Risk Taker
From wandering alone in the forest as a child, to skateboarding at FDR Skatepark, snowboarding down black diamond mountains, swimming with sharks, conflict photography, and living off the grid, I’ve always followed the call to adventure. A life without danger and taking risks is a life not worth living.
The Problem of Maintenance
Yesterday a coworker was talking about their car and how they had to shell out a couple hundred dollars to have the oil changed or something done to maintain the vehicle. Apparently, they still have to do more work on the car, and who knows how much this will cost. During the summer, I used to ride my bike to work, but because of the roads being so poorly kept, with trash and glass smashed everywhere, I ended up getting flat tires about two times in two weeks. I had to buy new tubes, go to the bike repair shop, and spend a couple of hours waiting, just to be able to get back out there and use my bike for transportation. Because of this, I’m no longer going to use my bike for transportation, but for leisure only, in the summer months, when I just want to get out there and listen to an audiobook or something.
These very small, simple hiccups do annoy me. It reminds me that less is more, and anything that requires maintenance is worth avoiding.
I think this is the appeal of living in a condo or an apartment, as there are people who work for the building who will come up and repair anything that breaks down immediately. For instance, if you get a clogged toilet or sink that you can’t fix on your own, you don’t need to call a plumber, as the building already has one ready to help you.
When I arrived at my mud hut in Zambia, Africa, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I got ready to take a bucket bath, boiling some hot water, and was looking for a place to hang my towel. I didn’t want to place my towel on the ground and get it dirty, so I decided to grab a rock, a nail, and hammer the nail into the wall. A piece of the brick from the wall wound up getting into my mouth somehow while I was hammering, and that small piece of brick chipped my front tooth. I lived with it for about a year, not really thinking too much of it. When I came home and went to my regular dental appointment, they suggested bonding the tooth, and I agreed. Because the bonding failed numerous times, they wound up damaging the tooth even further. Because of this, they had to put a cap on my tooth, and now I have this looming dread over my head that one day maybe it will fall off and I’ll have to get it recapped again. Honestly, I should’ve never listened and just kept the small chip, as it was simply a cosmetic issue and really does not matter.
I’m sharing this for somebody who needs to hear it: don’t do what I did, and don’t give yourself any more problems than you already have.
Bring on the Heat
Yesterday, while pruning plants at the Horticulture Center during work, I was in the zone—clipping the dead, shaping the bushes, and keeping the area clean and beautiful. The problem I’m learning during this winter month is that indoor plants require very particular temperatures to live in. The heat went out for a day or two, and the plants didn’t have the necessary temperature to survive in proper conditions. I’m noticing that many of the plants I potted are starting to die, and a few of the new ones went into shock. There are so many cracks in the glass of the greenhouse, or small gaps between the walls, where I can feel the cold winter air seeping into the area where we keep our plants.
Once it started getting really cold, my coworker and I began insulating the walls in the back area where we do lots of the potting and work with soil. We grabbed a tarp, I climbed on a ladder, and we hung the tarp in the middle of an open doorway to prevent the cold wind from blowing in from outside. It surprisingly does the job to a degree, keeping a lot of the heat in—but maybe that wasn’t enough.
The Gift of Fire
Michael Saylor is a visionary. I love the way he uses first principles to describe technology, evolution, society, money, and especially Bitcoin. He describes Satoshi as the equivalent of Prometheus, who gave fire to civilization, allowing us to advance with technology.
The Bitcoin network is like a fire in cyberspace, that will never go out, but will continuously burn for eternity.
When I consider the United States economy, especially the fiat currency that we use as a technology, I believe it’s experiencing significant heat loss. This heat loss causes the depreciation of the value of our dollar, and the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor diminishes the purchasing power of the dollar for everyday people. The system is broken, and it’s time to find the portal and create a new world!
Level Up
I’m very new to Bitcoin and only started buying at the beginning of this cycle in 2024, but after putting 100% of my money into Bitcoin, I’ve increased my gains by 50% in just a few months. This to me feels like a miracle, and it’s giving me so much hope.
It’s almost like Satoshi is Jesus, taking a small amount of bread and fish—a small amount of currency—and dividing it into 2.1 quadrillion satoshis.
Bitcoin seems like a great idea after all.
It’s almost like playing Super Mario Bros, the original one for the Game Boy or the NES. Once you get to level two and go underground, it becomes much more challenging to advance, as there are lots of pitfalls, piranha plants, spiky turtle shells, etc. However, every gamer knows that if you ride the elevator on the second level of Super Mario Bros, you can get on top of the map and simply sprint and jump over every obstacle without anyone getting in between you and the next level. Actually, when you run across the ceiling, you can access a warp zone portal that advances you into the next world, skipping so much of the gameplay and allowing the player to speedrun the game.
This is what Bitcoin feels like to me: a way to advance to the next level without having to deal with intermediaries, like the piranha plants, spiky turtles, and pitfalls of traditional investing or central banks.
Honestly, when you want to invest your money, it almost becomes a full-time job—if you want to play the stock market, learn about how to diversify your portfolio, etc. You could argue that it’s the same with learning about Bitcoin, but once you understand what Bitcoin is, you really don’t have to think about it too much.
Why should I have to pay somebody to invest my money, or why should I have to work to invest my money, when I already worked to earn it?
To me, Bitcoin makes sense because I know, with 100% certainty, if I put my money there, it will increase in value over time, as it has been engineered this way. I appreciate Bitcoin because it’s engineered, it’s a technology, it’s something that’s been designed for people to use, without the fear of it breaking.
That’s the problem with a lot of investments, especially real estate—things break, and there are things to maintain in the physical realm. However, Bitcoin requires zero maintenance—all you have to do is set it and forget it.
For instance, the central banking system could easily break. All it will take is one really intelligent hacker to shut down the computers of central banks. However, because of the power and resilience of the Bitcoin network—the hundreds of thousands of nodes across the world powering this thing—if for whatever reason the Bitcoin network were to be shut down, if all the electricity in the world was shut down, one individual with a computer and a solar panel or a generator could bring the network back to life. The power is within the hands of the people, and no one person controls the network.
Does it take some risk to take the elevator and fast travel in Super Mario Bros? Sure, if you stay on the elevator too long, you’ll die. However, if I jump off that elevator and take the perfectly engineered bridge to the warp zone, I can advance not only to the next world—1, 2, or 3—but to world 4!
Just think about that. If you invest your money in a traditional way, like the S&P 500, you’re only maintaining your money. As the money supply increases every single year and the value of the dollar depreciates, traditional investments are only a way to stop the heat loss. It’s kind of like putting on a cheap sweater from a thrift store. However, Bitcoin is like putting on a high-quality Canada Goose down jacket, with Uniqlo HeatTech tights, and alpaca wool socks.
Not only are you keeping the heat in, but you are building a fortress of warmth and protection against the elements. Just as Mario’s leap of faith from the elevator to the Warp Zone requires precision, timing, and a willingness to take a calculated risk, so does investing in Bitcoin. I’m not looking to play it safe—I’m looking to advance to the next level and take a risk.