My Journey From Normie to The Bitcoin Way

It’s Michael here, taking a stab at the newsletter this week! Rick is out of town enjoying some time away from the desk and we thought it would be a good chance to change things up for you.

In the last two years, Bitcoin has flipped my world upside down. My story is one that I suspect many people can relate to and we felt like sharing where I started, what I’ve learned, and how I ended up working at THE premier Bitcoin company might serve as a source of inspiration for you.

I started my journey into Bitcoin as something of a typical normie back in early 2022. Each year, I set goals for myself in various categories – Financial, Relational, Career, and so on.

At the end of 2021, I decided it was time for me to figure out this “crypto” thing that the whole world seemed to be talking about. I made it my “Learning” goal for 2022 to deep dive into this space. I figured this would lead me down the path of blockchain, NFTs, DeFi, and Web 3.0. Frankly, I thought it would put me at the cutting edge of some new, revolutionary technology that could line my pockets and set me up for a big payday.

I was fortunate that three days before the New Year, I met up with a friend of a friend to talk about this stuff because he was the only guy I had any connection with who was interested. I’ll never forget one of his parting comments:

“You know, most people go down this road and start learning about a lot of wild things… but they always seem to come back to Bitcoin.”

He recommended I check out Preston Pysh’s podcast and find any content I could track down from Lyn Alden.

I did start listening to Preston, but I also wasted a hell of a lot of time on some blockchain audiobooks and a bunch of nonsensical blabber about “crypto.”

The more I zoomed in on the Bitcoin-only stuff, on the other hand, the more things began to make sense. The macro picture came into focus, and I realized we needed a better form of money: not stupid monkey pictures on some pseudo-decentralized ledger. Bitcoin, and the many problems it could solve, was beginning to click.

Then a few months into the year, Celsius collapsed. And then a while later, FTX imploded. And don’t forget about BlockFi. The Bitcoin guys had been right about everything. I quickly shifted my focus and financial allocation to Bitcoin only. No more scams or speculating. Just level-headed saving in freedom money.

Along the way, I learned some things.

First, I learned that most everything I’d believed to be true was wrong. I’d been lied to about the best way to eat, to take care of myself, to save for the future. I learned that all of these “necessary” wars are far from necessary and are only made possible through a giant money printer at our central bank. I learned that we live in a false “red versus blue” political dichotomy and that fueling the State, regardless of who is in power, is a dangerous proposition. I learned that (gasp) my good old USA isn’t always, well, the good guy.

As I made my way down the rabbit hole, I began shedding my normie skin. I experimented with a strict carnivore diet, not because I wanted to fit in with my newly discovered Bitcoin people, but because it made way more sense that humans would eat meat in the wild instead of picking up bitter green leaves off plants for nourishment.

I haven’t had dessert in over two years, and I don’t even crave it any longer. Curious, indeed.

I stopped doing little things, like applying sunscreen before I go outside. The wellness and pharmaceutical industries are one big racket, best I can tell. I wear as little clothing outside as I can get away with (we moved onto some private land so I can be a bit more flexible on that) and soak in the sun as much and as often as humanly possible.

I found out that my childhood education was more akin to a time-sucking indoctrination that served little value. Looking back, even my degree from a solid university didn’t serve me half as well as six months of real experience in the workplace, listening to a handful of podcasts, and reading some good books.

For this reason, we began homeschooling our daughter and will do so with our other kids moving forward. If I perceive my time to be valuable, why shouldn’t I recognize my kid’s time as valuable? They don’t need seven hours in some crappy classroom to learn what their mom could teach them, in the comfort of our home, in an hour or two.

But even bigger changes began. While I like to say that my core beliefs have remain unchanged, my philosophical outlook on how the world ought to work sure has. I transitioned from a cog in the traditional political machine to a hardcore libertarian. I can hardly stomach presidential debates anymore because all I hear is both sides vying to serve up a massive government “solution” to any social, cultural, or economic problem, whether real or imaginary.

To say that my personal life has charted a new course is an understatement. The 2021 version of me would hardly recognize some of my habits and lifestyle changes I’ve adopted. My wife can’t believe some of the things that come out of my mouth these days, and she’s still piecing together why I make her spin the Fold wheel each night to stack extra sats. She’s also curious what price Bitcoin needs to hit before we put in a swimming pool, but I digress.

Over the last two years, there has been a lot of learning for me on the Bitcoin front, too. I figured out quickly that Coinbase is not a good place to buy Bitcoin, much less store it. I learned that chasing yield on Bitcoin is a fool’s errand (as I like to say, “The yield on Bitcoin is freedom”). I was lucky enough to get out of those games quickly and found a collaborative custody service provider for my Bitcoin stack that made me feel invincible… for a while, anyway.

I hadn’t done a deep dive on the Bitcoin tech, so having my coins off an exchange felt like a big win for me. I had my keys, could transact rather simply through a third-party app, and had the peace of mind knowing that if I lost a key, my trusty friends, at a company I won’t name, would send me the backup and I’d be good to go.

But then a few things happened that made me second guess it all.

First, my collaborative custody provider started supporting other cryptocurrencies. By this time, I was allergic to the word “crypto,” and that didn’t sit right with me. But in my complacency, I stuck with them.

Then, I started receiving emails about scheduled maintenance and found there were hours at a time I couldn’t use the Bitcoin network. What was the point of a 24/7/365 financial system if it was being turned off for me?

The final nail in the coffin for collaborative custody was when I found out the maker of my hardware wallet, used to store one of my three keys, could feasibly backdoor their way in to help me recover my seedphrase. I learned very quickly that the difference between open source and closed source tools is more than just a mere word; the difference can make or break the security of my generational Bitcoin wealth.

I knew I needed to move to proper, 100% self-custody with my stack, but I was not clear at all on what precisely that meant or what I needed to do to make it happen. Which hardware wallet should I pick? And what software wallet? How do I generate a seedphrase and how do I protect it? How do I connect it all to this node thing that I have, and what the heck is this node thing even doing for me? It all felt like a big mystery.

My complacency was wearing thin, but the path forward wasn’t obvious.

That is, until I heard this guy, Tony Yazbeck, on The Bitcoin Standard Podcast with Saifedean Ammous.

Tony had a wild story. After running multiple, successful tech companies, he was approaching early retirement in his 40s. He had it all.

Unfortunately, “all” that he had was tied up in Lebanon, a country that had been messing around with its monetary system for too long. As with all central banks, they eventually lost control and, in 2019, the currency collapsed.

Tony lost everything and escaped with $70 in his pocket.

On that podcast, Tony proceeded to share the most important lesson he learned through it all: you can’t trust anyone else to protect your wealth. His message was clear, and I knew that self-custody was the only way. And now, I knew who to call.

I scheduled a consult with The Bitcoin Way in January of 2024 and immediately knew I’d found the right team to help walk me through this. A few calls and a couple of weeks later, I was running my own node, sending test transactions with my open source, air-gapped, Bitcoin-only hardware wallet and getting all my questions answered by real experts.

For the first time in over a year, I fell asleep knowing that if any company failed or the US dollar collapsed or World War III started, my money was safe.

It is hard to overstate how liberating this felt.

My only problem now was that I was still working for a fiat paycheck day in and day out. I’d been at an AI startup for about six months and, though it was an exciting industry to be in, I felt detached from what I really wanted to do: to promote Bitcoin to the world and earn income in the hardest form of money ever to exist.

By divine intervention, it turned out, The Bitcoin Way was revamping their sales and marketing efforts, and I caught wind of it. I immediately reached out and it became clear that I was the man for the job, and that they were the company I’d been looking for all this time.

I started working with The Bitcoin Way in February of this year. I host The Bitcoin Way Podcast, where I get to speak with Bitcoin greats like Larry Lepard, Natalie Brunell, and Saifedean Ammous. I get to lead partnerships at our company, so I get a front row seat to the real builders – companies making the best Bitcoin products around – and to the traditional finance mavericks that are leading their clients into Bitcoin despite the regulatory headwinds they face.

My life has changed a lot in the last couple of years. I’m constantly connecting with brilliant, honest, hardworking people from all over the world who share my passion for sound, government-free money. I’m traveling to places I’d likely never go were it not for working in this space. I’m helping spread the gospel of proper care and custody of this new, crazy thing we call Bitcoin.

My world has certainly been turned upside down in just a matter of 30 or so odd months. And that is the power of Bitcoin.

When you’re willing to question your preconceived notions at the urging of this enthusiastic and wildly intelligent community of people, your heartrate slows, your peace of mind grows, and your life gets better.

If you haven’t taken the dive down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, this is my plea to you to do so. It goes deeper and wider than you can possibly imagine.

Remember: the yield on Bitcoin is freedom. Freedom to save in an appreciating currency. Freedom to secure your own wealth. Freedom to do as you please and to transact at your own discretion. Freedom to live life on your own terms.

My best wishes to you for freedom, sovereignty, and hope on your Bitcoin journey.

‍