Learn about Bitcoin. Your future self will very likely be grateful you did. I think understanding Bitcoin is in everyone’s best interest.
Although everyone’s heard about Bitcoin at this point, I think it’s still mostly misunderstood (and misrepresented).
I also think it’s here to stay, and will become increasingly significant and enmeshed in all our lives in the coming years and decades.
Also, learning about Bitcoin necessarily involves learning about money, and I think the subject of money is also widely misunderstood (to everyone’s detriment).
My experience engaging with the subject of Bitcoin has been extremely enriching. Yes, my net worth has grown because of it, but that doesn’t even seem like the most valuable thing I’ve received. Here are a few things I’ve gotten out of it:
-Holding bitcoin through the euphoria of its highs (in dollar terms) and the despair of its lows, has helped me develop levels of equanimity and resolve that I frankly didn’t know I had in me.
-Learning about things like Austrian economics, sound money, fiscal responsibility and libertarian principles has, I think, made me a more genuinely integral/integrative thinker. It has tempered my natural left-leaning idealism with what feels like a more grounded, common sense simplicity.
-Understanding the story of Bitcoin (and of its pseudonymous creator) has shaken me out of a cynical malaise that I didn’t know I was in, where I was assuming that it was almost impossible to have any significant positive impact on the world.
-Thinking of my savings in bitcoin terms instead of dollars/pesos has made me view my life on a much larger time scale, thinking in years and decades instead of days or months (while still living in the immediacy of the moment).
So, I want to invite you all to learn about Bitcoin. I’ll share a few great places to start below, and I’m down to converse about it anytime (it’s one of my favorite subjects).
I don’t think links work in these posts yet (just sent that feedback) so I’ll just name the resources, you can easily find them by googling:
*The Legendary Treasure of Satoshi Nakamoto by Tomer Strolight. This is a fantastic blog post on Bitcoin’s origin story. It’s philosophical, it’s spiritual, it’s awesome. And it’s now also been adapted into a great short film on YouTube, so just search for it there, it’s on Swan Bitcoin’s channel.
*How Money and Banking Work (and Why They’re Broken Today). Another fantastic short film on YouTube, by financial analyst and author Lyn Alden (who, by the way, I’m pretty sure is operating from integral awareness, though she’s probably never heard of Ken Wilber or integral theory). The short film is a summary of her excellent book Broken Money: Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make It Better.
A couple of awesome introductory books are:
*The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous (if you lean more conservative or libertarian)
*A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin by Jason Maier (if you’re more left-leaning).
*And finally, if you’re ready for the deep dive, there’s a free online college-level course at Saylor Academy that’s called PRDV151: Bitcoin for Everybody. That was the course that REALLY helped me grok this vast subject.
When you do decide to dive in, let me know how it goes!