Bitcoin has no treasury, no foundation, no built-in developer funding model. Fiat filled the gap and the incentive structure followed. When independent contributors disappear, we call it "burnout;" but what if that were a convenient label for a structural outcome? This article from the "Fiat Incentives Everywhere" series doesn't retell what @hodlonaut already covered in "The Capture" (which I recommend reading), it examines the incentive structure underneath it. Full analysis and sources:

BEYOND MONEY

Bitcoin Core Funding: Concentration, Compliance, Burnout

Who funds Bitcoin Core, what concentrated funding selects for, and why developer burnout looks structural. Plus the node-level immune reaction unde...

Independent research across 169 companies in the Bitcoin space demonstrated that the larger the #VC raise, the more likely the company drifts into stablecoins, fiat lending, altcoins, or tokenisation. Above $50M in funding, every Bitcoin-focused company drifted (16/16), whereas bootstrapped ones remain Bitcoin-only at 75%. Find out why in this article from the series "Fiat Everywhere:"

BEYOND MONEY

Funding: Why Bitcoin-Only Companies Drift

Independent research across 169 companies reveals a structural pattern: above $50 million in fiat capital, every company has introduced non-Bitcoin...

Strategy pays retail investors 11.5% in depreciating fiat while accumulating Bitcoin with no public proof of reserves and no redemption right. 80% of holders are retail. It may not be a Ponzi, but the structural argument is that STRC rebuilds a Cantillon Effect on top of Bitcoin. The entity closest to accumulation holds the scarce asset while the participants furthest from it hold claims in the depreciating one. I traced the full capital structure from SEC filings and the prospectus. Fully sourced analysis:

BEYOND MONEY

STRC Explained: The Cantillon Effect Rebuilt on Bitcoin

STRC pays 11.5% while Strategy keeps the Bitcoin. A sourced analysis of how the preferred stock rebuilds the Cantillon effect on the protocol built...

"The fiat system is being rebuilt on top of Bitcoin and calling itself Bitcoin." For the past few months I kept seeing the same pattern: If we look at Bitcoin like an organization, fiat incentives have infiltrated every department:

BEYOND MONEY

Fiat Incentives in Bitcoin: A Department-by-Department Map

A six-part series mapping how fiat incentives captured Bitcoin's human infrastructure: sales, marketing, development, funding, and our own dai...

- Sales: STRC's Cantillon Effect on top of Bitcoin - Dev: Funded compliance & why independent contributors disappear - VC Funding: More capital, further from Bitcoin - Marketing: How money shapes the signal - Plebs: A comfortable trap A video covering the full series will come end of June/early July. Zap what this research was worth to you. Sales:

BEYOND MONEY

STRC Explained: The Cantillon Effect Rebuilt on Bitcoin

STRC pays 11.5% while Strategy keeps the Bitcoin. A sourced analysis of how the preferred stock rebuilds the Cantillon effect on the protocol built...

Development:

BEYOND MONEY

Bitcoin Core Funding: Concentration, Compliance, Burnout

Who funds Bitcoin Core, what concentrated funding selects for, and why developer burnout looks structural. Plus the node-level immune reaction unde...

Funding:

BEYOND MONEY

Funding: Why Bitcoin-Only Companies Drift

Independent research across 169 companies reveals a structural pattern: above $50 million in fiat capital, every company has introduced non-Bitcoin...

Marketing:

BEYOND MONEY

Bitcoin Influencers: How Sponsor Money Shapes the Signal

Sponsorships, referral programs, and the compounding loop: how fiat money decides which Bitcoin voices get heard and which creators stay invisible.

Plebs:

BEYOND MONEY

The Comfortable Trap: The Fiat-to-Bitcoin Transition

Knowing fiat is broken and living like it are two different things. On the overlap between two economic realities and the daily choices that close ...

Where it ends:

BEYOND MONEY

Leaving Fiat: The Prison Door is Open

At a practical preparedness event, many participants already owned Bitcoin, and most of them were angry. Their sentiment was that Bitcoin had been ...

Slowing down on YouTube for the summer to finish an article series (coming end of June) and to typeset the interior of the #Portuguese edition of Beyond Money. The translation was done by Sandra Simões, a professional translator with decades of experience. She had heard about Bitcoin but wasn't really familiar with how aligned it was with her values when she came to my first in-person Bitcoin education meetup end of 2024. Sandra has stuck around to learn more about it ever since. She was already years deep into spirituality and personal development when Bitcoin found her, so when she offered to translate Beyond Money, a book that lives right at that intersection, there really was only one person made for the task. I'm incredibly grateful for the care, attention to detail, and decades of experience she put into crafting the final draft in her native language. Her approach also keeps all the writing Ai-free, even in Portuguese. All of this was a labour of human love :) Além do Dinheiro will be a very limited print run, so if you want to secure your softcover copy, pre-orders are open at

Edição impressa em português (Pré-encomenda) | BEYOND MONEY

Pré-encomenda: envio previsto para outubro de 2026 Idioma: português europeu Tradutora: Sandra Simões, tradutora profissional com décadas de ex...

and

eBook edição em português (Pré-encomenda) | BEYOND MONEY

Pré-encomenda: envio previsto para outubro de 2026 Idioma: português europeu Tradutora: Sandra Simões, tradutora profissional com décadas de ex...

PS. The "program your own Nostr algorithm" tutorial I mentioned in my last video is still coming this summer, just on its own timeline rather than a fixed schedule.

I had a lot of fun making this tutorial, knowing the people watching actually asked for it made the work involved worth it ⚡️

Working on the NOSTR video for next Tuesday. This one is from last week about how money by decree is a repeating economic karmic cycle and why bitcoin is the exit.

Friends from the Bitcoin community shared this with me: June 27th 2026. Consider joining us

Rothbard 100

Rothbard 100 — 100 Years of Freedom | 27 June 2026 · Porto

Celebrate the centenary of Murray Rothbard at the biggest libertarian event in Portugal. June 27, 2026, Porto. Featuring Hoppe, Kinsella and Miguel...

For search: #Libertarian #AustrianEconomics #Bitcoin #Rothbard #Saifadean #Portugal #Porto

What if Bitcoin were the last monetary system before we no longer need one?

Beyond Bitcoin (2140)

What if Bitcoin were the last monetary system before we no longer need one?

A decade ago my SMB eCommerce clients kept asking me the same questions so I started making YouTube tutorial videos to answer them. I didn't intend to "become a YouTuber," but I enjoyed the one-to-many approach and naturally transitioned into it. The shark in the space was Shopify and 99% of YouTubers were teaching "get-rich-quick" eCommerce methods to retail because the pool was massive and the affiliate payouts were up to $200 per conversion. Ecwid eCommerce was unknown, their commissions were hardly double digits, and my audience was tiny. I was promoting the underdog in a sea of noise and getting paid poorly for it, but I knew from my own and my client's experience that Ecwid was genuinely better and cheaper than Shopify. My channel didn't grow very quickly and never made nearly as much money as those promoting the bigger player with deeper pockets, but I slept well. That's all that mattered to me. The dynamic today feels identical. Bitcoin lives inside the crypto space on YouTube and so the fiat incentives around it have the same structure: You either play the clickbait game, chase NGU narratives, shill shitcoins, and ride the algo, or you focus on signal and experience slow/stagnant growth. Same trade-off, different space. Going back to making a tutorial video like this reminded me of that whole journey.

Payments in my online store now go directly to my own node! So excited I finally got this all set up; no middleman, no fees skimmed. As a non-developer, SSH-ing into a VPS was like magic, debugging WooCommerce hooks was a headache, but finally having it all running smoothly is so cool 🙌🏼 Also added backup payment methods over eCash. I just need to get better at balancing Lightning channels 😅 If you've been waiting to get the book in sats, now's the time:

Beyond Money

Shop | BEYOND MONEY

Products Archive | BEYOND MONEY

Since yesterday's post, the same conversation has found me everywhere. Nostr, YouTube, a text from a friend asking if Bitcoin has been compromised. So I pulled the thread into something that can outlast a feed:

The Prison Door is Open

Last weekend I spoke at a practical preparedness event, and to my surprise, many participants already owned Bitcoin. Their questions were sharp, bu...

Last weekend I spoke at an event full of preppers. Many were familiar with or own Bitcoin and so the questions were sharp. But the energy was frustration and anger. To them, Bitcoin had been captured and compromised. My response was Bitcoin can't be captured or compromised, only people can. And what else could we expect from fiat other than attempts to control the protocol that ends the 5,000 year ponzi? But it got me thinking. The people closest to seeing and implementing the solution are the same ones yelling at the fiat soap opera instead of building, running nodes, taking agency. Why? What if the familiar instinct to forfeit agency, relinquish responsibility, point fingers, and divide is itself the psyop? What if that is exactly what the system wants from us right now? What if we said NO? So what does it matter if the guards are corrupt? The prison door is open. The better question is why is it that so many who know this are still in the cell? Run a node. #Knots #BIP110

I'll be presenting "Sovereign Money" at the IV Encontro Nacional GNPA in Ovar, Portugal on May 1st. It's a 3-day preparedness and self-sufficiency gathering with talks on radio communications, off-grid energy, water purification, emergency shelters, and more. If you're a Bitcoiner in Portugal, this is one of the most aligned non-Bitcoin communities you'll find; sovereignty, self-sufficiency, interest in technology, and healthy skepticism towards centralized systems. Last year @brito who is building Geogram on Nostr invited me to present at a similar event and it was one of the most receptive audiences I've had outside of Bitcoin. This time I'm going deeper into the fiat problem, sound money, and Bitcoin as an exit. Friday, May 1st at 14:30 in Ovar. If you're in Portugal or nearby, join us.