people who don't want to have children who are okay with not having a family. And I think, well, what is your 30 year plan?
[00:40:34] Where are you going to be in 30 years? Who is going to be visiting you?
[00:40:40] And if they're actively, if they're openly and self aware in the decision that they're making, then that's totally fine. Nobody has to make the same decision that I make.
[00:40:51] But sometimes I wonder if they're actually thinking about it like that. Have they considered the trade off?
[00:40:59] I don't know. After having kids, I can't imagine going back to thinking as to whether or not we would, you know, there was a long time my wife and I were together for, we were married for almost 10 years.
[00:41:15] It was like nine years before we actually had kids.
[00:41:19] And there was a significant part of us who were like, we wanted to get a lot out of each other. We wanted to have our time before we knew the focus would be entirely on kids.
[00:41:32] And we loved that time. But we have talked about this multiple times since then is that we wish we had had kids earlier, that we could have more kids and we could have a bigger family and everything that I thought, all the costs that I thought going into having a family are very different. On the back end, there's so many things that I was like, oh, I won't be able to do this. And now when I look back, I think I don't care.
[00:42:00] I could not. I don't even want to go do this anymore. This is just not the. My perspective changed so much that I couldn't understand what I would value and what I would, no Longer be concerned about. It's very much like the video game thing is I could see myself 12, 14 years ago going, oh my God, if I had kids, I won't be able to play video games anymore. I won't be able to just sit down and play, you know, Halo for two hours or League of Legends for three hours, because I loved doing that. And now if I spend any time on any video game, I do enjoy it for a very short time, but. But then I immediately start thinking, God, how much time is being used up playing this video game. I don't want to sit down and play League of Legends for three hours every single day.
[00:42:48] But my past brain, my past experience, and who I was 12 years ago or whatever would never have been able to see, to have understand that my value mentality would have shifted so greatly that I have a hard time enjoying a video game when I know it takes three hours of my time.
[00:43:11] Rather than seeing the video game as something that I aspire to or I want to spend my time doing and kids as the cost that disallows me from engaging in that. Because, you know, I just want that, that kind of like shallow, short term feeling of excitement and fun that exists entirely within the realm of a video game.
[00:43:35] Now I see the cost in time that it takes to sit down and enjoy a video game as how much is it taking away from my sustainability in my life, my productivity, and my ability to spend time with my kids?
[00:43:51] My sense of cost is literally the exact opposite of what I thought it would be.
[00:43:58] And I'll tell you, the idea of my future was never concrete. Before Bitcoin, it was always this kind of hand wavy, oh, everything's gonna be easier, everything's gonna work out.
[00:44:13] At this point, you know, I didn't have a strong specificity into what I was going to do or how I was going to do was just this vague idea of how my life was going to have sorted itself out. In some sense, 10 years and 10 years seemed like something that was unreachable. It was far enough into the future that it was like I did not need to have specificity. I could just kind of wish myself into success.
[00:44:45] And I think the biggest thing about bitcoin is it gave me something concrete of, okay, if I can save this amount of capital, this amount of money, and I can prevent this amount of cost, or I can be this productive, well then in 10 years I could potentially have this much. I could have this foundation, this bedrock of our financial life to stand on in order to accomplish the next layer of things, the next order of magnitude thing, the business that I want to run, the, the film that I want to do, the family that I want to have, that we can engage in these things. And I'll actually have the capital to pull this off. My quote unquote retirement plan, my, which I don't like the idea of calling a retirement plan, but a I'm in control of my financial life plan became something very concrete and very specific. And suddenly 10 years out was not a very long time away.
[00:45:47] It was actually a very short time with some very key and explicit opportunities that I needed to take action and take advantage of Today, right now, in the middle of my life for 10 years out to be what I wanted it to be. And when I'm just having this hand wavy that 10 years out is some easy thing that I just have this vague success, well then today can still just be spent using playing League of Legends.
[00:46:15] Today can just be spent watching a movie because today isn't super relevant. I've got nine years and 363 days left before we get to that point in which I have this success and everything sorted out and so I'll get to it tomorrow. And that's kind of what I think is so important about money in this equation. And why Bitcoin does in fact change your perspective is because when your money is bleeding in value, when you don't know how much it's going to actually purchase, then you have to reach to the esoteric, you have to reach to the ephemeral idea of a productive business or I'm going to have this amount of income, or somebody's going to pay me this amount because I'm going to be such a good employee.
[00:47:05] And that is a far more distant thing.
[00:47:10] It's harder to define. You don't know who it is. You're relying on someone else, you're dependent on something else out in the world in order to be to reach the future that you're trying to attain. And so there's a lot more gap, there's a lot more uncertainty in what those individual pieces would actually be. And the idea of something that is here right now in front of you of oh, I have $200 in my hand and this $200 will actually buy me $1,000 worth of stuff in 10 years that isn't there. There's no direct connection to something that could exist in 10 years. Because you don't want, when you're thinking about success, you don't want your current job, you Want a more successful job. You don't want to work for the same person. You want to work for someone who is willing to pay you more. You don't want the the same status of your company or your business or your side gig. You want it to be 10x100x what it is today. But that makes everything that you want to do not something that's like right in front of you, not something that you can hold in your hand.
[00:48:19] Whereas Bitcoin is a tiny piece of something that could just be a hundred times bigger. And when you rec when that is something that you expect to be there and to be of greater value and greater integration at 10 years into the future that you're holding a tiny piece of something that if you were holding bigger pieces, you were holding more of a pie, that you would even be that much more successful, well, then it becomes easy to see that if you just put one more little piece in, well, then that compounds that much more over those 10 years. So maybe I'll add in two more pieces, maybe I'll add in three more. Maybe I'll stack another hundred thousand sats today. Because I can in my mind, trying to pull on this analogy or why I think this changes the framing so seriously is it's like breaking down money does something when money holds its value over time and it is legitimately scarce. And you can kind of see this future where it's going to be more valuable to you.
[00:49:30] It ends up acting like the process of breaking down a very large task into very tiny tasks.
[00:49:38] You know, creating a film is one of those. Like doing a feature film has always been a distant hand, wavy vague dream of mine, right? And I've done productions and I know a lot about doing film. I went to film school and I still have 100% intent to do that at some point. But it's also not my core focus, right? It is definitely something that when I have the time, I'll do it.
[00:50:07] But because of that, it's really, really hard for me to see what I can do today to get to the point where I could make a feature film.
[00:50:17] Because doing a feature film is one big, esoteric, vague future task.
[00:50:25] And it's not really easy to break that down into, okay, well, what would I do today, today to be able to make a feature film in eight years with this budget and this crew? Like, what's one task that I could do today that's a large mental wait to try to figure out what that tiny little piece of. The thing is that I could that's actionable, that's right now that actually has a meaningful impact to achieving that future in a very distant, a very long timeline. But now imagine if somehow just the idea of having a feature film was automatically broken down into extremely granular pieces and I could just look at, I could send one email today and it would get me 1/100,000th of the way to making a feature film. And it was just incredibly concrete and it was just very obvious that if I did that one task today, I could have a feature film in eight years. Well then the path would be so obvious, like I would just, I just have these one little, like these little Lego blocks and one by one I could see the entire picture of where I go from these single one off tasks to a full feature film. Because it's perfectly broken down into itemized units that are proportional to the total. And all I have to do is accumulate them all as completed tasks. I have a full on to do list with a million to do's and each one of them is this tiny, easy to do little thing. And so I'm just going to stack them, I'm just going to check one off every single day and at the end of it I will have a feature film. If you could tackle life that way, I think doing that, doing those big complicated things, like if you ever read any self help book or productivity book, every single one of them, what does it say? Break it down into small manageable tasks and hit them one at a time. Stop looking at the big heavy, distant, complicated, you know, huge system thing. Like I'm going to make a feature film and think what's the one little thing that I can accomplish today? Every single one of them says put it down like that, break it down to that degree of granularity and suddenly it becomes achievable. Suddenly the mental map of getting from A to B, even though B is super distant, super huge and in a totally different world than where you're starting, it suddenly becomes achievable.
[00:52:58] Sound money literally does this for the financial success, for financial sovereignty is you realize that, okay, you actually know exactly how much you need.
[00:53:11] It is the granularity of capital accumulation where you do just have a checkbox of how many thousand sats do I need to stack in order to get to a point where I have enough capital to sustain my life. And knowing that even the worst case scenario is that it's just worth what I've got, I put into it today and in the best case scenario is I get there five times Faster than I think because this is always going to be growing in value because society is going to become more and more valuable and there will always be 21 million Bitcoin. Fiat literally steals this amazing system of being able to see out into the future of I can actually do this one thing today, I can stack these sats today and I can recognize, I can see a path to a financially and monetarily sovereign future where I am actually in control of my life. I am retired or I can start a business or I can do whatever it is. I can achieve what I want to achieve in my life. I can afford a family and I can see what I can do. Just one thing today. I can see myself stack piece by piece, sat by sat, working toward that future. Because however much I think I, however much I want to have or however much appears to be wealth and sustainable capital today will always be sustainable capital plus more. It will always get more valuable because we're actually on this, this whole ship together. We're actually making this thing run faster and better and more efficient and more productively as a society. We are all cooperating toward making this thing better because we are working on a sound monetary standard. And fiat is literally the opposite of that, is that you have no idea what things are going to cost. Your savings is the most unreliable, useless crap that you could do. And the question really is in fact just the opposite. You see the vision of what if I go into debt?
[00:55:19] What if I go into debt now to buy a house and then the house is worth twice as much now I have equity. It does the exact opposite of providing that roadmap. It, it allows you that roadmap of dependency.
[00:55:30] It makes the roadmap of getting more and more debt, of things that go up in price forever, being more and more dependent, being more and more tied to a bank and tied to an employer and getting a higher income. These things appear to be the paths to sovereignty and success when they are exactly the opposite. They are the path to dependency and chains.
[00:55:52] Fiat is a lie to completely divorce what appears to be financial success from the reality of financial success from, from hard on the ground concrete. I have capital and I am in control of my life success. If there is anything that success ought to be, it's choice.
[00:56:13] It's that you are the one in control of what you can and cannot accomplish.
[00:56:18] Debt that you cannot afford, that you cannot cover is the opposite of choice.
[00:56:23] It's someone else's choice. It's someone else's strings having first say over your ability to choose if your bank with your mortgage decides that you're going to pay different or that they're literally going to call your debt due for some arbitrary reason, which does happen.
[00:56:43] Look, if you think that they don't set themselves up to be able to have that power, then not been paying attention.
[00:56:51] Read the great or listen to the great Taking, which is on this podcast. If you just scroll back. Well, it's been a while. You have to search it. But if you think the people who hold the reins to all of the debt and basically control all of the institutions and hold strings attached to all the World bank and the IMF and these institutions that literally indebted entire countries and you don't think they use those strings, you're not paying attention to anything.
[00:57:16] The reason they issue the debt, the reason they offer the debt is for the strings.
[00:57:22] Another great piece on this is structural adjustment, Alex Gladstein's piece on how the IMF and the World bank literally issue debt to poor countries for the sole purpose. Like it's not, it's not, it's not aid, it's how do we make sure that you have to build the airport that we want, that you have to sell our country coffee, even though what you actually want to do is grow rice and wheat for your own people?
[00:57:48] This is why they love the system of issue debt out of thin air.
[00:57:52] Because this means that they get to issue strings.
[00:57:55] This means that they get to create strings and tie the rest of the world to them and they get to pull on them whenever they want.
[00:58:04] Fiat is such a profound lie about the nature of capital and financial sovereignty that it paints this illusion that embracing this debt machine more intelligently is the road to success, that tying all the right strings to yourself in all the right places is the way to succeed. And what your job is, is to just make sure that you trust that the strings are well contracted, that they are from people who aren't going to pull on them to control your choices or your decisions, when the reality is there is actually no such thing unless you're writing your own strings and your own contracts, which just means that you're up to a political jurisdiction, which still just means that they're not your strings. There's no such thing as a debt without a trade off. And fiat couldn't make it more poisonous because the institutions which you are becoming indebted to that are getting strings tied to you that they get to pull on didn't even earn the money.
[00:59:10] They don't even have the money.
[00:59:13] They literally issued it out of thin air.
[00:59:16] And now they can exert control over you and you will spend the rest of your life paying them rent for the right to tie yourselves to their strings.
[00:59:27] While Bitcoin does the opposite.
[00:59:29] It shows a path to piece by piece, one tiny to do item of savings and buy one tiny to do item of savings at a time.
[00:59:40] How you could achieve you could find yourself in a place where there are no strings, where you actually own everything, where your capital is enough. You have enough saved capital to put your life in a position where you can choose what to do, you can choose how to spend your time, how much time to devote to your family, what product, productive activity or goal or mission you have in this world, something that you want to accomplish in the incredibly scarce and short time that we have in this world.
[01:00:11] Bitcoin presents the image enables the simplicity of seeing, of having one Lego block and being able to envision how many you might need to build a skyscraper.
[01:00:25] And I think that's a big part of the reason why it shifts time preference so much, why it has such an important role to play in making the future feel attainable, making the future feel closer to where you are today and thus encouraging action.
[01:00:48] Encouraging genuine assessment like not vague hand wavy. Maybe this is related to some point in my future assessment, but an explicit I will not have these sats in 10 years if I spend this today and I know it will be worth more if I still hold on to them.
[01:01:07] And I think that's a huge deal and I love pieces like this. A shout out to Connor Dolan for this piece.
[01:01:15] Really fun little article. Got mentioned in it a couple times and shared and just a great one to read on the show.
[01:01:23] So thank you.
[01:01:24] I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Don't forget to check out the hrf. Don't forget to subscribe links and details in the show notes and I will catch you on the next episode of Bitcoin. Audible and until then everybody, that is my two sacks.
[01:01:55] For what it's worth. It's never too late to, or in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit. Stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it and I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.
[01:02:31] Eric Roth, the Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
