A bit of honest introspection about where we are facing some headwinds in bitcoin adoption
Optimism is good, but it should be grounded optimism. If you want to win a World Cup, you don’t win it by ignoring your setbacks and weaknesses, you win by analysing these and learning from them.
Bitcoin adoption had a few setbacks last year that are seldom acknowledged, let alone analyzed, let alone learned from. This article is an attempt to analyze the video footage of our 2025 institutional game and come up with some suggested improvements for this year.
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What happens in price today has been foreshadowed in adoption trends months earlier.
Here's my latest piece on where we are facing solvable adopt...
This group are onboarding Bitcoin to pension funds, increasing Bitcoin corporate treasury adoption, furthering the integration of Bitcoin mining with AI datacenters and enabling long-term holders to access steady liquidity for living expenses without selling their BTC . They have run and operated multiple successful businesses already.
The feeling of the loneliness of leadership is a real thing to all of us who do something pioneering.
But, together we're transcending that feeling from being individual nodes, to one connected part of a human network.
Bitcoin is a peer to peer network. Who is your peer to peer network?
Mental Skills coach Gilbert Enoka contributed to the All Blacks winning back-to-back Rugby World Cup in 2011 and 2015. They'd previously lost 5 World Cups.
One key thing he changed was that previously, even though the All Blacks were normally the #1 team in the World heading into World Cups, they often abandoned their winning systems at key times when they found themselves behind on the scoreboard in a knock-out match.
Enoka got them to shift their focus from the scoreboard, to the systems/behaviors and mindsets that created great plays at these times.
In other words, he focused them not on the scoreboard, but back on trusting their systems and teammates, and focusing on the winning behaviors that created the desired results.
Many years ago, I was an associate with the firm that helped Sydney win the 2000 Olympics. One of my colleagues told me that she had worked with 5x Olympic Gold winner Ian Thorpe, who had developed the same approach. He didn't define "winning a race" as winning gold. He defined winning a race as "finding something that he could improve upon in his next race." This relentless focus on behaviors, not the scoreboard, allowed him to compete and win in multiple Olympics.
You don't have to be an elite sports professional to benefit from this principle
I've used this same system for more than 14 years with more than 60 founders and leaders, including the Bitcoin leaders and ambassadors group I run. On our recent group call, one person celebrated a successful cap raise. Another celebrated a shift in mindset that had caused a breakthrough in the development team after 6 months. We celebrated both equally. The first is a great milestone: we focus on unpacking what caused it (the behaviors and mindset shifts). The second win is a behavior/mindset shift that will create future wins on the scoreboard.
Both matter equally.
A relentless focus on the behaviors, skills, tactics systems and mindsets that create results is the best way to create results. If you define winning as "finding something to improve each day" - that's how winning on the scoreboard gets created.
Like sports, it is easier to apply this principle in a group of your peers, with a coach who is looking out for blindspots. Our next Bitcoin leaders group starts in April. Reach out if this is something you'd like to learn more about.
So which player had the better result?
Assuming other features of the serve are equal, notably speed, we would say that the one on the left served in at a higher percentage (20% vs 0%).
However, the server on the right has by far the better serving behaviors. This player has achieved a grouping, one of the most important things in serving because it is evidence of having a high degree of control. With coaching and direction they will soon be serving a high percentage of serves in. Likely they may just be hitting the ball consistently a fraction too early - which is an easy correction. The shooter on the left is all over the place, and got lucky on one serve. They will need a lot more coaching to produce the right consistent result (grip, throw, swing arc, follow through, leg drive, wrist pronation, breath...)
This visual serves as a reminder of the value of placing more emphasis on the right behaviors that create the result... that is if your goal is to win consistently.
20 years and 11 days ago, my father passed away from cancer. Days later I was at his funeral as person after person recounted the impact that he'd had on their lives as a coach, and teacher. At the time I was running a Bioinformatics company I'd started - an excellent thing to do, BUT ... it wasn't MY calling. Some people’s calling is to carve a new path from their parents. Mine had always been to follow, as a coach and teacher. But I'd avoided that because Dad was so good at it, I feared living in his shadow.
But at his funeral something changed: I saw my two futures: the initially comfortable but ultimately regret-filled future if I didn't pivot ... and the initially harder yet fulfilling one where I did. Within 9 months I'd told my board I would be leaving, and recruited my own replacement. I helped the company achieve escape velocity. But the incoming CEO guided it to the moon, setting the company up for its eventual exit.
Today, history repeats. Last year, after three years of voluntary advocacy, I partnered with MARA on a special assignment, part of which involved intensively shifting the Bitcoin mining narrative by taking the truth directly to influential outsiders. This assignment is about to come to a successful end (see chart below). Their help meant I had the time to rebut over 102 articles, write 61 Letters to authors of those articles and meet with 162 Regulators & Policymakers to present Bitcoin's ESG merits.
Many publications have now changed their editorial policy on Bitcoin mining to be nuanced and positive - something unthinkable just a couple of years prior. Thanks all who made this possible, including the hitherto unheralded player in this: MARA
I'd never intended to run my Bioinformatics company for more than a few years. I co-foundered it because I saw a chance to make a difference. And it did. Our software has been used to further our understanding of the evolution of each major new virus of the last 20 years.
I share this next parts as a reassurance ... and a reminder. When we do what is our true calling, we tend to have the biggest impact. I was running a single company, but as a coach I was able to coach more than 60 founders of tech companies, particularly “deeptech” companies.
I helped multiple ideas that were stuck in Universities turn into companies, and helped multiple companies attract capital and exit. One government entity wrote to me to say "[you have] helped us transform the research community [of New Zealand] at all levels."
I also never intended to do Bitcoin Mining FUD fighting for more than a few years.
In 2026 it's again time to follow my calling. I will be coaching more Bitcoin leaders, builders and educators. The work has started with some great Bitcoiners creating some great results for our ecosystem, including these: 
