Understanding Bitcoin Is A Superpower

I first heard about Bitcoin in 2014 when a friend had me create a Coinbase account and sent me some. This one transaction would change my life forever, I just didn’t know it yet. I read the white paper, but 98% of it didn’t sink in because I wasn’t technically literate enough to understand it. I understood that it solved the double-spend problem and that that was significant, but tbh I just liked the rebellious vibes the community was giving off at the time. I put a few hundred FIAT coupons in, and waited for something to happen. Then btc went sideways for a long time. I wasn’t someone who regularly tracked markets of any kind, so I got bored pretty quickly and forgot about it.

In 2017, when my wife was about to have our first child, the market went nuts. For the first time in about 3 years, I remembered ‘I own some of that’. So, I downloaded the Coinbase app and logged in to discover that I now had >15k. My jaw hit the floor as over the next few weeks I watched my portfolio climb to >20k. As euphoric as I was, my daughter was coming in less than a month, and money was tight. To this day, I credit my daughter’s birth as the sell signal, because I sold almost all of my btc for a deposit on a larger place to live and other costs that come with a newborn. I shit you not, a week later the dump comes. I breathe a sigh of relief and feel very smart for no good reason.

I still do not understand Bitcoin. Idk why, maybe it was morbid curiosity, but I stuck around and watched it slowly tumble. All the while consuming content. All the while believing fud narratives. “The network failed”, “double spend”, “China cancels btc”, etc.

About this time I started a job where I worked nights pretty much by myself. Between my wife and I’s income we were pretty comfortable(that btc head start really helped). I decide to designate the extra time I have at night to learning more about crypto.

Yep, I said cryto, not Bitcoin. Because I still didn’t understand bitcoin. I read up on some alts, and am forced to read up on bitcoin to learn what differentiates these alts from bitcoin. I still don’t get it. I buy alts. A couple make a decent return, most go negative. At this time I withdraw from the market completely. I’m still lurking here.

Something strikes me about the way people here are so certain that shitcoins are shit. The conviction is real. I start to dive into bitcoin with no skin in the game. Literally spend my weeknights teaching myself terminology so I can understand technical papers, reading about money, finding Andreas, reading the internet of money, the bitcoin standard, etc.

Then it clicks. This is the future of money. I want to go all in. Btc is at 5-6k on the way down to 3. Wife is hesitant, but has watched me throw myself into this for the better part of a year. We decide to take 40k from an inheritance and put it all in. Btc is at 4K. I either have the luckiest timing, or satoshi himself was waiting for me to get my head around Bitcoin, because(again) a week or so later it shoots up to 8k. My wife thinks I’m a genius. It continues to climb. I keep reading.

Since then, I continue to stack. Somewhere along the line I stopped checking price every day. Once I accepted btc as my inevitable exit from FIAT, the stress most newcomers associate with hodling miraculously dissolved. I am now immune to all fud. The conviction displayed here that initially drew me in, I now possess. What’s harder than diamonds? Because my hands have been forged in it.

Moral of the story? I know it can be daunting. The terminology, learning about legacy systems, comprehending the ramifications of a network like bitcoin. I still feel like a noob. I’m learning everyday. But once you’ve gleaned enough to acquire this level of conviction, it won’t feel like work anymore. Your thirst for deeper understanding of the nuances will be unquenchable. Understanding bitcoin will be your superpower.