The Discovery of Axion

My first serious encounter with the idea of Bitcoin came in 2014. My best friend had an IT guy working for him who told me about this nascent digital money. I recall that my conclusion at the time (as a 28-year-old know-it-all hotshot CFO!) was that Bitcoin was the version 1 of digital money, and that it was likely that a much later version would become widely used. Having read The Creature from Jekyll Island years earlier, which details the inception story of The Fed (The US Central Bank), I had some knowledge about the nature and history of money, and its corruption via central banking. This book brought me to the conclusion that the monopolization and manipulation of the money supply and interest rates (which I termed the corruption of money) was the meta-problem in the world, as it made the problems of propaganda, genocide, and both world wars possible (to name just a few).

In hindsight, I am convinced that I “judged a book by its cover.” The name “Bitcoin” really downplays its significance. The prefix “Bit” refers to the smallest unit of information in information theory: it is the amount of uncertainty that is resolved when a yes or no question is answered. In a similar vein, the suffix “coin” refers to the smallest unit of currency most of us are familiar with. Putting these two together to brand Bitcoin was an unexpected marketing maneuver. While most people try to brand themselves or their projects in memorable ways, or at least ways that make them seem significant and important, Satoshi had done the opposite. To my unconscious mind, the name Bitcoin spoke to its insignificance. At the time, I failed to realize how profound this innovation was, and remained oblivious to how much it would influence the course of my life.

A couple of years later in 2016, I was transitioning from a CFO role with a hospitality technology company into starting my own consulting business. I was leaving a good job with a lot of benefits to go and start my own consulting business. At the time of transition, I had only secured a single client for my startup. It was a CFO-consulting role, so I was effectively transitioning from the corporate world to the world of self-employment. A major benefit of this transition was all the free time I reclaimed. In my former CFO role, my time was fully absorbed handling the affairs of the multi-entity business conglomerate. But after going off on my own, I had lots of time to study and be curious about the world again. As I liked to do, I spent a lot of this time reading and researching.

At some point, I stumbled across the concept of smart contracts, which the crypto platform Ethereum was marketing itself as a platform for. A smart contract is an automated relation between buyers and sellers, or creditors and borrowers, or two sides of any market. The vending machine is the archetypal smart contract: the seller encodes specific conditions that must be met for the sale to occur, and meeting those conditions defines a buyer at that same vending machine. Ethereum was marketing itself as a “decentralized smart contract” platform, on which anyone could write custom smart contracts as they pleased. I would later learn that this was nothing more than innovation theatre, but I am grateful that Ethereum introduced me to the idea of the smart contract, because that led me to Nick Szabo’s 1997 essay. My epiphany after reading Szabo’s essay on smart contracts was that the entire finance industry, which at the time made up ~8% of US GDP stood to be streamlined by smart contracts.

Through this lens, the entire finance industry could be seen as a “dumb contract” in that it only served the purpose of connecting buyers and sellers, or lenders and borrowers, but rather than using software to automate these relations, it used expensive and inefficient human beings. As such, my thesis was this “dumb contract” called high finance stood to be revolutionized by the advent of smart contracts. This inspired me to start buying Ethereum, and the other top 2 cryptoassets as weighted by market capitalization: Bitcoin and Litecoin. Where my money went, my mind followed, and as I started a close study of Bitcoin, I soon fell down the proverbial “Bitcoin rabbit-hole.”

In trying to answer the question “What is Bitcoin?” a natural answer one often encounters is “Bitcoin is money!” The natural next question, then, becomes “What is money?” This question became one that I would become well-known for asking, and its many answers attest to the many complexities of its existence which cannot be adequately described in words alone.

Eventually, I came to the firm belief that the “What is money?” question was becoming the defining question of our time in history (thanks to the emergence of Bitcoin, its popularization of the term fiat currency, and the defensive posturing by central banks with the launch of their CBDCs).

As my studies continued, I was fortunate to order a book titled The Bitcoin Standard very close to its date of release in April 2018. I read the book over a weekend, at which point the Bitcoin epiphany hit me fully. By November 2018, as an almost 33 year old man, I got my first (and still only) tattoo: a Bitcoin emblem on the inside of my right upper arm. Thanks to Saifedean Ammous (author of the Bitcoin standard), I now realized that Bitcoin was the solution to the meta-problem of central banking I had uncovered years earlier upon reading The Creature from Jekyll Island.

“So dark, the con of man.”

The central banking con artistry at scale I had discovered over a decade ago in the pages of The Creature from Jekyll Island emerged because free-market-selected money (gold) needed to be custodied in centralized repositories. Since the use of physical gold for every transaction was cumbersome and risky, it was much better to transact in gold-backed paper currency. This monetary system works so long as the custodians don’t break the trust placed in them.

However, since money is power, the control over money is the nearest thing to absolute power known to man, and the trust placed in custodians of money is a history littered with breaches of that trust. The only solution to central banking was the disruption of gold: the emergence of a superior technology that could dethrone this 5,000 year old analog technology. And here is the source of one of the metaphors that best describes Bitcoin: digital gold. The problem with gold that led to the centralization of its custody is its lack of portability.

For our purposes here, let us define money as a tool for transmitting purchasing power across time and space. Thanks to its physical durability and resistance to supply expansion, gold made an excellent tool for transmitting purchasing power across time; but because it is physical and heavy, it is not so good at transmitting purchasing power across space. A gold-backed currency (which requires the centralization of gold into the vaults of custodians or banks) augments gold in a way that makes it excellent for transmitting purchasing power across space. However, gold-backed currency also requires trust in the custodians of the gold not to engage in the (fraudulent) practice of fractional reserve banking: issuing more paper representations of gold than the amount of gold that is actually held in custody.

Throughout history, this temptation has proven itself to be utterly irresistible to most people. Ron Paul indicted control over money as “the most sought-after monopolistic power of man.” Indeed, the power to print money is similar to the ring of power from the Lord of the Rings films: it corrupts the souls of those who touch it, and it lets its users get away with things by making them invisible. Metaphorically then, Bitcoin represents the fires of Mount Doom: the seething volcano into which the ring of power was finally pitched and destroyed, thus permanently eliminating the irresistible temptation of monopolizing money.

Reading the Bitcoin standard connected the dots that had been percolating in my mind about money for years: its fixed supply, hyper-portability, hyper-concealability, incorruptibility, and un-monopolizability make Bitcoin is the solution to the incentive trap inherent to all gold-backed currency systems. In finance, this is known as the agency problem. The agency problem is when a person or institution (the agent) is entrusted to act on behalf of others (the principals), but the agent’s incentives, information, and accountability are misaligned, so the agent pursues its own goals at the principals’ expense.

Central banks are a manifestation of the agency problem because they are delegated (explicitly or implicitly) to steward the public’s money and purchasing power. Yet they face weak direct accountability and strong incentives to debase their currencies and abdicate on their stewardship. Central banks are “currency counterfeiting cartels” that exist solely to the benefit of their shareholders, and at the public’s expense. At the risk of mixing metaphors, Bitcoin is the arrow which struck this Achilles Heel of central banking. Thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto, the dark con of man was facing up to the light of its judgement day.

My journey into the Bitcoin rabbit-hole would continue, as this hole is apparently bottomless and there is no escaping its gravitational pull. The 1949 masterwork by Ludwig von Mises titled Human Action was the next waypoint on my path down the rabbit-hole. Mises regarded economics as a subspecies of a broader scientific discipline he called praxeology: the science, the logic, or the logos of human action. Starting from the most basic of ideas, that humans act in an effort to get what they want, or use means (tools) to pursue ends (goals), Mises created the most fundamental science in human history. Praxeology is fundamental because its core axiom is metaphysically unassailable.

What do I mean? I mean that the axiom of action can neither be refuted in word nor in deed. This is easily provable. Imagine that you’re drifting off into a moment of introspection: you find your thoughts recursively revealing deeper layers of self-awareness, and you realize that you’re currently using your scarce attention span in an act of introspection with the goal of deepening self-awareness. That’s right: even thought is an act in the Misesian sense. And any attempt to invalidate the axiom of action results in a performative contradiction by he who makes the attempt. So everything is subsequent to action. That’s right, everything (at least insofar as that everything is accessible by human knowledge or experience).

Take the Big Bang for instance: clearly this occurred well before humans and is thus not subsequent to human action, right?. The Big Bang is just a model generated by acts of inference, generalization, arithmetic, and the numerous other actions that supported those men who made this model, and the countless other actions of the ancestors of all of these people performed to survive and reproduce! In short, The Big Bang is a scientific model of the universe’s origin created by humans, and thus human action. Even the words for absolutes like God, Zero, and the Tao are subordinate to human action, because all words are tools, or means in the Misesian sense. Since goal-orientation is defining feature of human action, and all purposeful behavior is by definition goal-oriented, action is the apex category. Indeed, as I would later come to realize, action-as-such is uncategorizable and paradoxical (with many fascinating reasons why, which I’ll share later).

Action is the metaphysical truth that cannot be undone. To deny the axiom of action is to perform an act of denial, and thus to performatively contradict whoever denies it. The undeniable fact that humans purposefully try and achieve their goals may sound obvious, or too trivial to matter. But this is only true at first blush. The entirety of epistemology (the logic of knowledge) and ontology (the logic of reality) are packed into Mises’ axiom: humans act. Everything humans have ever known or experienced is a consequence of action. And the self-awareness it affords us is second to none. Humans that act (which is all humans) imply that they have preferences, as it is to direct one’s will toward the realization of one outcome over another.

Preferences mean that humans choose among alternatives, which means all of us enjoy an inexhaustible free will within us, even if the idea of free will is denied (because again, denial is an act). Action requires that humans choose both their means (tools) and their ends (goals). Since means like time, attention, and energy are scarce (meaning that people always want more of these things than there is to go around), the axiom of action entails that we must economize our means.

Even more metaphysically, action presupposes both causality and time, as to act is to purposefully intervene into the flow of cause-and-effect events in an effort to create a new outcome, and all such actions necessarily take time (an action that doesn’t absorb time is simply unimaginable). In reflecting on the axiom of action, I began to see the glimmers of an unshakable first principle: a single point of origin from which all knowledge and being would be generated. In an age that often touts itself for celebrating “first principles thinking,” it wasn’t long before I was consumed with the idea that human action is the one and only first principle.

In the next phase of my studies, I encountered the book Economic Science and the Austrian method by Hans Hermann-Hoppe. On page twenty of this short yet profound book, I was hit by a philosophical lightning bolt. Hoppe wrote “for it is through actions that the mind and reality make contact.” In these words, I saw Hoppe resolving the subject-object duality into the unifying theory of action. If a (subjective) mind can only “touch” (objective) reality through action, then the category of action is prior to the categorization of subjects and objects.

Again, this is an undeniable fact: in each moment of action, the observer (the subject) and the observed (the object) emerge from the prior unity, or zero-point, of action itself. Clearly, action is the only place where ideas (eidos) and physics (physis) touch. Even more radically, categorization itself is an act of tool-making: since categories are tools useful for labeling, mapping, and grasping the world. Each category is a “frame” through which we interpret reality. A word, a thought, a concept, even a scientific theory: each is a categorical tool, or conceptual frame, used by humans to attain their goals. I soon realized Hoppe’s words had elevated the axiom of action into the vaunted status of sole metaphysical first principle of my worldview. Hoppe helped me see that action was the basis of both knowing and being. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the seed of monopraxialism beginning to take root in my mind. A question remained for me though: how could I know the veracity, or truth-value, of my worldview?

To answer this question, I had to try and establish an understanding of how action interfaces with the real world. Based on a Jordan Peterson recommendation, I one day started reading James J. Gibson’s landmark book An Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Truly a one of a kind book, Gibson explains with a math-like level of linguistic precision the nature of visual perception, which is much more sophisticated than I had ever considered. It was here that I was introduced to a new term: an affordance.

Any opportunity or pathway an organism has for acting on the world is an affordance. Most affordances are denoted by words ending in -ibility or -ability, such as visibility, learnability, and intelligibility. Consider the learnability of a magic trick. Is this a quality of the magic trick (or skill) in question or the magician who wishes to learn it? Learnability can’t just be in the magic trick, because a squirrel can’t learn how to do it. Equally, it cannot be in the magician, as he can only learn magic tricks that are appropriate to his skill level. As an affordance—a real possibility or pathway for action—learnability is between the magic trick and the magician, or the skill and the skillful. It is a real fitted-ness relation between the two that makes the afforded action possible. The graspability of the cup exists between my hand (the subject) and the cup (the object), and nowhere else.

This betweenness, or metaxu, of affordances means that these real relations cannot be classified as subjective nor objective. Instead, affordances are a mix between the two, what Vervaeke would call transjective. As Gibson wrote: “an affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective.” An affordance depends equally on the (subjective) choices of an organism and the (objective) landscape of features it encounters in its environment. Subject-object duality, then, is not an absolute feature of reality: it is merely a categorical dichotomy that is downstream from affordances and, thus, action. This notion of affordances meshes perfectly with Hoppe’s insight about action serving as the bridge between mind and matter. Gibson’s notion of affordances was another piece of the puzzle falling into place. To truly understand something, we must reflect on the interplay between mind and matter, agent and arena, subject and object. This interplay is everywhere and always the realm of action.

As I continued to reflect on the axiom of action and affordances, a deeper realization soon struck me. We often consider truth to be something outside of us, such as an actual condition of the world or an accurate record of the past. But in reality, there are degrees of truth which correspond to the meta-affordance of actionability. We might define actionability as the felt, situation-specific possibility that something in your environment offers you: an opportunity to do (or avoid doing) a particular action given your abilities, aims, and the constraints of reality. All affordances are subspecies of actionability, as they all imply the possibility of action.

As such, actionability is closely allied with ontological truth. 2+2=4 is more true than the statement “It always rains in Seattle,” because when it is put into action, the math is invariant and reliable whereas the statement is less reliable. The more true something is, the more actionability it affords. The American Pragmatists philosophers [RB1] understood this with their notion of pragmatic truth. According to their philosophy, truth was more a matter of function rather than fidelity of representation.

In other words, the truth-value of an idea is in how effectively it guides human action, or how successfully it helps us transform means into ends. Consider the relation between truth and usefulness. If a map successfully helps you navigate from point A to point B, is that because the map was true, or because it was useful? In a pragmatic sense, truth and utility are difficult to distinguish. As we well know at this point, the map cannot be the territory, so it cannot be absolutely true in a representational sense. But, it was true enough to help us go from A to B. In this sense, truth is a term for describing an idea’s degree of actionability. Rather than a static correspondence between map and territory, truth is a dynamic affordance structure, a constellation of pathways for action across varied contexts. The more an idea affords effective action, the actionable it is, and thus the more true it is.

To really guide this point home, let’s return to the map-territory metaphor. A map is valued according to how much it affords the navigability of a mapped territory. Consider a man wandering through a vast desert with three maps at his disposal. The first map indicates a watering hole ten miles east of the man’s location. Little does the wanderer know, this watering hole dried up over a year ago. So although the map is technically correct, in that the watering hole indicated did exist when the map was drafted, reality is dynamic and the state of the world has since changed, leaving the map incorrect or mostly untrue. If the wanderer were to rely on this map for navigation, he risks dying of thirst. Acting in accordance with this map impairs the wanderer’s ability to transform means (time, effort, metabolic energy) into ends (quenching thirst).

The wanderer’s second map points to a deep well with water that is still flowing twelve miles north of his location. Since this map points toward a solution to quenching thirst, or the satisfaction of his aim, it is much more actionable than the first map, and thus exhibits a greater degree of truth-value. Yet there are higher grades of truth still. The wanderer’s third map includes a survival guide with instructions on how to find watering holes by reading the desert, how to harvest water from cacti, and how to dig wells. This map doesn’t provide a mere static representation of a territory at a particular point in time, it also teaches its users how to satisfy likely aims in the desert. If he acts on this map, he is most likely to transform his means into ends. In other words, the third map provides superior actionability, as it affords the wanderer a way to generate new affordances, thus multiplying his effective range of action, and widening his set of options even if conditions shift unfavorably in the desert. Seen this way, the more something affords us with the means for successful action, the more true it is. In sum, truth is that which affords the most degrees of freedom, or optionality: it is the quality of those things which widen our agency in the face of a ceaselessly changing world.

As my intellectual explorations continued, I could sense my mental map coming into closer contact with truth. Since truth is a descriptor for degrees of a meta-affordance (actionability), it cannot be either subjective nor objective. In modernity, rational people often strive to root their opinions in “objective truth,” or they declare things like “I am just speaking my truth.” Both of these modern notions of truth fail, as in a purely objective world there is no possibility for subjective minds to emerge, and a purely subjective world is made senseless by relativism.

To create the means for solving this conundrum, a neologism was needed. Fortunately, I soon discovered the work of John Vervaeke in his Awakening from the Meaning Crisis video lecture series. In his wide ranging explorations of meaning and wisdom, Vervaeke coined the term transjective to describe those things that exist by virtue of interaction between the subjective and the objective. The archetypal example Vervaeke likes to cite is adaptivity.

Ask yourself: is adaptivity subjective (in the organism) or objective (in the world)? It can’t just be in the organism, because a shark is not adapted to the desert. Equally, it can’t just be in the world, because the ocean is not a habitable environment for a mountain lion. In truth, adaptivity is the transjective process of organisms shaping environments, and environments in turn shaping organisms. Adaptivity is a transjective truth grounded in the relation between an organism and its environment. As such, all affordances and actions are transjective notions.

Transjectivity captures the same idea that Hoppe and Gibson were articulating with action and affordances, respectively. Mind and matter can only come into contact through action, and this contact is transjective. Since I was a kid, I always held the difficult-to-verbalize intuition that the nature of reality is liquid. What I meant by this was that everything affects everything else, much like one liquid dispersing into another once it is poured in. Years later, I would unconsciously extend this ontological metaphor and come to see reality as liquidity-like, or money-like: a totally interconnected, recursive, and dynamic field of relations. By coining the term transjective, Vervaeke had given me a vocabulary by means of which I could intellectually explore this “liquid territory” of reality more closely. And there were many other terms he introduced that also helped change the way I understand the world (which I’ll introduce later). Vervaeke’s vocabulary was affording me greater intelligibility, and thus drawing my mind into a more dynamic, transjective relation with itself and the world.

On a book recommendation from Vervaeke (he recommends so many excellent books!), I soon started reading Theophany by Eric Perl. In this beautiful work of philosophy, Perl opens by asserting: “The foundational principle of Neoplatonic thought is the doctrine that to be is to be intelligible.” This was first made explicit by Parmenides: “For you could not know that which is not, for it is impossible, nor express it; the same thing is for thinking and for being.” When you think about it, although it may be possible to be free from thoughts (like in a state of deep meditation), it is impossible to think about nothing. If one were to think about nothing, then there would be no content of thought, and thus one would not be thinking. The idea of an unintelligible being is absurd, as it entails thinking about a being that cannot be thought of. Parmenides’ fragment points out the intuitive truth that to think of anything, any being, already presupposes its intelligibility. As Perl explains:

“To think being is to think it as thinkable. Indeed, it follows not merely that being and intelligibility are coextensive, as Paremenides plainly asserts, but that intelligibility is the very meaning of being: by being we can only mean ‘what is there for thought,’ for since thought cannot extend to anything else, ‘anything else’ is mere empty noise—in short, nothing. If ‘being,’ ‘that which is’ considered as one whole, has any meaning at all, then it necessarily means ‘that which is available for thinking,’ i.e. that which is intelligible.”

What Parmenides lacked, however, was the Gibsonian vocabulary to understand that intelligibility is an affordance, and thus a subspecies of action. To identify being with intelligibility is to make action the ultimate ontological truth. Reality is fundamentally what can be made sense of, which means that which affords effective interaction, or actionability. This is why reality, truth, and actionability are so thematically consonant. Like all other affordances, intelligibility is a subset of actionability, as it is possible to know about something without knowing how to interact with it in a way that transforms means into desired ends.

For example, consider a man who knows that a car engine can be repaired but does not know how to repair it. To this man, the repair process is intelligible, but it is not actionable. Being, that which is real, is a structure of possible actions, or a set of affordances. In this sense, being is coextensive with the actionable, and ontology finds its proper grounding in praxeology. Through the lens of praxis, the real is that which can be engaged, navigated, responded to, or integrated into a plan of action. According to this interpretation of reality, action is not merely something beings do, but beings are the culmination of actions performed across their own lifetimes and, when their ancestral lineages are taken into account, across eons of evolutionary time as well.

Consequently, the ontological ultimacy of action follows from the identity of being and intelligibility: an idea that would become core to the philosophy of monopraxialism. Insofar as the world is found to be intelligible, it is do-able. This is why the man to whom the car repair process is intelligible but not actionable can only make it actionable through training. In short, it is the action of training which generates new levels of actionability. At the bottom of reality, insofar as it is intelligible to the human mind, we encounter the meta-affordance of actionability: the possibility for action that opens up new possibilities for action.

At this point, the axiom of action had firmly rooted itself as the unshakable foundation, the absolute ground, of my worldview. In searching for a term for this worldview, I landed on monopraxialism, which linguistically gestures toward the One Act in which we all participate as actors. It seems Shakespeare was right:

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts …”

Thanks to my new worldview, I was becoming even more curious about fields such as praxeology (and its primary subdiscipline, economic science), process philosophy, mathematics, and linguistics. In economics, I realized that price discovery is a transjective “truth discovery” process. Consider how prices are discovered: they aren’t purely subjective, as they refer to actually completed trades in the past, nor are they purely objective, as they are influenced by the ongoing negotiations between buyers and sellers in every market. A price is set when a buyer and a seller each subjectively agree to make an exchange in objective reality: the point where supply and demand, the ask and the bid, meet. It’s the interplay of subjectivity (market demand) and objectivity (the actual supply of goods available) through which transjective price discovery occurs. Price discovery is an ongoing negotiation between the minds of market actors in regard to available goods. Even something as seemingly concrete and objective as “the price” is actually something that must be continually discovered in a transjective way. Price discovery is the dance between values and facts, and it dances to the music of praxis.

Money is the language in which prices are expressed. A closer examination of money revealed that it is fundamentally transjective in nature, too. What people use as a means of saving and spending is a subjective choice, and throughout history many different monetary technologies have been tried, including seashells, glass beads, and precious metals. But not every choice works out. Some forms of money work objectively better than others. Those monetary technologies which afford the greatest divisibility, durability, portability, recognizability, and irreproducibility tend to outcompete others on the free market. Each market actor subjectively selects the money they believe will work best, and then their selections face an objective market test. Those monetary technologies which fail to transmit purchasing power across time and space effectively fall out of use. Through this Darwinian process of market-driven natural selection, one money tends to become market dominant. Money is like numeracy in this sense, in that more efficiency gains accrue to each user as the number of users grows.

The transjectivity of money makes sense considering that money is the language of human action. The way we save or spend money expresses our preferences to other market actors. Through the use of money, market actors “dialogue” with one another about what problems they want solved, what solutions are available, and what they are willing to give up. Money emblematizes the economic consequences of past actions (like earning and saving) and enables future actions (like buying and investing). Like language, money emerges from the iterated interactions of people across vast spans of time and space. The price signals propagating through money are among the most important coordination mechanisms in the world. Prices are highly compressed data packets containing highly actionable information. A price increase, for instance, simultaneously incentivizes producers to produce more, consumers to consume less, and innovators to innovate new solutions. All of this data communicated through a simple number, undistorted by narrative or bias. Since numbers never lie, they are among the most actionable ideas we have at our disposal (insofar as they track reality, of course). As economic numeracy, money is one of the strongest signals for human action to follow. A quick reflection on how most people spend most of their lives will demonstrate just how important money is to human action and its many fruits. Even people who say “they don’t care about money” almost always have full-time jobs, or they have so much money that they aren’t concerned with its lack. As always, actions speak louder than words.

Hoppe’s insight on action continued to reverberate with me. Since mind and reality could only come into contact through action, and action could not be refuted, I saw action as the only possible ground on which the dichotomy of subject and object could be resolved. In other words, before you have a subject (a mind) perceiving an object (an external thing), you have the interaction itself: the doing, the relation in motion. In a phrase that perhaps gestures toward the limitations of literacy: the relation comes “before” the things related (which are known as the relata). The inescapable difficulty of describing this reality in words is that words themselves are relata, or things related, rather than relations-as-such. This is why all literacy is suffused with notions of time. That relations come “before” the relata entails a temporal relation, and action can only occur in the eternity of the present moment. Without action, the concepts of “mind” and “reality” and “time” simply could not exist. This is another way of saying that all concepts are means to ends, even those as seemingly fundamental as mind, reality, and time.

Only through active engagement can we gain actual knowledge of the world or, conversely, imprint our ideas onto the world. I may imagine a tree in my mind, and there may be a real tree in front of me, but only by touching or climbing the tree can my mind come closest to comprehending its essential being. This flips the typical philosophical question: “How can my mind know the external world?” by asserting that because I am acting in the world, I am in contact with the world. I would later realize that action resolved all the Enlightenment Gap dichotomies as well, including theory and practice, facts and values, and the many and the one. All of these concepts, or products of intelligibility, spring from the all-pervading process of human action: the ground of all knowing and being.

This “ground of all knowing and being” idea was not original. As my studies continued, I started seeing that it had appeared in many other traditions. One striking example is from Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō’s idea of “absolute nothingness.” Despite its forbidding name, Nishida’s absolute nothingness is not a nihilistic void. Quite the opposite in fact: it is a fundamental aspect of reality in which distinctions vanish and opposites find their unity. Nishida wrote that all knowledge is grounded in “the place of absolute nothingness where there is no longer a distinction between the knower and the known.” In other words, he is describing the primordial “placeless place” beneath, or prior to, the separation of subject and object. Later he describes it as “the selfless ground of our knowledge and reality.”

Nishida’s absolute nothingness was pointing at the same transjective, non-dual ground that I found in action, but through a contemplative and heavily Zen-influenced lens. For Nishida, this foundational “no-thing” was not an entity, nor an object, but a field of relations from which subjects and objects emerge and interpenetrate one another. Absolute nothingness was strikingly similar to action-as-such, which is also “not a thing” but rather a relational process (of means and ends) that generates an infinity of beings (and Being-as-such) as its products. Discovering this parallel to action in Eastern philosophy was profoundly validating for the ideas I was synthesizing from predominantly Western thinkers.

As Nishida repeatedly points out, absolute nothingness is radically paradoxical. For Nishida, the ultimate “place” (basho) that is not a thing among things, but the self-negating field in which all determinate things can arise and relate. Human action bears the same fruitful paradoxicality as Nishida’s absolute nothingness. Every action is rational, because it involves a framing process that imagines better conditions, and then orders means to ends accordingly. Yet equally, action-as-such is also an irreducible given—Mises’s “ultimate datum”—and so “irrational” in the Nishidan sense (not contrary to reason, but prior to it, the condition that makes reasons possible at all). Action and absolute nothingness are both one and many: one because their form is invariant, many because each act is singular and non-repeatable.

Although action is a universal process, specific actions are events of determination occurring within a field that is itself indeterminant. And action is map and territory because it is simultaneously the ground of epistemology and ontology: like absolute nothingness, it is that paradoxical locus where subject and object, knowing and being, are not yet split—where the world becomes intelligible as a space of affordances and the self becomes real as the power to actualize them. In this way, action mirrors absolute nothingness: a “nothing” that is not mere negation, but the generative openness through which all concrete form, meaning, and reality come to be.

Nishida was significantly influenced by American psychologist and philosopher William James’ notion of “pure experience.” James proposed that our immediate contact with reality, before we carve it up into our mental categories, is just pure experience. Only after this unmediated contact with reality do we split reality into dichotomies such as “observer” and “observed,” or “knower” and “known.” As James described it “the instant field of the present is at all times what I call the ‘pure’ experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.” Like Hoppe, James was describing action as source to both the subjective mind and objective reality.

At this zero-point between the two, everything happens, and only afterwards do we designate part of the experience as “the subjective self” and another part as “the objective world.” This may sound abstract, but consider the times you’ve been so absorbed in an activity that you lose self-awareness. This is a well-documented aspect of flow states, but it can also be experienced in an act as mundane as parking the car, where your bodily proprioception is extended into the body of the car such that you can “feel” its position as it moves through space, even when you can’t see it. Although James had arrived at his notion of “pure experience” via psychology and radical empiricism, it perfectly dovetailed with the axiom of action Mises reached through the radical rationalism of praxeology. Pure experience is essentially the experiential perspective on action-as-such: the idea that before we categorize the world, we must engage it as a field of affordances in a means-ends framework.

Robert Pirsig is another author whose writing began to stand out to me as pointing toward action as the first principle of reality. I had read both his most famous book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and his lesser known book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals around the same years I discovered the work of Mises. In these books, Pirsig proposed his “Metaphysics of Quality,” in which he divides the world not into subjects and objects, but into Dynamic Quality and static quality. Dynamic Quality (spelled with capital letters to indicate its ontological ultimacy) is the immediate, uncategorized moment of present experience (very similar to James’s “pure experience”). Dynamic Quality is, as Pirsig writes, the “continually changing flux of immediately-experienced reality” which cannot be defined and can only be known by direct experience.

Static quality, on the other hand, consists of the patterned forms which emerge from this flux. Pirsig classifies static quality into four distinct layers: inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual patterns of value. Each of these patterns of value are produced by the undefinable process of Dynamic Quality. To say it analogically: what Dynamic Quality is to process, static quality is to product. By positioning Dynamic Quality as primary, Pirsig reframed reality as raw experience itself, rather than a relation of subjective mind and objective matter. Just like many great thinkers before him, this renegade philosopher had gone to great pains to articulate the inarticulable first principle. The quality of his work is self-evident, and he spent many years writing each book. Pirsig’s perspective provided yet another point of consilience on the axiomaticity of action.

Hoppe, Nishida, William James, and Robert Pirsig were all describing a primal, generative unity of everything we can know or experience. Soon, I started to realize these core ideas from each thinker strongly resonated strongly with the core idea behind the “religion of flow” I had studied years earlier. Taoism, and its central notion of the eternal Tao, is an ancient Eastern philosophy. But in the East, there is no distinction between philosophy and religion, which is why Taoism has been described as the religion of flow. Tao translates as “The Way” and is eerily aligned with action-as-such, absolute nothingness, pure experience, and Dynamic Quality. The Tao too is a fundamental grounding which underlies all distinctions.

As such, the Tao cannot be reduced to linguistic distinction: as Lao Tzu famously said in the Tao Te Ching: “the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” Portrayed as the origin of heaven and earth, the Tao is the formless source of all things. Its most widely known symbol is the Yin-Yang, in which black and white shapes swimming around and into one another symbolize masculine and feminine polarity, and the Tao is the relational movement between the two. The Tao is the source and fundamental principle of the universe, but it is not an object or a deity: it’s more like the underlying order of nature. All things are said to arise from the nameless source waters denoted by the Tao. I realized the Tao too was consilient with the core ideas of the other great thinkers I was exploring. The Tao is an ontologically ultimate ground that is neither a thing nor thinkable, but is nonetheless the origin of all things and thoughts. In more poetic language, the Tao was referring to the deeper unity prior to the splitting of reality into subjects and objects. Discovering this parallel with ancient Eastern philosophy emboldened my belief that the ultimate ground of reality was beyond duality, timeless, and based in action.

Next, I turned my attention to Neoplatonism. “The alpha and omega of Neoplatonism is the assumption of the wholly transcendent One understood as the highest principle of all things.”[i] Plotinus, a philosopher from the 3^rd century, wrote about The One as the absolute unity from which everything emanates. He described The One as “beyond being”: meaning it was not any specific thing, but rather the source of all things. This was consonant with the idea of action as the ground of all things (beings, thoughts, etc.). Centuries later, early Christian mystics like Pseudo-Dionysius would take up the notion of The One and instead refer to it as God. Now, this isn’t to claim that action-as-such is the God of Christianity. But the New Testament does insist that inner assent without enactment is lifeless: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.”[ii] To identify the God of Christianity with action-as-such may be a step too far, however even faith in God is pointless without action, according to The Bible.

In any case, The One is not something that can be conceptualized, although it makes all conceptualization possible. Like action, The One is both one thing (means-ends framework) and many things (no two actions are the same). In Neoplatonism, I found another paradoxical first principle that further reinforced the idea of these disparate traditions converging on the same unifying truth: that all that can be experienced or known of reality arises from one foundational ground. On this sacred ontological ground, all dualities are dissolved, and the monistic origin of the multiplicity is revealed in action. In studying the philosophy of action, I felt as if I was drawing closer to God.

God is perhaps the most paradoxical word of them all. Since time immemorial, humans have created in the name of, argued over, and even killed over God. In irony that is unrivaled, God (in Christianity at least) is identified with agape: unconditional, selfless love. Killing in the name of unconditional love: what could be more paradoxical? In studying God, I arrived at the work of Thomas Aquinas and his idea of God as Actus Purus, which means “pure act.”

According to this view, the first principle cannot possibly exist in potential waiting to be actualized by something prior, because then it wouldn’t be first. So Aquinas posited that reality is generated from a place of pure actualization: a metaphysical “point of origin” with no unrealized possibilities, no dependencies, and lacking only in limitations. In Actus Purus, I encountered the paradoxical first principle again: although this point of origin is “nothing” in the sense that it is not any one thing among other things, it is also “everything” in the sense of being the enabling condition for all change, all form, and all intelligibility.

In what was one of the most explicit predecessors to Mises’s axiom of action that would emerge centuries later, Actus Purus drew a clean verbal line between the paradoxical first principle and action-as-such. Pure act is another way of saying that action is ontologically primary: action-as-such is not one phenomenon within reality, but rather it is the most basic way reality shows itself as actualization, world-disclosure, and the point of contact between mind and matter.

From Neoplatonism and Aquinas, I made an unexpected turn toward the Hindu-Arabic numeral system and its cornerstone: the number zero. Years earlier I had written an essay titled The Number Zero and Bitcoin in which I endeavored to answer a common question circulating in my little corner of the internet: if Bitcoin is open-source software that can be readily copied and modified, what makes it any better than the millions of coins that copy it? Answering this question quickly veered off into esoteric domains such as multi-sided network effects, the first-mover advantage, and path-dependence. I began searching for a historical analog that could help me explain why Bitcoin is, in principle, extremely difficult to disrupt or replace. After much thinking and reflecting, the idea of the number zero— Bitcoin’s ancient digital predecessor—as its ideal historical analog took hold of me.

Zero is a strange thing, because it symbolizes no-thing. As the number representing lack of number, or the category for that which cannot be categorized, zero is paradoxical like many all the other ineffable first principles we have explored so far. Zero proliferated and became dominant in the world because it was an unstoppable idea: a psychotechnology which enabled merchants to perform calculations in less space, in less time, and with less error. Despite all the philosophical and legal resistance zero faced as it spread from East to West, no worldly power was able to stop the spread of this idea whose time had come.

The thesis of my essay was that Bitcoin, which is essentially just the idea of money with a zero-percent terminal inflation rate, would follow a similar adoption path. Like gunpowder or warplanes, zero and Bitcoin were quite simply innovations that could not be ignored without being outcompeted by others who adopted it. Those merchants who failed to adopt zero were outcompeted by those who did. Similarly, those entrepreneurs and businesses who fail to adopt Bitcoin as a savings technology will be outcompeted by those who do. “Never bring a knife to a gun fight,” as they say. But let me stack on track: paradoxically, zero is a presence symbolizing absence, a void pregnant with possibility akin to how the Tao which cannot be named births the world and everything we can ever know about it, or how unstructured (or, pure) experience gives rise to mind and matter.

It was beginning to dawn on me: it was as if every formal system required a category for all that was not, or could not be, categorized. Metaphorically, every map requires a key for that which is not, or cannot be, mapped. Whether this “category for that which is uncategorizable” is the Tao, Dynamic Quality, The One, God, Zero, or action-as-such, each is a touchpoint between a formal, well-defined system (the map) and the informal, ill-defined nature of ultimate reality (the territory of energy, frequency, and vibration). Without such a touchpoint serving as an interface between a representation and that which it represents, then map cannot correspond to territory.

Without a reference to the absolute, all maps are purely arbitrary and, thus, useless. In the discipline of praxeology, the absolute is unquestionably action-as-such. Action cannot be undone, in the sense that actions are irreversible, and that engaging in action cannot be avoided by human beings. Indeed, action is what defines humans as human, more than any other words ever could. As Mises wrote: “Human action is one of the agencies bringing about change. It is an element of cosmic activity and becoming. … As—at least under present conditions—it cannot be traced back to its causes, it must be considered as an ultimate given and must be studied as such.”

Realizing that there is always a part of an action which cannot be put into words (the same part which contradicts the speaker’s speech when he is caught in a performative contradiction), the axiom of action can then be understood as the most performatively affirmative phrase imaginable. It is the only utterable statement that perfectly corresponds to the state of being of he who utters it. All of these other paradoxical first principles were gestures to the action Mises would ultimately articulate scientifically. Even God and the number zero, as concepts, are subcomponents of action, as they are means to ends. I was beginning to see the deepest mysteries of all these disparate disciplines as one within a universally unifying field of action. As both the God-head and zero-point of all knowing and being, action-as-such is the anchor point of consciousness.

From the Hindu-Arabic numerals, I made a final turn, this time toward Hinduism. The notion of Dharma in Hinduism is often translated as “law.” In the West, the word law often invokes the idea of an external ruleset imposed from above. But Dharma connotes a sense of moral law and the natural ordering principle that sustains (biological and social) life. Dharma simultaneously refers to the sustaining principle of cosmic order, how this order expresses itself in life as ethics and virtues, and how this principle is taken up to form norms, rules, and legal systems. In other words, Dharma is a paradoxical principle referring to an impersonal cosmic order that both is and informs right action. Dharma is closely linked to rta: the “cosmic order” or unifying principle of reality itself. What struck me was that Dharma is both metaphysical (reality-oriented) and ethical (action-oriented) in nature. Dharma is not merely what happens, but also what holds together what happens.

Metaphysically, Dharma suggests that beneath our private thoughts and the apparent chaos of events, there is a prior coherence: a “wayness” that isn’t an object in the world, yet shapes the world. Ethically, Dharma means “right action,” an idea beyond mere obedience or preference, and more closely aligned with Natural Law in the Western tradition. In this sense, Dharma seems like the Tao translated into life lived responsibly: not just standing on the ultimate ground of reality, but incarnating it with truth, justice, and righteousness.

And these three words—truth, justice, and righteousness—refer to three distinct senses of the word right: which is, in turn, derived from the Proto-Indo-European word rta. Viewing action in the Misesian sense, Dharma is best understood as right action. In this most explicit connection to the axiom of action yet, the idea of monopraxialism began to take hold of me. Like the ultimate ground of other systems, Dharma does not refer to a thought or a thing, but the self-evidently real, true, and eternal present—the place where the cleanliness of our formal systems meets the messiness of reality: in action.

Connecting all of these dots is how I drew my line of thinking toward the formulation of monopraxialism. This neologism combines mono- (meaning one) and praxis (meaning action) to convey the idea that action is the one true first principle of all knowing and being. A seemingly abstract problem, the corruption of money, had started me down a path of philosophical discoveries which culminated in the most concrete realization possible: that human action is the ultimate generator of subjective consciousness and objective reality. This reification of this realization could not be reversed, as any other realization (in both meanings of the word: “to comprehend” and “to make real”) would also be an action. Here again was the deep continuity between being and intelligibility articulated in the Neoplatonic tradition.

Monopraxialism is the self-evident thesis that the dynamic process of human action is the sole generator of everything humans can know or experience. It ties together the philosophical insights of East and West, it serves as unity prior to subject-object duality, and it reconciles the other dichotomies leftover from The Enlightenment. Action (along with its historical analogs explored by other traditions) is the most fundamental substrate of everything we can think, say, or experience. Indeed, these historical analogs were woven into the substructure of the culture and world that birthed Mises. So in a sense, the Tao, God, the number zero, and the others that emerged before Mises are precursors to his axiom of action. As the ground of all knowing and being, action is architectonic in its primacy, meaning it is the foundational organizing principle to all conscious human experience. As articulated by Mises’s axiom, action is the final explanatory terminus of all things, and is thus no-thing. Epistemically and experientially, there can never be a principle more fundamental than human action.

As I began taking monopraxialism seriously, I came to see the ethical implications as necessitating right action rather than just regarding it as optional. The primacy of action entails the first moral fact: that each person is an acting center—a locus of choice, purpose, and responsibility. This unshakable truth means that life, liberty, and property are far more than political slogans: they are preconditions for a civilized social order. Indeed, all three of these natural rights are derived from the innate human birthright: the right to life itself. As Ayn Rand wrote: “Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action.” Life is the ultimate end for all non-suicidal humans, which is all living humans. It is the metaphysical and moral anchor to action, as to be alive is to act in a way that one’s own survival and flourishing require.

Life is the purpose of rights, which makes the human right to life the ultimate right. Liberty is the freedom of action in a social context. As such, liberty is the bridge between life (as the spiritual end) and property (as the concrete means). Property is the ultimate means by which we secure the universal end of life. As Rand puts it: “The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.”

According to monopraxialism, if we truly wish to create a world free from slavery, then we have no other choice other than to pursue the perfection of private property. This is the only implementation which honors the innate right to life each of us enjoy by virtue of our conscious existence and action in the world. Only private property can justly resolve the contentious situations of people finding themselves at cross-purposes. The only alternative is barbarous violence. In short, there are two ways to settle the inevitable conflicts which come up over scarce resources: either by contract or by conflict.

Clearly, coming to a consensual agreement is the most cost-effective strategy for sorting out disagreements over control over vital resources. Private property is this agreement, and there is no other. It is the extension of human action into the world: the means I must control to pursue ends across time. If the right to property is not respected, then the right to life will be violated, as the fruits of stealing are an inducement to killing, which motivates people to act out of fear rather than love, and thus catalyzes a degenerative process of decivilization.

Seen through the lens of monopraxialism, taxation reveals itself as a forced distortion of otherwise self-authored action patterns: an imposed taking of time, effort, and means. Inflation becomes a subtler form of the same violation: a quiet erosion of the fruits of labor (the retained earnings of action) over time. And statism, broadly, becomes a doctrine of institutionalized coercion: social systems built on overriding the author of action “for their own good.” Monopraxialism doesn’t merely critique these practices; it exposes them as anti-action technologies: systems that parasitize the creative core they claim to manage.

At this point, Bitcoin becomes the apex ethical imperative. If money is the language of human action, then corrupting money causes human action to become corrupt as well. It scrambles economic coordination, it intensifies coercive central planning, and it turns long time horizons into ever-shortening attention spans.

In fact, the corruption of money puts civilization itself into performative contradiction. Mises’s crowning achievement, the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) says that boom–bust cycles are largely the result of artificial credit expansion (through central bank machinations) that pushes market interest rates below the level that would reflect people’s genuine time preferences (how much present goods are valued over future goods). When rates are suppressed, entrepreneurs interpret the cheap credit as a real signal that society has saved more and is willing to defer consumption, so they rationally undertake longer, more “roundabout” investment projects (housing booms, overexpansion in capital goods, speculative ventures). But because the lower rate wasn’t produced by an actual increase in savings (defined as goods produced but not yet consumed), the real resources (labor, materials, time) needed to complete all those projects aren’t actually available; the pattern of actions across the economy becomes internally inconsistent: consumers still demand present goods while producers simultaneously attempt a future-heavy structure of production.

This economy-wide performative contradiction eventually forces a correction—rising rates, squeezed margins, project failures, recessions, and depressions—revealing malinvestments and triggering the bust, which is the painful but necessary re-coordination of actions back toward real scarcity and real preferences. It’s “deduced” from the axiom of action because once you start from purposeful choice under scarcity through time, interest rates become a coordinating price for intertemporal plans; falsifying that price predictably miscoordinates millions of actions in the same direction, generating a systemic cycle rather than random errors.

By disrupting the central bank’s monopoly control over the money supply and interest rates, Bitcoin rids the world once and for all of this performative contradiction. By imparting radical epistemic humility, the axiom of action and its derivative theories are the closest thing to “a theory of everything” humans will ever have. Thus, Bitcoin and monopraxialism are perfectly aligned against the paradigm of coercive central planning. The relevance of Bitcoin to the forward progress of civilization can hardly be overstated.

Speaking of relevance takes my mind to Vervaeke’s work on relevance realization. In a world infinitely rich in information, how do we decide what is relevant to our actions? Given the infinitude of facts, it is not possible to scan through all of them and decide which are most relevant to act upon. But act we must, so somehow we make this decision in every moment of conscious existence. This seeming paradox of needing to know which facts to ignore without checking all the facts is at the heart of what Vervaeke calls relevance realization. You can’t define relevance by listing facts, because relevance is not a property sitting inside an object like a label. Relevance depends on an organism’s orientation: what it is trying to do, avoid, become, or preserve.

This all means relevance presupposes an aim, and an aim presupposes Misesian action. This is why purely verbal definitions always fall a little short. Words can describe a landscape, but they can’t generate the salience that snaps your attention to “this matters now.” Relevance is necessarily enacted. It’s discoverable only in doing.

This clicked with monopraxialism immediately: relevance is the cognitive face of action’s primacy. In a sense, relevance realization is how the world becomes a world-for-me: not a neutral inventory of objects, but a field of affordances, threats, opportunities, tools, and obstacles. Meaning emerges as an embodied fit between an agent and his arena of praxis: a fit that is necessarily action-oriented all the way down.

Vervaeke’s work also clarified a crucial distinction for me: there’s a difference between a theory of relevance realization and relevance-realization-as-such. To paraphrase Vervaeke: we should strive never to confuse properties of the theory with properties of the thing the theory is about. A theory is a map: it abstracts, labels, and explains. But the relevance we actually realize is the living process by which maps are made and used: the pre-intellectual illumination of what matters. This difference mirrors something I encountered in my own studies: the difference between action (the axiomatic category of Mises’s theory) and action-as-such (the ineffable and paradoxical first principle of reality). To designate a word for action-as-such is to reduce to words that which is irreducible to words. Nonetheless, I found it useful to have a word for that component of action that is inherently beyond categorization, and that makes all categorization possible in the first place. To this end, I coined the neologism axion (pronounced ak-SEE-on) for action-as-such (a combination of the words axiom and action, in homage to Mises). Like zero, God, and other such terms, axion is a “map” of that which cannot be mapped. The difference between Vervaeke’s theory of relevance realization and relevance-realization-as-such is the same as the difference between the axiom of action and axion.

The axiom of action is the truest statement anyone can make: the propositional crystallization of the universal fact that humans act. But axion points to the actuality of action before it becomes an axiomatic proposition. Axion is action-as-such: the irreducible happening that makes statements, knowledge, and justification possible in the first place. Think of axion as the part of the performative contradiction that “speaks” loudest: clearly, this “speech” is non-verbal, yet its importance to truth-value is supreme. In a similar vein, axion and relevance cannot be adequately defined in words, but their importance to all knowing and being is paramount.

The axiom of action is the closest we can come through literacy to the ontological ground. Axion is the ground’s dirt beneath our feet. And this is why monopraxialism naturally carries a flavor of radical epistemic humility: the most important truths cannot be enclosed in words. Some truths—like relevance and axion—are undefinable yet, at the same time, essential conditions of intelligibility. They are like seeing rather than saying, like walking rather than talking. Relevance realization and monopraxialism converge here: both insist that the deepest structure of knowing is not merely contemplative: it is enacted.

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The Way is in Training

“The Way is in training.”— Miyamoto Musashi, in The Book of Five Rings

Nature teaches us that all learning comes through training. This may sound like an overly generalized use of the word training, but according to the ancient samurai warrior-sage Miyamoto Musashi, training is the only path to mastery. Legendary for going undefeated in over 60 sword duels to the death throughout his life, Musashi taught that victory is, above all, a matter of relentless practice and self-discipline. In his masterpiece The Book of 5 Rings, he list his core principles which begin with “Do not think dishonestly” followed by “The Way is in training.” One is hard pressed to formulate a better two-step approach to success in any domain than these twin directives. By training one’s mind to sense the subtle distinctions between signal (information that helps you move toward your aim) and noise (information that doesn’t), one’s own intelligence is optimized. Intelligence here meaning one’s ability to error-correct in the pursuit of ends, so optimizing intelligence involves finding and clearing errors more efficiently. There are many paths to the top of the proverbial mountain: intelligence finds the best one. These twin directives are related because to think honestly is to pattern one’s mind after patterns in the real world. By putting one’s physical body through the crucible of countless iterations of practice for building any desired skill, one’s own being becomes entrained to the patterns deemed most useful by one’s honest thinking. Taken in combination, this pair of strategic principles is the path to working intelligently to pursue valued ends within the factual constraints of human nature.

“Nature never rushes, yet nothing is left undone.” This famous quote from ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu emphasizes the natural flow, effortless action, or wu wei that is attainable by putting Musashi’s principles into practice. By imitating the ways of nature, and entraining oneself to its rhythms, victory over opponent forces and the cultivation of virtue can be pursued with the best chances of success. The Way, of course, is in training, and what physics will show to be the same, in entrainment.

You likely already sensed the shared roots of the words training and entrainment. The traditional sense of the word training relates to the performance of ritualized movements to develop muscle memory, carve neural pathways, and in general to program oneself for the effortless performance of complex actions. For instance, a pianist in training will slowly, consciously, and repeatedly perform specific sequences of key strokes in preparation for a piano recital. But during the recital, the aim is to perform the same key stroke sequences quickly, unconsciously, and melodically. As the pianist knows, training is the only way to transform novel challenges into automatized skills. In other words, the pianist knows entraining himself to the songs he wishes to perform is the only way to achieve his goal. In physics, the concept of entrainment refers to the synchronization that naturally occurs between any two vibrational systems proximate to one another. Entrainment can be seen when a tuning fork of the right frequency is struck near another one of the same frequency, where the unstruck tuning fork begins to oscillate with the same frequency as the struck fork. Entrainment is also evident among women who spend time together and find that their menstrual cycles start to synchronize. Or with the heartbeats of lovers, which naturally come into synchrony as they sleep beside one another. It is evident in physiogamy, especially among fiat politicians after a few years in office, the facial degeneration of which attests to the fact that they sell their souls for stolen money. No matter what course of goal-directed action we choose for ourselves, the training we experience entrains our bodies, minds, and spirits to the actions we persistently perform. We are what we eat. We are the products of our environments. We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. These examples are training and entrainment in action. All of these choices are made in action, so choose your actions wisely.

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become deeds.
Watch your deeds, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes destiny.”—Lao Tzu

One does not learn to swim by reading a book. This is one aspect of Musashi’s focus on training, which emphasizes that true understanding—the intuitive, qualitative sense of any given situation—comes from iterative embodied practice, not just abstract theorizing. In other words, to understand a thing is to entrain oneself to that thing. To fall asleep you must first act as if (or pretend) that you’re asleep, and this is how everything works. To become a professional athlete you must intensify your training until you train like a professional athlete. To become a leader, you must practice leading people. Body, mind, and spirit are each dynamic processes that must be entrained to the patterns one seeks to incarnate. This is The Way of growth and learning, as there is no other.

Another aspect of Musashi’s phrase about training is the focus on process over product, or journey over destination. The Way is not a place at which one will ever arrive. Instead, it can only be emulated through a lifelong process of constant self-refinement through disciplined action. This emphasis on the dynamism of action over the stasis of conceptual categorization must be wholly accepted to most deeply understand self, world, and their relation. Since all categorical, formal, and propositional knowledge only approaches reality but never fully encompasses it, we must be ready to reform our theories when practice says so. “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is.” Herein lies the inestimable value of wisdom: the paradoxical knowledge of one’s own limits of knowledge. To act effectively in the world one must come to terms with the limited and provisional nature of all knowledge: the realization that it is always a map and never a territory.

“It’s not what people don’t know that hurts them, it’s what they think they know that just ain’t so.”

The territory of our experience is everywhere and always the indisputable fact of human action. Such knowledge is gained through the lived experience of self-reflection, or physical and mental actions. Knowledge is discovered through action, and its value is to improve the effectiveness of future actions. To quote Aristotle: “the purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.” As will be revealed in the course of this book, attempting to argue against the reality of action is equivalent to telling someone you are asleep: it is a performative contradiction. As always, your actions speak louder than you words. You can’t tell someone you are asleep, you can only be asleep, and to get there you must first act as if you are asleep. This is why talk is cheap, actions speak louder than words, and anyone who is all talk and no walk is all hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas.

Musashi’s focus on the action of training as the only pathway to improvement highlights the ancient principle of praxis. The word praxis comes from the Ancient Greek πρᾶξις (praxis), meaning “action, practice, doing,” derived from prássein (to do, to act). Praxis was central to ancient Greeks because it linked ethics with experience (virtue had to be embodied to be real), it was relational (virtue had to be exhibited in community), and it expressed freedom (action is intentional, moral, and guided by reason). The cultivation of virtue was the highest concern of ancient Greek philosophers. Yet, as will always be true, virtues in abstraction are only as valuable as the actions entrained to them. Sharing an etymological root with words such as practice, practical, and pragmatic, praxis was distinguished by Aristole as separate from theoria (θεωρία, contemplation: pure knowing — theoretical reflection on truth) and poiesis (ποίησις, making/production: bringing something into being, like art or craft.) Western Civilization was built through rigorous intellectual training (or, entrainment to useful ideas) and debate founded on Aristotle’s systematic treatment of praxis. Centuries later the work of Mises would expand this ancient conception of action to encompass both contemplation and production in his unified framework of praxeology: the study of human action. Mises defined action as the purposeful use of means to pursue valued ends. According to praxeology, the reflection of theoria and the production of poiesis are both encompassed by the primary category of action, as each is an activity generating means for the varied ends valued by actors (action-takers) across the world.

Although Mises’s axiom of action unified all conceptual categories into one, it paradoxically radicalizes our humility as to knowing what we can possibly know. For this reason, studying action deeply is prerequisite to the cultivation of wisdom. In acting according to the axiomaticity of action, profound epistemological humility is gained, and wisdom gleaned. In this sense, there is a radical relation between the axiom of action and The One which we will explore with an intense curiosity in this book.

Since all knowledge is founded on the fact that we are actors navigating the world with limited, mutable categorical structures in mind, we must accept that our knowledge, no matter how profound or sophisticated, will always be bounded and context-contingent. The etymology and definition of the word context are telling on this point. Etymologically, context is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root teks- which means “to weave” or “to fabricate.” As it pertains to mental action, context is defined as the parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage to clarify its meaning. And in the world of physical actions, context consists of the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood or assessed. The meaning of any action, mental or physical, is almost entirely dependent on context. But the scope of context itself is a matter of interpretation: what you consider contextually relevant to a situation may have zero bearing from my perspective. Context can never be “complete” in any meaningful sense. We each must decide where to draw the line for ourselves when evaluating any specific situation. Herein lies perhaps the most fundamental skill we must all develop through training: the ability to discern what is and what is not relevant to any given course of goal-directed action. Like context, relevance can never be fully known nor derived from an algorithm or formula, yet nature demands we act despite this constraint.

Human action most often occurs in social contexts. To survive infancy, each of us depended fully on care from others in a social setting, typically from our parents and direct relatives. The first relation of the infant to the caregiver is imitation. Thus, in infancy begins the socially contextualized process of building one’s own personality from pieces assembled through the imitation of others. As Aristotle wrote in his work Poetics: “Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation.” In Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, this primary mode of human relation receives its most thorough intellectual treatment. Girard anchors this innate human proclivity for imitation in the origin of mythology, religion, social institutions, the rule of law, and literary fiction. Considering what is now known about complex adaptive systems and their fundamentally vibrational nature, Girard’s thesis makes sense. Think of mimesis as mutual oscillation or entrainment occurring between actors acting in social contexts. In the same way two forks attuned to the same frequency will soon start to vibrate with the same rhythm, two actors in physical (or even social) proximity will soon start to act in similar ways. Seeing that social proximity has been significantly intensified through the advent of social media, it makes sense that we see tsunamis of imitation racing across the internet in the phenomenon now called “virality.” Since digital technologies have fundamentally altered social proximity and the means by which we broadcast social signals, the imitation game will never be the same. Of course, mimesis is not restricted to conscious human action: even fireflies synchronize their flashes, starlings murmurate in a coordinated fashion, and the applause of an audience naturally drifts toward unison over time. Monkey see, monkey do. Like mirror neurons, individuals aping one another is the primary social action of human beings. For humans: imitation is vibration, language is frequency, and labor is energy. The cultures, social constructs, and economies we build from these define the epochs of our existence. But no matter what age of mankind you are living in now, unbounded imitation is the social context we all act within, and natural language is the uniquely human game we all play.

Like all skills, natural language is acquired initially through imitation. We are drawn to try and act like those around us, especially those who we admire, or to those who inspire awe. The word train originates in the Latin trahere meaning “to pull” or “to draw.” This non-obvious Latin root underlies the description of every railcar, martial art, and act of apprenticeship. Training is the act of being drawn forward: toward a goal, a skill, a social role, a vocation, or an identity. Training also involves the drawing of lines: deciding what path of action to take at the exclusion of all others, setting boundaries in relationships, and establishing explicit protocols. After raw physical imitation, natural language acquisition is the most fundamental human training ground. The transference of natural language occurs as much through training as it does social entrainment. In the fact of the social interaction, there is little difference between training and entrainment. To train is not merely to exert effort to acquire a skill: it is to fall into resonance with a pattern outside oneself. Beyond learning at least one natural language, which is indispensable to being a modern human, helping you find the right patterns to fall into resonance with is central to the mission of this book, as is a deep-dive into the nature of language more broadly.

Returning our train of thought to the purpose of this book, you may be wondering why we are talking about such seemingly disparate fields as action, context, and mimesis? The simple answer is that these are some of the domains which have afforded your authors a deep understanding of the world and themselves. Our aim is to help you get on the right track to making money the right way, and this challenging aim requires us to plumb the philosophical depths together. As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Deep knowledge of self and other is paramount to the execution of any successful strategy. Without working to cultivate this knowing, your life will surely get off track, and may even become a train wreck. But by practicing an embodied philosophy centered on discipline and training, you can build yourself into a force to be reckoned with: into a person with the unstoppability of a runaway train. Without understanding the principles of nature in oneself and the world, you cannot move in harmony with others. To gain this understanding, you must be willing to entrain yourself to The Way.

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Energy, Frequency, and Vibration

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”—Nikola Tesla (possibly apocryphal)

Since the time of Einstein’s bold theoretical breakthroughs, the world has known that matter is convertible to energy. His famous equation E=mc^2 showed that a body’s energy (E) is proportional to its mass (m), with the square of the speed of light (c^2) as the factor of conversion between the two. Prior to this, scientific consensus was centered on the Newtonian model. Newton showed us a cosmos comprised billiard-ball-like particles that moved with clockwork-like precision and predictability. Whereas mass for Newton was static, Einstein revealed mass as frozen energy, and energy as plasmic mass. To invoke a monetary metaphor: matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, everything in the universe is reducible to pure energy.

Energy is defined by physics as the capacity to do work, or the potential to effect change. Energy is the universal currency of becoming: the account from which all phenomena are paid. It is the force behind every action, from the burning heat of a star’s surface to the metabolism animating every stargazing eye. Strangely, the accounting of energy always balances out to a perfect zero. The first law of thermodynamics teaches that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Instead, energy can only be transformed from one configuration to another. It is the hidden constant that underwrites all of reality. Energy renders stillness impossible and guarantees the endless unfolding of the cosmos. So far as we know, energy ensures change is the only thing that will never change.

Frequency is the bassline of reality as measured against a baseline. This is evident in many domains. As we all know, although history doesn’t repeat, it does rhyme. Stars, planets, and galaxies all move at certain beats of movement with one another in a grand, cosmic choreography. A power law scales the number of heartbeats of every organism such that each lifetime shares the same average number of heartbeats. Your chronological age is based on the frequency Earth orbits the sun. Atomic time is measured by frequency of electrons jumping between energy levels within atoms. Frequency is at the heart of all cycles of change, even the rhythmic beating of our own hearts. Frequency is the measure of repetition through time, the “heartbeat” of cycles from the cosmic down to the microscopic. It is how we turn qualities into quantities. Every wave, whether of light, sound, or probability, vibrates with a frequency that carries information. In this sense, frequency is the grammar of the universe: a structuring principle that generates patterns from change, enabling harmony, resonance, meaning, and communication.

Vibration is closely related to frequency. If frequency is the bassline, vibration is the lead singer. Everything vibrates in its own way. It is seen in the breathing of animals, the undulating surface of water, and the searing crackle of electricity. To vibrate is to exist, for stasis is death, illusion, or abstraction. Vibration is the dynamic interplay of opposites—inhalation and exhalation, compression and release, particle and wave—through which energy and frequency reveal themselves. It is the primordial movement that gives texture to the void, the cosmic shiver that whispers that all is alive, connected, and in flux. As beings of light inhabiting a universe of light, any given person or any given situation or any given time has a particular vibe. In the interweaving of people, situations, and times, contexts emerge and oscillate. Like the light which comprises all of the things they interweave, different contexts shimmer and vibrate in different ways.

Light is a spectrum of energy vibrating at varying frequencies. The speed of light is the rate at which pure energy moves in empty space. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. “Nature’s speed limit” either directly or indirectly defines all the primary units established by the International System of Units (SI):

These standardized units of measurement are foundational to all global commerce, the scientific enterprise, and our (limited) understanding of the nature of reality. These metrics are the second of time, the meter of extent, the kilogram of weight, degrees Kelvin of absolute temperature, the ampere of electrical current, the mole of molecular mass, the candela of luminosity. The indispensable role of universal units in global commerce is well understood. Businesses source components from other businesses all over the world. For these components to work properly with other components, these businesses rely on the immutability of standards of measurement. Similarly, without units of immutable constancy, the replicability of scientific experiments would be impaired, as would the capacity for recording and transmitting empirical data. Finally, all of our theories through which we interpret observational data also depend on the constancy of universal units. Like Einstein’s equations, these theories most often involve mathematically derived constants which have their roots in experimental confirmation. In this way, these standardized universal units of measurement drive all business, empiricism, and rationalism. Goods, services, and ideas are successfully exchanged across the world and across the ages by virtue of being erected on these immutable foundations. To revisit our music metaphor, standardized units form each baseline that defines any frequency.

Energy, frequency, and vibration is the triune (tri-unity) that comprises all that is known. The entire universe is the symphony of this triune: every perceivable and conceivable thing is encompassed by it. Energy drives and comprises the contents of all change, frequency is found in patterns of change, and vibration is the activity through which anything touches everything. On the canvas of this phantasmagoria our intellect inscribes its many lines, slicing and dicing the reality continuum into discrete, intelligible chunks. As is true for all words, even “energy, frequency, and vibration” are discrete data packets derived from this wholly interconnected “monster of energy!” Although each word carries its own energy, frequency, and vibration, they are still just maps to an underlying territory that cannot be contained by words. Reality is a terrain of infinite complexity and dynamism, yet paradoxically, it also exhibits an underlying unity and order. The language of complex dynamical systems theory is perhaps the best we’ve got to make sense of this infinitely colossal flux called reality.

Complex dynamical systems are all around us, and indeed, are us. Hurricanes, galaxies, social groups, and even individual persons are all examples of complex dynamical systems. According to systems theory, a system is any group of things related in any given way. This definition is so broad however, that it verges on vacuity. To distinguish a system like a hurricane from an aggregate like a pile of rocks, a caveat must be added. In a system, the properties of the parts depend on their contextual relation to the whole; in an aggregate they do not. Each of the millions or billions of stars orbiting a galactic core is effected by the gravity, electromagnetism, and orbital momentum of all the other stars. From moment to moment in the galactic rotation, the relations among these stars change, which in turn changes their individual properties (temperature, luminosity, velocity, etc.). This highly complex and recursive dynamic field of relations interweaving the stars spiraling within a galaxy is less applicable to a pile of rocks. Whether the rocks are aggregated into a pile or strewn about, their measurable properties remain relatively stable. Whole systems and their parts are context-sensitive, whereas whole aggregates and their parts are not. In this way, piles of rocks are aggregates, whereas galaxies are complex dynamical systems.

Interestingly, there are often points of emptiness or extreme stillness at the core of complex dynamical systems. Systems coalesce around and derive their structure, organization, and identity from these “vacuums” or “voids” at their center. In a Cartesian sense, we could think of these as the graphical origin (0,0) around which the probability space of each complex dynamical system is organized. For a galaxy it is the black hole at its core, for a hurricane this is the eye of the storm, and for the human psyche it is the elusive part of ourselves that we each call “I.” Even less traditional complex dynamical systems such as natural language and mathematics have God and zero at their cores, respectively. As Lao Tzu said: “We shape the clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that gives it its usefulness.” The interplay between the seeming stasis of these voids and the extreme dynamism of complex dynamical systems echoes a primary philosophical relation: that between the relative and the absolute.

The absolute never changes. The relative, on the other hand, is always changing. Absolute and relative are widely understood as opposite philosophical poles. In truth, the absolute is of a higher dimension than the relative, so the actual opposite of relative is non-relational. Since everything knowable is relational, non-relationality is nearly an impossible concept to fathom. Let’s look at the dimensionality relation in an example to try and fathom non-relationality. Imagine a 3-dimensional sphere passing through a 2-dimensional sheet of paper. If the entire universe were confined to that sheet of paper, then all that was relative would be defined by traditional X,Y axes (two dimensions), and the absolute would be everything outside that sheet of paper (the higher dimensions). From our higher, 3-dimensional perspective, the sphere would move along the Z axis to pass through the sheet of paper universe. From the perspective of the sheet of paper universe, the sphere would come from and return to “no place.” Since this “place” doesn’t exist from the perspective of the “sheet of paper universe,” it is “no place.” Since it is “no place,” it has no relation to anything in the 2-dimensional universe from any perspective within that universe. Since nothing is always the same thing—the complete absence of something—then nothing never changes. In other words, nothing is the absolute. In this example, nothing is not the absence of something, because we have a higher dimensional viewpoint on the matter. But from the perspective of the paper universe, everything that is not on its bounded X,Y coordinate plane is no-thing, or nothing. We can see how the absolute in this example, which is all the surrounding space of the paper universe, is not opposite to the relativity of its X,Y coordinate system. Instead, the absolute underlies and makes possible all relations within the X,Y coordinate system. In this way, the absolute is not opposite to the relative, but is instead properly understood as the source from which it emerges, of which it is a mere image, toward which it moves, and to which it returns. These movements reflect the fourfold path of consciousness contained in the sacred syllable AUM: which follow the sequence of creation, preservation, dissolution, and silence. AUM emblematizes the (relative) everything that comes from (absolute) nothing. The true relation between the relative and the absolute is one of dimension rather than opposition. The absolute is the underlying (or overarching, depending on your metaphorical orientation) principle of unity in any given system. In the language of Plato and his followers, the absolute is The One.

All things are one, yet also many. Neoplatonism refers to this inexorable interconnection of all things as The One. The role of context in complex dynamical systems also emphasizes the way everything is effected by everything else. Etymologically, the word context is associated with the act of weaving, as in the production of a fabric or a textile. No matter how much context one frames for any given system, there is always more context outside the frame to be considered. And context is not merely subjective. In physics, Ernst Mach’s “principle” shows that “shaping the conditions at any point on earth are unfathomable forces across the entire universe summed at any particular point.” The same is true for market economies across the world, where each price point expresses an executed trade between a willing buyer and a willing seller, actions that are in turn influenced by the worldwide fabric of other such actions. It is in this reciprocal process of price discovery that the minds of market actors across the world are brought into unity. Prices are the “units” that bring markets into “unity”: the data points which weave the context guiding the actions of all market actors globally. To describe the world as a complex adaptative system, we might say: human action vibrates, prices codify this vibration into frequencies, and labor energy is expended according to these codified signals. This is the reciprocal revelation unfolding in every market process. Prices, expressed through the language of money, are the means by which human actions are brought into productive harmony.

Although this is a good description of the world, it all sounds quiet abstract and theoretical. To truly understand how the world works, we must move into an embodied relation with it. Ritualized training is the means by which we entrain ourselves to productive patterns of action, which brings us to our next quote…

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The Map is Not the Territory

“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”—Alfred Korzybski’s 1931 paper A Non-Aristotelian System and its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics

Maps offer a fascinating metaphor for the purpose of symbols. The word symbol, as it is used here, does not refer to religious symbols, but rather standardized markings that are widely understood to stand for something else. As a tool, maps rely on symbols to be useful. Maps may include a variety of symbols including the cardinal directions, lines of latitude or longitude, or perhaps polar coordinates. Originally hand written, maps classically were a collection of symbols useful for real world navigation. As a metaphor, symbols are maps to territories of varying kinds. Again, the word “symbols” here is used in the semantic sense: meaning, in relation to the way symbols refer to things in the real world. Metaphoric maps (symbols) and their respective territories (referents) are paired together in many different ways: such as menus to food, words to ideas, and money to wealth. Respectively, each is a map paired with its territory, or a symbol with its referent.

A symbol, in the semantic sense, is designed to refer to something beyond itself. Words, mathematical notation, diagrams, money—all operate as maps of something they are not. They’re valuable not because they are the thing, but because they point to the thing. Of course, “point to” in this sentence is metaphorical, as symbols cannot perform actions. What we mean is that symbols index to, or stand in for, referents. Again, this “standing in” is metaphorical, but as we will see, nothing that can be said is non-metaphorical. Symbols are a data-compressed versions of the things they symbolize, useful for thinking, communicating, and recordkeeping. Since we each experience the world through our own senses, and there’s no way to transmit this raw data across time or space, we must instead make use of symbols to encode aspects of our experiences for transmission to other minds across time and space. By compressing the natural complexity of the world into an orderly form, symbols are indispensable to human cognition, interaction, and social harmony.

However, a symbol is limited: it can never be the thing it represents. Metaphorically, we may echo Korzybski by plainly stating: the map is not the territory. Many people seem to live their lives unaware of this unbridgeable gulf between map and territory. The symbol and the referent can only touch in our agreements as to where they touch. Indeed, social agreement is the metaphoric touchstone of all symbols. The meaning conveyed by symbol-systems or languages is the alignment of minds confirmed by the coherence of their actions. When I say the word “dog” and you know that I am referring to the four-legged fury animal on the leash, then our minds are aligned and this word can coordinate our actions (ie. watch the dog while I grab his food). In other words, symbols are derivatives of our physical movements, meaning they reflect these movements, but are not identical. As this book will show, this derivation is true even for the loftiest of abstractions when their genealogy is traced far enough. At source, it will be seen that all abstraction (the map) originates in action (the territory). And although to abstract is itself a mental action, for our purposes it is useful to distinguish mental action from physical action.

In the gulf between the map and the territory the philosophical stakes are high. The symbol (the map) is indispensable because without it communication breaks down and our actions (the territory) cannot be coordinated effectively. Without maps, we are also limited in our ability to store and transmit knowledge. This is disruptive to the effectiveness of action, for as Aristotle said “the purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.” At the same time, any given map necessarily excludes many—or perhaps even most—aspects of its respective territory. So there are strict ontological (reality-based) limits on the reliability of maps. Here, extreme danger lurks. Those who foolheartedly believe that the map can be the territory think that their models of reality can override reality. Such fools buy into the idea of totalized knowledge: a set of symbols that contain reality in its totality. This is the intellectual hubris at the dark heart of totalitarian ideologies. So although we cannot dispense with the map, to mistake it for the territory can cause extreme human suffering.

Many brilliant thinkers have weighed in on this matter. As Ayn Rand said: “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” In other words, you are free to falsify your own map or altogether ignore the territory, but the consequences of any such ignorant act cannot be ignored. Said simply: you are free to believe flapping your arms will make you fly, but you are not free to ignore the consequences of jumping off a skyscraper while flapping your arms and hoping to fly. Or as Carl Jung wrote “Evil is that which prefers being to becoming.” For Jung, blind faith in a fixed, final, and totalized state (being) is the refusal of growth, dynamism, and freedom (becoming). In short: evil insists the map is more real than the territory. Tyrants across history proved the malevolence of such totalitarian tendencies. With unwavering conviction in totalized knowledge, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot ruled with iron fists, and decimated human lives in the process. Using a non-map metaphor to reemphasize the point: evil is the force that believes its knowledge is complete. This sentiment echoes the words of Nikolia Berdyaev, who wrote: “The root of evil is the aspiration to absolute perfection and to the absolute good, because it means the denial of freedom.” In this sense, the perfect map is antithetical to freedom, and freedom is essential to all human action. When someone believes their ideas are supreme, they will justify coercive means to make sure others live in accordance with them.

Every map is made up of lines and bounded by lines. These are the boundary conditions within each map, and between each map and the world. The metaphor of the map and the territory invites us to ask one of the most profound and important philosophical questions there is: where do you draw the line? Ultimately, this is a question we must continuously answer throughout our lives, both individually and collectively. This line of philosophical inquiry will take us on a winding path through areas such as literacy, numeracy, concept mapping, empiricism, ethics, politics, economics, and art. Establishing these metaphoric lines on and between our metaphoric maps is essential to intelligence. Learning to “read between the lines” is directly connected to the etymological origin of intelligence as “inter-ledger.” In this relational sense of the word, intelligence is the capacity to see between, beneath, and beyond the lines of the map into the actual territories they depict. In an action-centric sense, to be an intelligent actor is to be capable of goal-seeking, correcting errors along the way, and reserving the ability to change courses whenever necessary. There are many paths to the top of the mountain, yet the destination is only one.

Finally, the metaphor of the territory invites us to ask a profound question: what is the most fundamental territory in all of reality? In other words, where can we find ontological ground: the bedrock of reality itself? Pursuing this question will lead us into the idea of reciprogenesis. Reality is a mystery that reveals itself to us, just as we reveal ourselves to reality through action. The mystery of reality is manifest in self, other, and the world. Through technique and technology, we can generate revelations of reality that would not be otherwise possible. In the ground-stuff of reality we will encounter the essence of pure relationality: an ontology absent of all substance. Here we will encounter an etymologically accurate depiction of the universe as “one song.” The idea of music carries us into our next section based on a Tesla’s apocryphal quote about energy, frequency, and vibration.

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“What is money?

Money is what we save, unlike food, a house, or a car, which are things we consume.

We invented money so we can save our time, energy, and labor and later exchange it for things we need.

That’s why it must be scarce and trustless. That’s why Bitcoin wins.”

— Jack Mallers

"Money is not the valuable thing itself. Money is the thing you exchange for the valuable thing itself. The reason bananas are not good money is because bananas are the value you're trying to get. Money is the thing you exchange for bananas that has no value in itself. It is simply a symbol, an abstraction. It represents something that can be carried, that I can give to someone tomorrow, and they will probably give me bananas. That future promise of value is the essence of money. So the essence of money is the ability to have an abstract token that in itself is immutable, unforgeable, eternal, maintains its value, and represents the exchange of value in the future as a promise."

— Andreas Antonopoulos

Money is not a social construct.

To paraphrase an example from Saifedean Ammous: If we all agreed that bananas could get us to the moon, would they actually get us there? Someone could climb up on a roof, grab a banana, and jump off believing it would take them to the moon, and what would happen? They’d jump off and die. And then we’d all learn, despite our sincere belief, that bananas aren’t good at getting us to the moon.

If you use the wrong tool for the job, you’re going to get hurt. Money is no different.

This Week:

WiM618 with Sevilla King

"We’ve been hypnotized into believing that being wealthy is the ultimate goal. But there are things far more valuable than that. Money is a practical tool—we need it in the society we live in—and it’s a high-quality system of value, condensing labor into a token. That doesn’t mean you discard it, but you have to put it in perspective and not forget what real quality is. Efficiency and profit don’t necessarily equal a quality life. Practices like meditation, or simply remembering what true quality means, matter more. Deep down, people know this, yet we’ve been conditioned to believe that money is the highest value, while technology races out of control."

How to Live a Quality Life – The Metaphysics of Quality

WiM619 with Matt Prusak

"America has an operating system. Bitcoin has code in some ways that’s very similar. Over the past 200 plus years, there have been some glitches in the code, or some bugs discovered in the code. When you have glitchy code, you can do one of two things: you can either fork it or you can patch it. I come from the train of thought that we should patch it as an operating system, because it’s served us very well. I think it will continue to do so in the future, but it could probably be patched to serve the American citizen even better than it has for the past 200 years. So, as I think about what these bugs in the American code are, the first is fiscal decay. You have a central bank that is conjuring trillions of dollars out of thin air."

Trump Family Bitcoin Bet Will Trigger Nation-State FOMO

WiM620 with Graham Krizek

“A layer 2 on Bitcoin, whether it’s a peer-to-peer network or an additional blockchain, is a mechanism that is made to help scale the Bitcoin blockchain. When you think about Bitcoin Layer 1, there are some things that are natural trade-offs to keep the security of the network. It has to, by nature, be a little bit more expensive to transact because you have to pay the miners to validate the transactions and produce blocks. You also have to have the slower block creation time to keep the security of the network. So with those things, it naturally can be expensive and slow to transact. That's one of the biggest gripes that people have about Bitcoin: ‘Oh, it's slow and expensive.’ Well, that's what a Layer 2 is made to do — to make it cheaper, faster, easier to transact, and more real time. And that's what the Lightning Network is made to do.”

The full episode with Graham Krizek will go live today, 9/5/25 at 3pm EST.

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Next Week:

9/8 with Brian De Mint

Brian De Mint, author of “Bitcoin Evangelism”, was the Chief Marketing Officer for Atheneum Blockchain for 3 years and resigned in 2021 in order to focus more on Bitcoin education.

9/10 with Zuby

Zuby is an independent rapper, author, podcast host, public speaker and creative entrepreneur.

9/12 with Jesse Shrader

Jesse Shrader is Co-Founder and CEO of Amboss, leading provider of Bitcoin Lightning Network data and insights.

Sponsors:

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Products I Endorse:

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the Bitcoin community losing a true legend: Hal Finney.

Some of Hal’s many accomplishments include:

• First person (other than Satoshi himself) to run the Bitcoin software.

• Recipient of the very first Bitcoin transaction.

• Core cypherpunk, helping develop foundational privacy tools like PGP.

• Creator of the first reusable proof-of-work (RPoW) system.

“The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them.”

In November 1992, long before Satoshi appeared, Hal Finney shared this line with a cryptography mailing list, seventeen years before he would receive the first Bitcoin transaction.

“Running bitcoin.”

Two words that became legendary. Hal tweeted this on January 11, 2009, becoming the second person behind Satoshi to run the Bitcoin software.

“Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea. I like the idea of basing security on the assumption that the CPU power of honest participants outweighs that of the attacker.”

Hal was a brilliant engineer. He saw the genius of proof-of-work not as abstract math, but as an incentive system grounded in physical reality. Bitcoin’s security wasn’t theoretical, it was computational, measurable, and real.

“Bitcoin has a couple of things going for it: One is that it is distributed, with no single point of failure, no ‘mint,’ no company with offices that can be subpoenaed and arrested and shut down.”

No CEO. No offices. No levers of coercion. A system resilient not by law, but by design.

“The computational power of the network is proportional to difficulty; and it appears that difficulty is proportional to bitcoin price. It follows that unless bitcoins become substantially more valuable than they are today, the Bitcoin network will never be substantially more resistant to attack than it is today. For Bitcoin to succeed and become secure, bitcoins must become vastly more expensive.”

Hal drew a clear link between Bitcoin’s price, its computational strength, and the level of protection it provides. The harder it is to mine blocks, the more expensive it becomes to attack the network. For security to grow, the price must rise. When it does, more miners are incentivized to join, adding computing power and driving difficulty higher in a self-reinforcing cycle.

“I see Bitcoin as ultimately becoming a reserve currency for banks, playing much the same role as gold did in the early days of banking. Banks could issue digital cash with greater anonymity and lighter weight, more efficient transactions.”

One of Hal’s boldest predictions, seemingly foreshadowing the rise of Bitcoin treasury companies like MicroStrategy.

“I see Bitcoin as ultimately becoming a reserve currency for banks, playing much the same role as gold did in the early days of banking. Banks could issue digital cash with greater anonymity and lighter weight, more efficient transactions.”

Hal Finney passed away on August 28th, 2014, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

He was diagnosed in 2009, not long after corresponding with Satoshi and running one of the first Bitcoin nodes. Despite losing the ability to move and eventually to speak, Hal continued working on Bitcoin, writing emails with the help of eye-tracking software.

Hal lived the cypherpunk ethos. He believed in using code, not politics, to defend human freedom. Hal is gone, but his conviction remains: technology can either enslave us or set us free.

It is on us to build technology that makes humanity more free and more prosperous.

This Week:

WiM616 with Scott Dedels

“Fiat is really an equation to the theft of your time. If you've spent your own personal time accumulating money and that money is then devalued, it's not a victimless crime. It's a transfer of energy. We make so many decisions with this understanding that you have to kind of do something with your money now. And life is already hard enough and goes fast enough without having the added pressure of having to store that time and energy in something that melts.”

Your Time is Being Stolen — Bitcoin Fixes This

WiM617 with Michelle Weekley

“The WEF represents what they believe to be the right agenda for a global agenda. They believe in a one-world government driven by globalism, where individualism is criminalized—even nationalism is criminalized, or worse. And so they really run things themselves, for themselves, and then we’re just peasants.”

The full episode with Michelle Weekley will go live today 8/29/25 at 3pm EST.

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Thanks for reading The Freedom Analects! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

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Next Week:

9/1 with Sevilla King

Sevilla King is a psychodynamic psychotherapist with a deep appreciation for spirituality and Jungian principles.

9/3 with Matt Prusak

Matt Prusak is the CEO of American Bitcoin, a Bitcoin mining company backed by Eric and Donald Trump Jr.

9/5 with Graham Krizek

Graham Krizek is the Founder and CEO of Voltage, a leading Lightning Network payment provider.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

• Panic, Then Opportunity (1907)
  Wall Street melts down, J.P. Morgan personally orchestrates a rescue. D.C. decides: “never again, let’s formalize the lender of last resort.” Congress passes Aldrich‑Vreeland (1908) and sets up the National Monetary Commission (NMC) to design a new system.

  J.P. Morgan, The Panic of 1907, & The Federal Reserve Act

• Jekyll Island (1910)
  Sen. Nelson Aldrich (NMC chair), Paul Warburg (Kuhn Loeb), Frank Vanderlip (National City/Rockefeller orbit), Henry Davison (J.P. Morgan partner), A. Piatt Andrew, and Arthur Shelton meet in Jekyll Island, Georgia, under cover of hunting season and with fake names to draft a central‑bank plan. They won’t admit it happened until the 1930s. Vanderlip openly recalled he was “as secretive—indeed, as furtive—as any conspirator” about that meeting.

  The Meeting at Jekyll Island

• The Aldrich Plan (1911)
  This proposal (National Reserve Association) concentrated power among big banks (a banking cartel).

  Aldrich, Nelson (1911), Entry 168, Box 11, Folder 1

• The Creation of the Federal Reserve (Dec 23, 1913)
  The Senate approves 43–25; President Wilson signs that evening. America gets a central bank two days before Christmas.

  The Senate Passes the Federal Reserve Act

Stop using money another man can print. Study Bitcoin.

For more on this topic, watch my conversation with Chris Sullivan from Jekyll Island:
Bitcoin vs. The Federal Reserve with Chris Sullivan from Jekyll Island (WiM537) and my interview with G. Edward Griffin, the author of “The Creature from Jekyll Island”

This Week:

WiM614 with Gary Lee Mahmoud

“Bitcoin encourages low time preference behavior. You’re thinking, I’m not trying to get over on my neighbor and win a quick deal from him at the expense of my integrity. That is the world I want to live in. I want to live in a world where you are rewarded not for being close to a bank or a politician, but for your work and your innovation.”

Bitcoin vs War, Violence, & Corruption w/ Gary Lee Mahmoud

WiM615 with Rich Rines

"I think we'll get to a point where Bitcoin is really the only asset used for store of value… Whenever that shift takes place, that's when central banking as we know it really collapses, because your marginal interest for a dollar will be so much less than your marginal interest for Bitcoin. Is that at a million dollars a coin? Ten million dollars a coin? I have no idea exactly where it is on that curve. But I think central banks will end up having to issue against Bitcoin in the intermediate term, and then it's just Bitcoin-based afterwards."

The full episode with Rich Rines will go live today 8/22/25 at 3pm EST.

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Thanks for reading The Freedom Analects! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribe or the YouTube Clips Channel for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

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Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

8/26 with Scott Dedels

Scott Dedels is the co-founder and co-CEO of Block Rewards, the host of The Block Reward Podcast, and the author of “The Dao of Bitcoin.”

8/29 with Michelle Weekly

Michelle is product director at Byte Federal and a global speaker with a background in computer science, startups, policy, and international finance.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

March 5, 2018: "The likelihood of Bitcoin prices falling to $100 is greater than that of the digital currency trading at $100,000 a decade from now, Harvard University professor and economist Kenneth Rogoff said on Tuesday. “I think bitcoin will be worth a tiny fraction of what it is now if we're headed out 10 years from now ... I would see $100 as being a lot more likely than $100,000 ten years from now."

August 9th, 2025: “Harvard Management Company made substantial new investments in exchange-traded funds tracking the value of gold and Bitcoin during the second quarter of 2025, marking a sharp shift in its directly held public equities portfolio after it backed out of many Big Tech positions last quarter.

The endowment purchased 1.9 million shares of iShares Bitcoin Trust, valued at $116.7 million, and 333,000 shares of SPDR Gold Trust, valued at $101.5 million, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.”

It’s tempting, as Bitcoiners, to laugh at those who don’t get it. To poke fun at those who were too arrogant to consider someone without a PhD after their name might know something they don’t.

I don’t want to do that.

Bitcoin meets you with open arms when you are ready for it.

People change their minds when the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of changing.

“Bitcoin is on a need‑to‑know basis. You have to need to know about it, before you’ll open your mind to it.”

— Michael Saylor

It’s not just Harvard. Pensions, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds are coming to the same conclusion: adopting Bitcoin is not an option.

"Bitcoin will be adopted like gunpowder. If you don't own it, you'll be its victim."

— Saifedean Ammous

The old playbook for long term capital preservation is finished. Those holding portfolios of bonds, commercial real estate, and stock indexes are victims. The 60/40 portfolio is dead. Bonds have posted five straight years of losses, commercial real estate in some markets is already marked down 80-90%, and the S&P 500 still hasn’t recovered from the Dot-Com Bubble when priced in gold. The “safe” assets that once funded pensions, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds are bleeding out.

Harvard was not ready in 2018. That’s okay.

Many of us missed Bitcoin the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 100th time we heard about it.

Bitcoin does not hold grudges. It does not care if you laughed at it in 2018, ignored it in 2020, or called it dead in 2022. Block after block, it offers the same deal it always has: a fixed supply of 21 million and an uncensorable monetary network that works for anyone, anywhere, anytime.

So welcome, Harvard. Like everyone else, you got Bitcoin at the price you deserve.

This Week:

WiM611 with Dr. Ahmad Ammous

A lot of people try and philosophize what's the problem with healthcare—why are hospital networks not efficient? Why are doctors so burnt out? The fundamental issue is that whatever you're doing is not helping people get better. A patient cured is a customer lost. And you are not helping people get better. So that's why the system is so overworked. That's why the system is so overburdened.

What Doctors Won’t Tell You About Seed Oils, EMF, Blue Light, & SSRI's w/ Dr. Ahmad Ammous

WiM612 with Samson Mow

If you look at all the warning signs, they’re there for anyone to see, plain as day. There is infinite money now. Someone from the Federal Reserve said that in a clip before, but it’s true today, and you’re seeing signs of it. Bitcoin treasury companies like Strategy are borrowing at 0%, effectively tapping into the infinite money out there and converting it to Bitcoin.

When $1,000,000 Bitcoin? w/ Samson Mow

WiM613 with David Branscum

The full episode with David Branscum will go live tomorrow 8/16/25 at 3pm EST.

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Subscribe or the YouTube Clips Channel for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

8/19 with Gary Mahmoud

Gary Lee Mahmoud is an educator at Bitcoin Mentor, actor, and formerly worked in Congress.

8/22 with Rich Rines

Rich Rines is an initial contributor at Core and previously led money movements at Coinbase. He left Coinbase to focus on Core, recognizing its potential and alignment with his startup-driven mindset. Rich is also the CEO of Element Wallet, a consumer app for stablecoins and encrypted messaging.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Orange Pill App: https://www.orangepillapp.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

The first recorded ‘obituary’ was released in the Underground Economist on October 15th, 2010 titled “Why Bitcoin Can’t Be A Currency.”

Bitcoin was trading at $0.11. A $1,000 investment on this date would be worth $1,059,672,727 today.

June 20th, 2011 Forbes published “So, That’s the End of Bitcoin Then”

“Bitcoins aren't secure, as both the recent theft and this password problem show. They're not liquid, nor a store of value, as the price collapse shows and if they're none of those things then they'll not be a great medium of exchange either as who would want to accept them? … It's difficult to see what the currency has going for it.”

Bitcoin Price: $17.51

April 11th, 2013, Slate released “Fool’s Gold”

“Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme—the Internet’s favorite currency will collapse. Bitcoin is a fantasy. The Internet’s currency—a secure, private, decentralized type of money that makes possible anonymous and virtually costless transactions across borders—contains the seeds of its own destruction. More than anything else, it resembles a Ponzi scheme—and the wild claims made on its behalf reveal a great deal about a libertarian strain of thinking with deep roots in the American psyche.

Yet history shows that private currencies always end in tears; if central banks sometimes abuse the trust we place in them, the alternatives are worse.”

Bitcoin Price: $124.90

March 23, 2014, Vice published “Bitcoin is Dead — Long Live Bitcoin”

“When you invest your money in virtual currency, don’t be surprised when it virtually disappears. Or reappears, for that matter.

Bitcoin was born out of this distrust of institutions. Instead of allowing governments, central bankers, and financial institutions to control currency, Satoshi Nakamoto — there is still no consensus on who he actually is, or if he’s even a single person — built a system that allowed financial transactions to be guaranteed and tracked by a distributed network of computers solving complex math problems.”

Bitcoin Price: $561.35

February 15th, 2015 Whistling in the Wind published “The End of Bitcoin”

“Bitcoiners love to point to Bitcoin Obituaries as if to point out Bitcoins resilience. “Look, at all the people who claimed bitcoin is dead, how wrong were they!” However, if you actually look at the website, it’s clear that few articles actually claim bitcoin is dead, rather they say it is dying (which it is) or that it will never take off and be a widely used currency (which it hasn’t). Far better would be to look at a compilation of outrageous claims of $1,000+ bitcoins and the hyperinflationary collapse of fiat currencies.

You could fill a book with the flaws of Bitcoin and why it will never take off. Its had its 15 minutes of fame and now everyone has moved on. The community is shrinking and growing more desperate in its attempts to pretend everything is fine. Currencies rely heavily on network effects to survive, if no one else uses one then there’s no sense in you using it. The Bitcoin network is fading away and the price is destined to continue its downward march. This is likely to be the last year people take Bitcoin seriously (if last year wasn’t already). Whether Bitcoin disappears with a bang or a whimper, the end is coming.”

Bitcoin Price: $216.77

February 21st, 2016 The Street published: “Bitcoin is Dead, Long Live the Blockchain”

“Do not confuse Ethereum with Bitcoin. Bitcoin was never a viable blockchain platform for commerce. Ethereum is… Ethereum is a disruptive technology far greater than the Internet, itself. It will bring the dark web into the light and provide a platform for disintermediation that is almost unfathomable, today.”

Bitcoin Price: $438.99

October 13, 2017 CNBC published: “Jamie Dimon says if you’re ‘stupid’ enough to buy bitcoin, you’ll pay the price one day”

“If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day,” Dimon said in response to a moderator question at an Institute of International Finance conference Friday.

The CEO said he could care less about what bitcoin trades at. “The only value of bitcoin is what the other guy’ll pay for it,” Dimon said. “Honestly I think there’s a good chance of the buyers out there are out there jazzing it up every day so that maybe you’ll buy it too, and take them out.”

Bitcoin hit a record high Friday above $5,800, up more than six times in price for the year.

On Thursday, Dimon said during a post-earnings conference call with media that he’s “not going to talk about bitcoin anymore.” The executive called bitcoin a “fraud” in September and said it “won’t end well.”

Bitcoin Price: $5,640.13

December 21, 2017 RT Business published: “Bitcoin heading to $0.00 & many will lose everything when bubble pops – warns investor Peter Schiff”

“Bitcoin is a massive speculative bubble that will implode, and people who are buying it now will be left holding the bag, according to economist Peter Schiff, best known for predicting the 2008 financial crash.

“These currencies are going to trade to zero or pretty close to it when the bubble pops," predicts Schiff. "Right now, the only reason why people are buying bitcoin is because the price is going up. When it turns around, they are not going to sell it for the same reason.

There is no value in bitcoin, you can’t use it as money," Schiff points out. "It’s too slow, too expensive and too vulnerable.”

Bitcoin Price: $15,561.05

November 21, 2018 Bloomberg published: “Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett Have the Last Laugh on Bitcoin”

“This is a long-term unraveling of all of the lies, exaggeration and populist fantasies that drove last year’s market mania.

Bitcoin was meant to make all of its investors rich, something that held particular appeal to a millennial generation hungry for a financial boost in a world of crushing student debt, income inequality and low-quality jobs. It was meant to be free of Wall Street’s corruption and the U.S. government’s meddling technocrats. It was meant to be secure, with a price that would go ever higher. For the hardcore evangelists, it would reward its acolytes when the inevitable financial apocalypse arrived. The dollar was destined for scrap.

Unsurprisingly, none of this has come to pass. The Bitcoin bubble of 2017 — mercifully short and economically contained — has enriched only insiders such as mining companies and crypto-exchanges, and the early birds and tech elites who cashed in at the right time.”

Bitcoin Price: $4,574.36

February 25th, 2019 CNBC published: “Warren Buffett says bitcoin is a ‘delusion’ and ‘attracts charlatans’”

“Bitcoin has no unique value at all,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in a “Squawk Box” interview Monday. “It is a delusion, basically.”

The Berkshire Hathaway CEO said he is sympathetic to optimists who bought the world’s largest cryptocurrency in hopes that “it would change their lives.” Bitcoin has lost more than 80 percent of its value since reaching a high near $20,000 at the end of 2017. The cryptocurrency was trading near $3,781 on Monday, according to CoinDesk.

“It attracts charlatans,” Buffett said. “If you do something phony by going out and selling yo-yos or something, there’s no money in it — but when you get into Wall Street, there’s huge money.”

Buffett has been a long-time critic of cryptocurrency. He called bitcoin “probably rat poison squared,” ahead of the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting. A “mirage,” “not a currency,” and “tulips” are among the descriptors Buffett has used for bitcoin, according to CNBC’s Warren Buffett Archive.

Bitcoin Price: $3,852.16

December 20th, 2020 The Motley Fool published: “Here's Why I Won't Buy Bitcoin, and You Shouldn't, Either”

“The problem is that bitcoin lacks genuine scarcity. Its perceived cap of 21 million tokens exists because of computer code. Last I checked, code can always be erased and rewritten. While it's unlikely that a community consensus would be reached to increase the circulating supply of bitcoin, the possibility of this happening isn't zero.

By comparison, a precious metal like gold has a hard supply limit. We can't use alchemy to make more gold. The only gold that's available is what's been mined or is still underground. When the only parameter of scarcity is written computer code, that's not true scarcity.”

Bitcoin Price: $23,459.00

May 1st, 2021 CNBC published: “Charlie Munger calls bitcoin ‘disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization’”

“Of course I hate the bitcoin success,” the 97-year-old Munger said during a Q&A session at Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting Saturday. “I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth, nor do I like just shuffling out of your extra billions of billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air.”

“I think I should say modestly that the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.”

Bitcoin Price: $57,836.01

June 18th, 2022:

Bitcoin Price: $18,948.80

Watch my debate with Peter Schiff here: Bitcoin vs Gold DEBATE 2024: Peter Schiff vs Robert Breedlove (WiM532)

The final tally…

According to this database, Bitcoin has died 431 times.

If you invested $100 each time one of these was published, you'd have $121,787,113.

Check out all the Bitcoin obituaries over the years for yourself: Bitcoin Is Dead

This Week:

WiM609 with Brandon Keys

“The amount of buying we’re seeing, the amount of Bitcoin getting taken off exchanges… I think the possibility of a supply shock or a supply squeeze is definitely coming about. A lot of people think the bigger the asset gets, it’s a slower grind. I don’t think so—we’ve never seen anything like Bitcoin ever in our lifetime."

Green Candles Incoming? Bitcoin Corporate and Nation State Adoption w/ Brandon Keys

WiM610 with Greg O'Gallagher

"Creating an amazing physique is actually quite simple. There’s a few different levers you need. You need to be lean and you need to be strong. And so the goal is to get strong on key lifts. And training non-stop—training five, six days a week, doing tons of sets, tons of volume—is counterproductive. It’s a net negative."

The full episode with Greg O'Gallagher will go live today 8/8/25 at 3pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

Subscribe or the YouTube Clips Channel for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

8/11 with Dr. Ahmad Ammous

Dr. Ahmad Ammous helps people optimize their health using trusted traditional healing methods in combination with the most scientifically advanced modern therapeutics.

8/13 with Samson Mow

Samson Mow is the CEO of JAN3, a Bitcoin technology company focused on accelerating hyperbitcoinization. Previously, he served as the Chief Strategy Officer at Blockstream and founded the game development company Pixelmatic.

8/15 with David Branscum

David Branscum is an energy-efficient data center operations specialist and the Chief Technology Officer at Scout Energy.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Orange Pill App: https://www.orangepillapp.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

“A weak dollar makes you a hell of a lot more money… When you have a strong dollar, you can’t sell anything… Between Japan and China, all they want to do is have a weak currency. That’s how they’ve really dominated over the years.” — President Donald Trump

We are living through a monetary regime change.

The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency. As the reserve currency, the US must run deficits to supply the world with dollars because much of global trade (oil, commodities, debt settlements) happens in dollars. As a result, there’s constant global demand for dollars. This demand gives the dollar artificial strength. A strong dollar discourages domestic production. It makes American labor too expensive, offshores jobs, and hollows out the middle class.

For example:

1. China runs a trade surplus by selling goods to the U.S.

2. China receives U.S. dollars in return

3. Those dollars can’t be spent in China, so they buy U.S. stocks, real estate, land, and bonds

4. American asset prices soar. Wages don’t keep up. Wealth concentrates.

Global capital flows drive up asset prices for those in Silicon Valley and Wall St, and everyone else is left with fewer jobs, higher prices, and a decaying social fabric.

• Manufacturing? Hollowed out.

• Middle Class? Gutted.

• Culture? Decaying.

• Health? Deteriorating.

• Birth rate? Collapsing.

We are being prepped for a weak dollar future. When you have $37 trillion in debt, you can’t raise rates (Nothing Stops this Train). You must debase and keep the lie going.

We built a monetary system on the premise that money can be managed by a central authority. That someone, somewhere, should decide the rate at which your time and energy should be debased.

This isn’t a partisan issue. This is not red vs. blue. No individual, no central bank, no government should be in charge of managing our time and energy. That’s one answer to “what is money?”

Money is our time. Our energy. Our life, abstracted.

This Week:

WiM607 with Michael Morelli

"The bigger the reason, the bigger the result. Anchor it to your daughter. Don't do it for you. Do it for your daughter. Your daughter is watching you. Your son is watching you every single day. You are showing your kids what's possible every single day. Are you gonna show them what's possible, or are you gonna wait for somebody else to show them what's possible?"

Modern Medicine is Keeping You Sick – Break the Cycle

WiM608 with Lynette Zang

"I see the need for a new system. Whatever that new system is, I want a component of sound money in it… I want the public to take their power back. And the only way that you can take your power back is if you actually have a tool. Vote harder, right? It doesn't do anything. But if you have a tool that will enable you to hold your politicians, that you elected, toes to the fire, that's what I want. That's what I'm fighting for."

The full episode with Lynette Zang will go live today 8/1/25 at 3pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

Subscribe or the YouTube Clips Channel for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

8/5 with Brandon Keys

Brandon Keys is the host of the State of Bitcoin Podcast, Macro Insights Podcast, and Green Candle Investments Newsletter.

8/8 with Greg O’Gallagher

Greg O'Gallagher is a Canadian fitness entrepreneur and online personality, best known as the founder of Kinobody, a fitness brand focused on achieving a sculpted physique through strength training and intermittent fasting.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Orange Pill App: https://www.orangepillapp.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

Every cycle, we forget.

We obsess over every candle, dissect tweets, and try to forecast the next 5% move like it matters. But the people who win in Bitcoin are the ones who zoom out:

December 31st, 2010 — Buying Bitcoin at $0.35

July 25th, 2011 — Bitcoin Wallets, Bitcoin Faucet, Mt. Gox, and Mining

February 25, 2011 — Buying Domino's Pizza with Bitcoin

Mid-2011 — Home Mining 2 Bitcoin Per Day

May 28th, 2011 — Radeon 5850x4 Bitcoin Miner pProducing ~1340mhash/sec

June 14th, 2011 — How to apply thermal paste to your new Bitcoin mining card for better cooling

April 1st, 2013 — CNBC Debate as Bitcoin Hits $100.00

June 26, 2015 — Don’t Buy Bitcoin!

More signal, less noise.

This Week:

WiM605 with Stephen Cole

“I thought it would be so powerfully good for the world if we could separate money from state — but it’s not possible, because they’ll never let us vote on an issue like that. It would just threaten so much of the system itself. And then, when I started to connect the dots—Bitcoin as money—that gave me this eureka moment of: maybe this is a tool that can help us achieve that. Maybe this is the sly, roundabout way that we can take money out of the hands of the government, like Hayek said."

How Bitcoin Can Save Your Business w/ Stephen Cole

WiM606 with Neal Flesher

"Slavery did not die. It evolved. Yes, the brutal imagery of whips and auction blocks has mostly faded. Yet the essence endures: systematically appropriating a person's work by force. Although today's outward trappings differ radically from chattel slavery, the same principle remains. Same form, different matter. What once bound human beings with iron shackles now ensnares them through currencies, contracts, and credit systems.”

The full episode with Neal Flesher will go live today 7/25/25 at 3pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

Subscribe or the YouTube Clips Channel for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

7/29 with Michael Morelli

Michael Morelli is the founder of FitScript which helps turn men into unstoppable leaders using data-driven protocols.

8/1 with Lynette Zang

Lynette Zang is an economist that has been involved in the markets at some level since 1964, as a student, banker, stockbroker and precious metals and currency analyst.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Orange Pill App: https://www.orangepillapp.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

Earlier this year on February 28th, I published an article titled: “How to Handle Bitcoin's Price Volatility”

Bitcoin had just “crashed” to $78,000 from a high of $109,000 5 weeks earlier.

The tips for dealing with Bitcoin’s fiat price volatility included:

1. Turn Off the News

2. Grounding, Sunning, and Loving

3. Avoid Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

4. Build Your Own Conviction

5. DCA and Chill

6. Ditch the Shitcoins

7. Realize Bitcoin’s Volatility is a Blessing

8. Stay Humble, Stack Sats

Now that we’ve smashed through previous all-time highs, here are some tips for surviving a Bitcoin bull market:

1. Stop Thinking in Fiat Terms
   If your goal is to accumulate more dollars, you’ve missed the point. Bitcoin is the last trade.

2. Avoid Shitcoin Temptation
   This is when the carnival starts. Shitcoins pump, influencers pump them harder, and you start wondering if you’re missing out. You’re not. Shitcoiners love Bitcoin too… they just love your Bitcoin.

3. Don’t Try to Time the Top
   Trying to sell the top and buy back lower is a great way to get rekt. I’m not saying to never sell, just don’t delude yourself into thinking you know the future. Bitcoin is just a tool. Use it to make your life better.

4. Don’t Use Leverage
   Leverage is like fire. It can heat your home, or burn it to the ground. Don’t let greed turn your savings into ashes.

5. Stay Physically and Mentally Grounded
   Spend time outside. Walk barefoot. Get sun on your skin. Work out. Be with people you love.

6. Ignore the Noise
   In bull markets, everyone suddenly becomes a Bitcoin expert. Your inbox, group chats, and feed will overflow with price predictions, shitcoin sales pitches, and “once-in-a-lifetime” trading opportunities. Mute the noise. Curate your signal.

7. Protect Your Keys

   Bull markets attract attention. Scams multiply. Phishing links get clever. Double-down on security. If you don’t hold your keys, you don’t hold your Bitcoin. Freedom requires responsibility.

8. Stay Humble, Stack Sats
   Same rule in bull markets as in bear markets. Greed and pride are the enemy. Gratitude and patience win.

This Week:

WiM603 with Guy Sengstock

“The essence of wonder is not easily grasped. In our everydayness, we are enveloped by the familiar, the known, the taken for granted. The chair upon one sits, the tree seen through the window, the voice of the other speaking to us. All are present. All are given. Yet beneath this seeming clarity of presence lies a concealment, a hiddenness which calls forth wonder. This wonder properly understood is not the effect of astonishment of the rare or the overwhelming. Rather, the silent event of being disclosing itself in what is most near."

Bitcoin: Everything Divided by 21 Million w/ Knut Svanholm

WiM604 with Ben Justman

"If money is the core problem, and you don’t look at money, it’s going to be hard to solve the rest of the problems in your life—because you’re going to be continuously dealing with debasement and the problems that come with it.

But when you can find that rock—when you can find that stability, that thing where you just go, ‘I have this, I don’t worry about it, I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to wonder where my money goes’—you can just build and live your life. And hopefully, this thing appreciates.

It’s a pretty core, solid thing to build on. And you can go so much further when you have a steady base in Bitcoin."

The full episode with Ben Justman will go live today 7/18/25 at 3pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

Subscribe or the YouTube Clips Channel for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

7/22 with Stephen Cole

Stephen Cole is the co-founder of “Castle”, the easiest way for businesses to buy Bitcoin.

7/25 with Neal Flesher

Neal Flesher, author of “Modern Chains”, is a philosopher and former Army Officer with expertise in monetary systems, Bitcoin, and the philosophy of money.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Orange Pill App: https://www.orangepillapp.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

We here at WiM Media would never say “I told you so,” but…

Bitcoin’s price at the time of this tweet: $66,740

Bitcoin is doing what it always does 12-18 months after the halving:

• 2012 Halving: 9308% increase over 13 months.

• 2016 Halving: 2861% increase over 17 months.

• 2020 Halving: 620% increase over 11 months.

The last halving occurred on April 19, 2024 (~15 months ago).

There is a steady spot bid of people rotating out of something with an infinite supply ($), into something with a capped supply (₿).

3 green, 1 red is holding strong so far.

The saying “Stay Humble, Stack Sats” has withstood the test of time for a reason.

• Provide value to the world

• Live beneath your means

• Don’t trade “crypto”

• Buy Bitcoin

This Week:

WiM601 with Knut Svanholm

“Bitcoin is a tool. Bitcoin is a language, and we can use it to to get closer to other people and to live life more on our our own terms. And it's a beautiful thing for everyone.” —

Bitcoin: Everything Divided by 21 Million w/ Knut Svanholm

WiM602 with Robert Breedlove

"Money is often defined as the language of value or the language of human action. Some even call it the language of power. It does have this communicative function. It generates price signals—this is what coordinates entrepreneurial activity at scale.

It’s a very efficient data compression technology. People can just see a price change; they don’t need to know any of the story. They don’t need to know that there was a fire here or an earthquake there—they just need to see the price change. As a producer, you’re incentivized to produce more; as a consumer, you’re incentivized to consume less.

And so that’s how we self-organize in the marketplace: using the medium of money as a language. It’s a bit psychotechnological. We think in terms of money. We negotiate in terms of money. We look through money. We’re engaging in business planning—all of these things. So I’m comfortable saying money does have some linguistic qualities to it."

The full episode with Robert Breedlove and Guy Sengstock will go live today 7/11/25 at 3pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

We’ve relaunched the Clips Channel! Subscribe for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

7/15 with Guy Sengstock

Guy Sengstock the is the founder of The Original Circling Approach and co-owner of the Circling Institute.

7/18 with Ben Justman

Ben Justman is the owner of Peony Lane Vineyards and known as “The Bitcoin Wine Guy.”

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Orange Pill App: https://www.orangepillapp.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

• First person (other than Satoshi himself) to run the Bitcoin software.

• Received the very first Bitcoin transaction.

• Core cypherpunk, helping develop foundational privacy tools like PGP.

• Created the first reusable proof-of-work (RPoW) system.

A week after Bitcoin went live in 2009, Hal Finney predicted the value of 1 BTC could reach $10,000,000:

Later in December 2010, with Bitcoin trading around 30 cents, Finney made another prediction:

• Bitcoin can’t scale to handle every global transaction
  He argued that the base layer couldn’t scale to accommodate all global payments directly. Broadcasting every transaction to the entire network would be inefficient and slow.

• Bitcoin-backed banks will emerge
  To address these limitations, banks that hold BTC as reserves and issue their own forms of digital cash that is faster and more suited to everyday use will emerge.

• Free market competition between banks
  These banks would operate like pre-centralized banking institutions, each with its own policies. Some might be fully backed by BTC; others fractional. Risk profiles, interest rates, and trustworthiness would vary, and their digital cash might trade at discounts or premiums accordingly.

• Bitcoin as "high-powered money”
  In this system, Bitcoin itself serves as the base reserve asset (similar to gold in the past) primarily used for settlement between banks rather than for individual purchases.

• Final settlement layer
  Most Bitcoin transactions would occur between institutions to settle net balances. Retail users would interact with lighter-weight currencies issued on top of Bitcoin, not with BTC directly.

Fast forward almost fifteen years…

“[Bitcoin] is the most valuable asset in the world. The [MSTR] endgame is to be the leading bitcoin bank, or merchant bank, or you could call it a bitcoin finance company.”

— Michael Saylor

As chairman of Strategy, Saylor has transformed the company into one of the largest holders of Bitcoin in the world, with ₿597,325 on its balance sheet (roughly 3% of the circulating supply). His stated goal? “To be the leading Bitcoin bank.”

At its current scale, the company is well positioned to explore the kind of layered system Finney envisioned, where Bitcoin serves as a reserve asset backing new financial instruments and services.

“Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace, run by incorruptible software, offereing a global, affordable, simple an dsecure savings account to billions of people that don't have the option or desire to run their own hedge fund.” — Michael Saylor

To be clear, this is not an endorsement of MSTR stock. Nothing (and I mean nothing) beats self-custody bitcoin.

This Week:

WiM599 with Mike Kelly

“If something is fragile, let it go — let it break. Incorporating the fragility of things that you're trying to produce will make you the producer of things more antifragile. It doesn’t matter if what you're making is fragile — if anything, you want it to be fragile in certain ways so that you fail and learn and grow. So that’s my takeaway: don’t try to obsess with making systems antifragile — try to obsess with incorporating the fragility that’s within that system into better practices, into learnings. And then you, as the observer of the system you’re trying to build, will achieve antifragility. The only way you can really do it is by not trying to do it — and instead trying to embrace the iterative, failure-based tests.”

Bitcoin vs Central Planning: Nassim Taleb's "Antifragile" Part 3

WiM600 with Ariana Thacker

"Imagine your body is a castle, and invaders are coming in. These invaders are microbial species in the air. The castle has guards that recognize the invaders and either push them out or deal with the issue. But for the 24%—about a quarter of the population—that doesn’t have that defense, the invaders get in and aren’t recognized. Maybe they’re dressed like the guards, but the castle still senses something is wrong. That’s when the alarm systems go off. These alarm systems are the cytokine storm—the inflammatory response. It’s an unregulated alarm blaring that something’s wrong, but there’s no ability to address it. You can’t clear the issue, and it ties into something called an antigen presentation issue. The body just can’t identify what the biotoxins are."

The full episode with Ariana Thacker will go live today 7/4/25 at 3pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

We’ve relaunched the Clips Channel! Subscribe for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

7/8 with Knut Svanholm

Knut Svanholm is a Bitcoin author, educator, and self-proclaimed armchair philosopher, international village idiot, and rock star.

7/11 with Guy Sengstock

Guy Sengstock the is the founder of “The Original Circling Approach” and co-owner of the Circling Institute.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code ROBERT): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Orange Pill App: https://www.orangepillapp.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

Bitcoin was not a one-off, breakthrough invention. Bitcoin was the result of 40 years of research and development in cryptography and distributed systems.

The following is Satoshi’s first known email sent to Wei Dai, a computer scientist, cypherpunk, and cryptographer best known for creating B-Money, an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system.

August 22nd, 2008:

Satoshi’s 2nd email was sent to “The Cryptography Mailing List” and announced Bitcoin publicly to the world.

October 31st, 2008:

Following this email, members of “The Cryptography Mailing List” replied with a mix of questions, comments, and concerns.

The following is an exchange between Satoshi and Hal Finney, who later received the first Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi himself (Hal’s messages are preceded by the “>” symbol, and Satoshi’s responses are highlighted in orange for clarity).

November 9th, 2008:

Conflicting Transactions & Chain Forks

“What if two versions of a transaction are on two separate chains? How is it resolved?”

Satoshi’s (paraphrased) Reply:
It doesn’t matter which transaction nodes saw first. The one in the longest chain becomes the valid one; the rest are invalidated. Only one version of the truth survives.

Takeaway: Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism relies on the longest valid chain rule, which resolves conflicts objectively based on accumulated proof-of-work.

Double-Spending by an Attacker

“If an attacker has more computing power, how can he reverse old transactions? Can honest nodes detect his tampering?”

Satoshi’s (paraphrased) Reply:
The attacker must redo the block containing the transaction and all subsequent blocks, faster than the honest network can add new blocks. If successful, his chain becomes the longest and valid.

Takeaway: This is the infamous 51% attack. Bitcoin’s security lies in the energy cost of rewriting history.

Why the Longest Chain Must Win

“Can’t nodes remember which chain was first and stick to it?”

Satoshi’s (paraphrased) Reply:
No. That would cause fragmentation. Some nodes would favor one history, others another. Only the longest chain rule keeps all nodes in agreement, even if that means replacing a chain they saw first.

Takeaway: Objectivity over memory. Consensus must be reproducible and universal, proof-of-work is the only common language.

Verifying Transactions as a Recipient

“Does a recipient need to verify every previous transaction in a coin’s history?”

Satoshi’s (paraphrased) Reply:
No. Just verify the transaction’s inclusion in the blockchain to a sufficient depth (typically a few blocks). Older history can be safely discarded.

Takeaway: Bitcoin achieves efficient verification.

How Nodes Validate Transactions

“Do timestamp nodes ensure transactions are valid by checking their history?”

Satoshi’s (paraphrased) Reply:
Yes. Each block must contain only valid transactions, referencing valid inputs from previous blocks or earlier in the same block. Nodes enforce this rule on every block they receive.

Takeaway: Bitcoin ensures global integrity by requiring every node to check each block for correctness.

Documentation and Development Process

“A more formal, process-oriented spec would help. Do you plan to write one?”

Satoshi’s (paraphrased) Reply:
I wrote the code first to prove it worked. I’ll release the implementation before a detailed spec.

Takeaway: Bitcoin was code-first, proof-by-implementation.

Another interesting exchange between cypherpunk James A. Donald and Satoshi answered a key question: How does Bitcoin solve the Byzantine Generals Problem?

The Byzantine Generals Problem is a classic problem in computer science, game theory, and distributed systems that illustrates the difficulty of achieving consensus in a system where some participants may be unreliable, faulty, or malicious.

November 13th, 2008:

Bitcoin is a distributed system with no central authority. Nodes must agree on a single version of the blockchain, even though:

• Messages can be delayed or arrive out of order,

• Some nodes might act dishonestly (e.g. trying to double-spend),

• There’s no trusted leader to coordinate agreement.

Satoshi’s breakthrough was using proof-of-work to let honest nodes reach consensus without trusting each other. The longest chain of proof-of-work becomes the agreed-upon history.

Satoshi said it best…

This Week:

WiM597 with Michael Ruiz

"I think actively changing your perspective and your framing on situations and problems—to see them as stepping stones toward where you're headed—is important. In life, as we go, we're going to have roadblocks, we're going to have setbacks. And the process of figuring out how to overcome them is what’s going to build your character, make you stronger, and make you more adept at dealing with whatever challenges come down the road."

— Michael Ruiz

Bitcoin & the Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

WiM598 with Mike Kelly

"The next battleground is the mind…I mean it's like even when the battleground is the battleground, the battleground is the mind—like morale and strategy. The battlefield has gone from being a distinct area to just the surface of the earth." — Mike Kelly

The full episode with Mike Kelly is live today, June 27th.

Bitcoin is Antifragile: Nassim Taleb's "Antifragile" Part 2 w/ Mike Kelly

Link to My YouTube Homepage

We’ve relaunched the Clips Channel! Subscribe for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

7/1 with Mike Kelly (Antifragile Ep.3)

Michael J Kelly III is a producer and creative strategist with a passion for natural science and the intersection of politics and biology.

7/4 with Ricardo Salinas

Ricardo Benjamín Salinas Pliego is a multi-billionaire businessman and the founder and chairman of Grupo Salinas, a corporate conglomerate with interests in telecommunications, media, financial services, and retail.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Netsuite by Oracle: https://netsuite.com/whatismoney

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code BREEDLOVE): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

All wars are bankers’ wars.

This Week:

WiM595 with Lyn Alden

“Before the telegraph, there were ways to speed up gold and silver, but they were very limited. Coinage helped speed up transactions. The invention of paper over papyrus, then bookbinding, and eventually the printing press drastically lowered the cost of encryption. These technologies functionally accelerated the ability to transfer gold and silver more safely, efficiently, and quickly—with some degree of abstraction.

The telegraph completely blew open the divide, allowing people on different continents to agree to make an exchange—a transaction is basically just an IOU—while final settlement couldn’t happen at that distance. That shift gave massive power to the entities running the ledger, the middlemen, the banks, and by extension, the central banks. Now we're in the third era, where for the first time, we actually have fast settlement.” — Lyn Alden

Bitcoin Has No Brakes w/ Lyn Alden (WiM595)

WiM596 with Chris Vasquez

"Your reality shrinks or expands based on your level of belief. That’s the crazy part about life—we’re not all living in the same universe. We’re living in 8 billion different universes." — Chris Vasquez

The full episode with Chris Vasquez will go live today, June 20th, at 3:00pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

We’ve relaunched the Clips Channel! Subscribe for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

6/24 with Michael Ruiz

Michael Ruiz is an entrepreneur and founder of “The Sovereign Mindset” who is navigating the transition from Fiat to Sound Money.

6/27 with Mike Kelly (Antifragile Ep.2)

Michael J Kelly III is a producer and creative strategist with a passion for natural science and the intersection of politics and biology.

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Netsuite by Oracle: https://netsuite.com/whatismoney

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code BREEDLOVE): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

The U.S. fiscal situation is spiraling, and the train has no brakes. It’s not political, it’s structural. And it’s accelerating…

1. Deficits are now structural.

• Historically, deficits rose during recessions or wars

• Since 2017, the U.S. has run 6–7% deficits even during low unemployment

• We’ve entered a new era of fiscal dominance

2. The Fed’s brakes are broken.

• Raising rates used to slow private credit growth

• Today, it accelerates deficits due to high federal debt levels (>100% of GDP)

• The system now responds backwards, rate hikes worsen fiscal health

3. Private debt → Public debt.

• Post-2008, debt creation shifted from banks and corporations to the federal government

• Private credit growth has stalled; public debt has filled the gap

• This shift is persistent and inflationary

4. Interest expense is exploding.

• Declining rates offset rising debt for decades

• Now rates are rising, and debt is at all-time highs

• Interest expense has become a dominant budget item ($1.2 trillion in 2024)

5. Social Security is a time bomb.

• The SS fund peaked in 2017–2018 and is starting to “turn over”

• Expected to run out of funds by ~2035

• Both political parties have promised not to touch it

6. The system is a Ponzi.

• Total U.S. debt (public + private) rarely declines, only 5 years in 110+ years

• The entire system relies on ever-increasing leverage

• Any deleveraging is met with rapid money printing

7. Bitcoin is the anti-Ponzi.

• Fiat = elastic supply, opaque, reliant on monetary expansion

• Bitcoin = fixed supply, transparent, immune to manipulation

• As the fiat system bleeds value, Bitcoin offers an exit

Nothing (and I mean nothing) stops this train. But you can choose which track you’re on.

This Week:

WiM592 with Saifedean Ammous

“The process of civilization — we could think of it as the decline of time preference. From an economic perspective, the decline of time preference is necessary for us to have any capital. It's the delaying of gratification that creates capital. You have to give up consuming something valuable today in order to dedicate it to the process of production.” — Saifedean Ammous

Can Bitcoin Rebuild Civilization? w/ Saifedean Ammous (WiM592)

WiM593 with Eric V Stacks

“Most people go through their life and they spend their time like it's unlimited and their money like it's limited. The reality is the inverse — your ability to procure resources is much more limited than your time is. Am I going to sit here and hodl, or am I going to use some of this to live a better life? I'm not using my life to get more Bitcoin — I'm using Bitcoin to get more out of my life.” — Eric V Stacks

Wake Up, Neo: Bitcoin Is the Orange Pill w/ Eric V Stacks (WiM593)

WiM594 with Ivan Makedonski

“Just because we found Bitcoin, that doesn't mean that entropy will stop. A lot of things will attack this system. We are trying to get on the same standard, but we are still going to fight entropy. The good thing is that the wind is in our favor…”

— Ivan Makedonski

The full episode with Ivan Makedonski will go live today, June 13th, at 3:00pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

We’ve relaunched the Clips Channel! Subscribe for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

6/17 with Lyn Alden

Lyn Alden is an investor, best-selling author of “Broken Money”, and worldwide speaker with a focus on the intersection of money and technology.

6/20 with Chris Vasquez

Chris Vasquez is a tech investor, entrepreneur, and host of the “World Class Podcast.”

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Netsuite by Oracle: https://netsuite.com/whatismoney

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code BREEDLOVE): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

Tensions between Musk and Trump escalated Thursday, sparked by disagreements over Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Musk took to social media, calling for Trump’s impeachment and stating that Trump appears in the “Epstein files.” Trump fired back, claiming he pushed Musk out of his White House advisory role and threatened to cut government support for Musk’s companies.

Here are some of the highlights from the public feud:

Elon added: “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”

U.S. Federal Budget Deficits by Year

• 2000: $236 billion

• 2001: $128 billion

• 2002: $158 billion

• 2003: $378 billion

• 2004: $413 billion

• 2005: $318 billion

• 2006: $248 billion

• 2007: $161 billion

• 2008: $459 billion

• 2009: $1.41 trillion

• 2010: $1.29 trillion

• 2011: $1.30 trillion

• 2012: $1.07 trillion

• 2013: $680 billion

• 2014: $485 billion

• 2015: $442 billion

• 2016: $585 billion

• 2017: $665 billion

• 2018: $779 billion

• 2019: $984 billion

• 2020: $3.13 trillion

• 2021: $2.77 trillion

• 2022: $1.38 trillion

• 2023: $1.70 trillion

• 2024: $1.83 trillion

Musk then retweeted the following videos of Milton Friedman speaking on inflation:

The below videos show Musk speaking on inflation, interest payments, and our spiraling National debt:

Musk then ironically replied to Trump’s tweets from more than a decade ago:

I don’t think these two are going to kiss and make up anytime soon…

If only there were a scarce, apolitical, decentralized money governments couldn’t inflate away…

Not red. Not blue. Orange. Bitcoin fixes this.

This Week:

WiM589 with Robert Breedlove

The laws of physics govern all action in space and time. They’re independent and immutable. It’s like a cosmic protocol. This is the way things work. The speed of light, terminal velocity on Earth, Euler’s number. These are independent variables encoded into the structure of reality. And what’s important about them is they’re human-out-of-the-loop.

I’ve run this thought experiment before: imagine a device—only one in the world—that lets someone manipulate the laws of physics. You could turn gravity up or down, change the speed of light, whatever. You can imagine the political strife and warfare over that thing. Whoever controlled it would eventually run the world. They’d win forever. If they could turn off gravity or shut down your metabolism, the game of existence would end. The rules would’ve been corrupted. They’d be changeable. And the whole system would unravel.

So what’s our aim as humans, trying to play these games with each other productively? We need to emulate the incorruptible rules of physics. There’s a reason they work so well: they’re not manipulable. Ideally, we need similar rules in the socioeconomic domain.

— Robert Breedlove

Buy Bitcoin for Your Bloodline w/ Robert Breedlove (WiM589)

WiM590 with Henry Shi

As we understand LLMs and these models better, maybe our brain isn’t what we thought it was—that a lot of it is just pattern matching. You can see why, a lot of the time, humans aren’t purely rational, first-principle, logical thinkers. We’re also pattern matchers.

— Henry Shi

A Crash Course on Artificial Intelligence w/ Henry Shi (WiM590)

WiM591 with Sad Oshi

If you have money that’s worth less—or valued less—what are you going to do with it? You’re going to burn it, spend it, push it—you’re going to do something with it, because it evaporates. And I think that creates the haste from which bad ideas take root.

It’s interesting how Bitcoin is re-centering people on quality. That’s actually one of the things I’m really passionate about—Bitcoin forcing the creation of new standards for quality. — Sad Oshi

The full episode with Sad Oshi will go live today, June 6th, at 3:00pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

We’ve relaunched the Clips Channel! Subscribe for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

6/9 with Ivan Makedonski

Ivan Makedonski is a contributor to Bitcoin Magazine, the leading Bitcoin publication dedicated to covering news, trends, and insights since 2012.

6/11 with Chris Vasquez

Chris Vasquez is a tech investor, entrepreneur, and host of the “World Class Podcast.”

Sponsors:

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Netsuite by Oracle: https://netsuite.com/whatismoney

Cowbolt - Split Costs and Settle in Bitcoin: https://cowbolt.com/

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code BREEDLOVE): https://heartandsoil.co/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

“50 million Americans own Bitcoin, and I believe that’s going to be 100 million before too long.” — JD Vance

“Blockchain, Bitcoin, and ‘crypto’ these are the financial systems of the future.” — David Sacks

“0.1 bitcoin is going to be worth an absolute fortune…” — Eric Trump

“I think there’s so many ties between free speech, crypto, Bitcoin, blockchain technologies…” — Donald Trump Jr.

Welcome back, Ross.

This Week:

WiM587 with Matt Manning

“Everything we’re looking for is already right here. It’s our own illusion that it’s not here. Enlightenment is already right here, right now.” — Matt Manning

Bitcoin & the Awakening of Human Consciousness w/ Matt Manning (WiM587)

WiM588 with Stephen Diangelo

“Printing money is the same kind of addiction. It’s the same psychological phenomenon, which is: ‘I'm going to take a short-term benefit and defer the consequence.’ But the consequence always comes. And in the same way that an addict gets into a cycle of self-deception, self-abuse, self-destruction, I think the monetary system does exactly the same thing.” — Stephen Diangelo

The full episode with Stephen Diangelo will go live today, May 30th, at 3:00pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

Thanks for reading The Freedom Analects! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

We’ve relaunched the Clips Channel! Subscribe for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

6/2 with Bram Kanstein

Bram Kanstein is an early-stage startup expert and creative digital entrepreneur with a knack for turning abstract ideas and concepts into viable ventures.

6/4 with Henry Shi

Henry Shi is a technology entrepreneur based in San Francisco, California. He co-founded Super.com in April 2016, and went on to serve as COO/CTO. Shi previously founded uMentioned, a local social discovery network and was the second machine learning engineer at LendUp.

6/6 with Sad Oshi

Sponsors:

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code BREEDLOVE): https://heartandsoil.co/

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove

Most people are still asking the wrong questions: “How do you value Bitcoin? How high can it go?”

It’s understandable. Bitcoin doesn’t fit into the neat little boxes of traditional finance. No cash flows, no earnings reports, no board of directors to make sense of. Models like stock-to-flow, power laws, and logarithmic regressions attempt to provide clarity, but as we know, all models are wrong, and some are useful.

Here’s a better question: If Bitcoin is the best money, how should we value everything else?

No one asks how to value a dollar. You don’t need a model to price it. You just use it to measure other things like stocks, real estate, or gold. You look at your investment portfolio and ask, am I gaining more dollars over time?

Try this instead: value those same assets in Bitcoin.

Suddenly, the illusion breaks. What looked like a 10% gain in dollars becomes a 20% loss in Bitcoin. If Bitcoin is the best form of money (and by every monetary property it is: scarcity, portability, durability, divisibility, etc), then it’s time to stop viewing it as an investment and start using it as a measuring stick.

Stop asking what Bitcoin is worth.
Start asking what everything else is worth in Bitcoin.

Repricing the Economy in Bitcoin

This Week:

WiM585 with Paul Saladino

“Don’t microdose nature—do a heroic dose. Full nature immersion. If you want to change your brain—and it will—whether it’s a week-long backpacking trip, a month-long trek, or a transatlantic sailing trip, just start doing that. I think it changes us as humans in a good way. We become more iconoclastic in the best way, more rebellious in the best way, and we allow our brain to think more creatively.” — Paul Saladino

The War on Aging: Botox, Steroids, & Taking A "Heroic Dose" of Nature w/ Paul Saladino (WiM585)

WiM586 with Jesse Meyers

"I might have stumbled into a potentially groundbreaking new hypothesis for why humanity outcompeted other early humans, what separates us as a species, and why civilization developed — and it all comes back to scarcity, which Bitcoin has now perfected." — Jesse Meyers

The full episode with Jesse Meyers will go live today, May 23th, at 3:00pm EST.

Link to My YouTube Homepage

We’ve relaunched the Clips Channel! Subscribe for highlights from episodes and other exclusive content:

Link to YouTube Clips Channel

We’ve launched a WiM Telegram Community Channel! Join us here to engage with a group of deep thinkers, freedom maximalists, and Bitcoiners:

Link to WiM Telegram Channel

Check out the Sovereign Shop! Support the show with merch that will help strike up conversations about the defining question of our time in history: What is Money?

Link to Sovereign Shop

Next Week:

5/27 with Matt Manning

Matt Manning is a consultant who offers private 1:1 work for leaders on the edge of Bitcoin, Decentralization, Consciousness, Wisdom, and The Liminal Leap.

5/30 with Stephen Diangelo

Stephen Diangelo is a Silicon Valley veteran with 30 years experience in the software technology industry leading high-performing global organizations.

Sponsors:

The Farm at Okefenokee (mention BREEDLOVE for $21,000 off a custom cabin): https://okefarm.com/

iCoin Hardware Wallet: https://icointechnology.com/breedlove

Heart and Soil Supplements (discount code BREEDLOVE): https://heartandsoil.co/

In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/

Blockware Solutions: https://mining.blockwaresolutions.com/breedlove

OnRamp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedlove

Mind Lab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedlove

Coinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedlove

Products I Endorse:

EFANI: Protect your mobile phone from SIM swap attacks: https://www.efani.com/breedlove

Lineage Provisions (code BREEDLOVE): https://lineageprovisions.com/?ref=breedlove_22

Colorado Craft Beef (code BREEDLOVE): https://coloradocraftbeef.com/

Jawzrsize (code RobertBreedlove for 20% off): https://jawzrsize.com

Salt of the Earth Electrolytes: http://drinksote.com/breedlove