The Mirror You Can't Dodge
When a human coach reflects something back to you, part of you can dismiss it. "That's their perspective." "They don't fully understand my situation." "They're projecting."
When an AI reads everything you've ever written about what you believe, then compares it to what you're actually doing, and shows you the gap, there's nowhere to hide!
Especially when you've removed its diplomatic filter and given it explicit permission to challenge you and point out when you're not living what you say.
In fact, if was even more powerful than hearing feedback from another person.
Why?
Zero option for me to go "well that's just like your opinion man". It was my own words, reflected back with total recall.
I didn't expect this to be the most powerful use of AI. But it was.
I could have gone a lifetime without realizing where I was not living my own values.
The catch: AI can't do this by default. You have to teach it your material first. Most people skip that step, which is probably why most people think AI isn't useful for deep work.
Not saying there aren't many glitches too. But the potential for AI to help people grow is enormous and largely untapped.
Bitcoin miners are like ants (hear me out!)
Ants eat crumbs, ie: food that humans either can't use or don't want.
Bitcoin mining works the same way. It uses surplus energy at times and places where no one else can use it: midday solar overflow, nighttime wind surplus, stranded gas in remote locations.
It doesn't compete with electricity. It eats the crumbs that no one else could use. And in the process, it makes the whole grid more efficient and more resilient.
Why does Bitcoin get more enduring criticism than other disruptive technologies such as the Internet?
Simple: Bitcoin is not only a technology, it is an asset. There was no financial penalty for being late to the Internet. You just used clunkier, slower tech for longer.
But if you're late to Bitcoin, you don't only have mild inconvenience you have to reconcile financial cost too. We saw the same pattern with investors who missed the tech boom and in particular early Amazon doubters
The tweet below is a textbook real-time illustration of this at play, showing three psychological principles at play at once
1. Cognitive Dissonance
2. Sour Grapes Effect (a dissonance-reduction tactic)
3. Omission Regret
1. Cognitive Dissonance
When two cognitions conflict such as “I am a smart” and “I passed on an opportunity that turned out to be enormously successful”, psychological discomfort arises. To reduce it, people don’t change their original decision or admit error. Instead, they seek/emphasize information that justifies the original choice. (Leon Festinger, 1957)
2. Sour grapes effect (Sjåstad et al, 2020)
Principle: People disparage goals they failed to attain (“the grapes are sour anyway”) to eliminate the pain of missing out
In this context: “I didn’t buy Bitcoin, therefore it must be worthless/wasteful/destined to fail
3. Omission Regret
Regret from not acting (omission) is often felt more intensely than regret from a bad action. People cope by rewriting the narrative: the missed asset “was never that good.” (Ritov & Baron, 1995)
Gizmodo’s “How Much Should I Regret Not Buying Bitcoin?” (2018) even frames it exactly this way for non-investors
Keen's admission of the missed £10 BTC price is immediately followed by a list of long-standing objections that conveniently justify the non-decision. Bitcoiners will call it “saltiness,” but the underlying psychology at play is standard, peer-reviewed behavioral science.
Keen may defend himself by trying to argue "the tech really is genuinely bad". But in stating that "Bitcoin uses a lot of energy per transaction" (a piece of misinformation that anyone who has spent 1 hour researching Bitcoin mining will know is untrue: Bitcoin energy use does not come from its transactions) he has lost the right to claim objectively that his criticisms come out of understanding.
Rather, he has illustrated a huge asymmetry in that he has spent countless hours making videos against Bitcoin, but almost no time understanding the technology.
In his tweet thread, you can also see a classic red-flag that rather than engage on an issue, he will level one (widely debunked) claim after another. Brandolini's law in action: it takes longer to debunk BS than to create it.
However, these are human frailties that can be overcome with higher self-awareness and lower ego.
If the need to "be right" is reduced, then a person can become intellectually curious and re-appraise an asset. Indeed the ability to change one's mind is a defining aspect of real intelligence.
Michael Saylor illustrated the possibility of this path.
I finally relented and started using Claude 72 hours ago.
Here's what's happened over the weekend as a direct result.
First, it was another Bitcoiner's results that showed me the potential power of using it. His output quality and quantity had gone up and I asked him why. He showed me behind the scenes. That crossed me over the line.
Within a few hours I could see what the fuss was about. I'm happy to open-source what I've been doing so far, in case its useful to others. I'm still in the experimental phase, so I'm not recommending others do this - just sharing.
1. Fed it my 4 books, 100+ articles, podcast transcripts, keynotes, and over 100 coaching videos I use with clients. Asked it to mine across 6 dimensions: stories, voice patterns, coaching frameworks, repurposing opportunities, "named concepts", and cross-world connections (to help me link between the Bitcoin, coaching, and breathworks worlds I move in).
2. Taught it to coach me using my own methodology. Then asked it to mirror back where I wasn't applying my own principles to myself. It came back with 10 areas. Not integrity gaps. Blind spots. I couldn't dismiss them because the mirror was built from my own words.
3. Changed the default from "helpful assistant" to "thinking partner who challenges me." The default setting for AI is reactive, diplomatic, task-focused. I said: optimise for growth, not comfort. It now initiates hard questions I haven't thought to ask. It's taken a lot of coaching, but we've got there now.
4. Built persistent memory across sessions. Session logs, a master context file, a parking lot for half-formed ideas.
5. Created a voice profile so it writes like me. It suggests content, I rewrite it then show it to Claude. Claude feeds back why it thinks I've made those changes and learns. I affirm and correct it's analysis.
6. Mapped vocabulary across my three worlds (breathwork&meditation, coaching, Bitcoin) so it bridges them when generating content.
7. Taught it meta-principles, for example, whenever I discover something for myself, it now knows my next thought is to ask "who in bitcoin can this help", or "how can this help my clients", or "how would this help someone in Kenya wanting to promote bitcoin as freedom money?"
8. Built a story bank with every retellable story from my career, tagged by principle and cross-application.
9. Set up an autonomous mining protocol (content mining, not bitcoin mining) so any new content I give it gets broken down and integrated without prompting.
10. Asked it to hold me accountable on areas where I've let slip in the past, which I care about
11. Real-time feedback on what's working
12. It showed me how much content I'd created and forgotten. I have a pattern of building things and moving on without leveraging them. It named this pattern and now catches it.
Some people say AI makes you intellectually lazy. My experience has been the exact opposite. I have thought more deeply across more threads than I have in several years.
The possible applications are so vast that my imagination is firing faster than I can keep track of new ideas, even with AI's help!
The biggest surprise: the least interesting thing it does is save time. What I didn't expect was the "mirroring". As humans, our eyes face outwards. We don't see ourselves. AI mirrors you from inside your own material. It reads what you've said you believe, compares it to what you're doing, and shows you the gap. That's real coaching. And it's impossible to dodge because the mirror is built from your own words.
It found 10 areas where I wasn't living my own principles, and reflected those back to me. It nailed every single one. I
I wouldn't recommend everyone dive into and use it this way without caution. AI is a magnifying glass. Used well, it illuminates powerfully. Used poorly, it can burn. For example, after turning off the diplomacy filter it made some observations that labelled current disposition as "fixed state". A coach would never do that, because it sends a negative command to our Reticular Activation System.
So Claude has the potential to be better than any human coach at accountability, mirroring, and gap-analysis. There are probably other things it can do better than me also and its exciting to explore.
The areas humans will always have the edge is inspiring change, creating beliefs breakthroughs in a couple of sentences, empathy, situational awareness, contextual awareness, intuition, seeing how feedback is landing - where to push, when to wait for absorption, when to be more direct - when to praise, when to create constructive discomfort as a growth motivator, when to "shine the light on the behavior that it serves someone to exhibit more of".
It takes experience to know which feedback to absorb and which to set aside, and having been a coach for 2 decades, I can see how to correct it. But for someone willing to do the work, it's the most powerful thinking partner I've encountered.
72 hours. I feel like I'm just getting started.
Like the environmental narrative on Bitcoin, the way VC tries to generate returns is back to front.
... which is probably why so much of the industry went for the easy gains of early exit liquidity through investing in ICOs rather than doing their job of raising real people bringing real commercially valuable ideas to the world.
In every other high-stakes industry, elite performance is coached. But in Venture, it's largely ignored. We’re suffering from the same blindspot that cost Oracle the America’s Cup despite being the better-funded by some margin.
1. "Bikes on Boats."
In 2017, Team NZ beat Oracle in the America’s Cup final
7:1 by overcoming a bias called "functional fixedness." For 90 years, sailors used their arms for power. Team NZ realized that was backward. Legs generate more power, freeing hands for precision. They put "bikes on boats" and won. In VC, we have the same blindspot. We say we "invest in people" but treat their performance as a fixed trait. It’s back to front. If we want to win on the global stage, we have to stop leaving founders to figure it out alone and start treating them like professional athletes.
2. The 60% Opportunity
In any portfolio, up to 20% of companies will likely succeed no matter what, and ~20% will likely fail regardless. The real performance of a fund lives in that middle 60%. These are the companies that either fail or turn into "living dead" because of avoidable leadership friction. You can resurrect a lot of those companies through coaching. That’s the real unlock.
3. On Fiduciary Duty
If you claim to invest in people but do nothing to optimize their potential, are you actually fulfilling your fiduciary duty? The burden of proof shouldn’t be on why we coach. It should be on why a VC firm would choose not to pull the single biggest lever they have to control their returns.
4. The All Blacks Standard
Coaching isn’t mentoring. It isn't just telling people to do what you did. In sports, it takes a decade for a former elite player to re-emerge as an elite coach. It is a profession in its own right. If we aren't putting our coaches through a real interview process, the same way the All Blacks select a head coach, we aren't going to see transformational results.
5. Making it the Default
Stop treating coaching as a "nice-to-have" or a remedy for struggling founders. Make it the default. We made coaching a requirement for investment years ago, and it’s the biggest performance multiplier we’ve found. You don’t wait for your team to start losing before you give them a coach. You coach them because they're the best, because their performance dictates our returns, and because it is commercially irresponsible for us to continue to ignore this truth.
It’s time to stop putting the burden of proof on why we should coach, and start putting in on why we’re okay with leaving so much performance on the table.
Just gave an online talk on Bitcoin and ESG to 200+ regulators from Securities Commissions, Banks, Central Banks from around the world including...
Nigeria, Canada, El Salvador, Indonesia, Ukraine, New York, NZ, South Africa
It's the second talk like this I've given. Over 350 regulators in total reached., including heads of banks, Central Banks and Securities Commissions.
Each time we engage with regulators and policymakers is a chance to put misinformation to bed permanently, and (re)educate them about why Bitcoin ticks the right boxes for them.
This in turn helps smooth the road for more nation state Bitcoin adoption, better ability to allow Bitcoin as a medium of exchange and more Bitcoin mining harvesting stranded energy on and off grids.
Onwards!
Just ran a breathworks and meditation session for a Bitcoin event in Australia for ~100 Bitcoiners!
Conference organizer reported back "the overwhelming feedback was very positive! I've had a number of people asking where they can do more down this path"
I've always said that sovereignty over your own mind is the ultimate self-sovereignty. And meditation and breathwork is the hack that gets you there.
Like Bitcoin itself, its not a "get transformed quick" scheme, it requires some initial effort to learn, and then some effort to do a 20 min practice each day.
But if raising personal resilience, energy-levels, freedom of thought, imperviousness to the uninformed takes about Bitcoin from others, relentlessness in orangepilling, better empathy and communication is something important to you - then I've personally found breathwork & meditation the ultimate low-time preference way to achieve that state and maintain it.
It's honestly the reason that I've been able to respond objectively, neutrally and intuitively to so many uneducated takes on Bitcoin for 4 years without getting emotional.
Running a course online (2.5 hrs/day for 3 days) exclusively for Bitcoiners this Fri-Sun if you'd like to experience it. I'd like to see all Bitcoiners eventually experience this.
In transparency, there is a small fee for this (which doesn't go to me, I've been doing it as a volunteer since I was trained to run the course 19 years ago). Proceeds goes to the organization Art of Living (
http://artofliving.org) who runs it to support service initiatives.
If you're interested to join us, send me a message or comment.
As a climatetech investor, I have seen over 200 technologies and innovations. But the leading one by far in terms of its ability to create an immediate positive environmental externalities is Bitcoin mining, because
1. It uses existing, proven technology
2. It can solve problems (such as mitigation and wasted renewable energy) profitably, which other technologies simply cannot
3. It is modular, relatively low budget, rapidly scaleable and does not need government incentives and subsidies to make it viable
4. It creates positive social consequences in parallel as an organic byproduct of using the technology (such as reducing residential power prices, helping grid operators stabilize grids, obviating the need for gas peaker plants and expensive grid upgrades, and mitigating the negative impacts of putting addition AI load onto grids). It also helps renewable operators with the current backlash they are facing due to the high levels of waste energy they are not able to sell (with costs that are often picked up by the grid operator via curtailment payments).
This is why 7 out of 7 of the grid operators we know of that have experimented with Bitcoin mining have embraced it and are looking to scale up its usage on the grid.
Like Electric Vehicles (EVs), Bitcoin is a fully electrified network, so it has no direct emissions.
Like EVs, BTC has "indirect emissions" because some of that electricity was generated using fossil fuels.
However ... also like EVs, each time someone uses it, rather than the old, more emission intensive technology it replaces (fossil fuel transport in the case of EVs, the more emission intensive banking network in the case of Bitcoin), it creates a net emission reduction.
Here's a view we have comparing 2 net emission reducing technologies.
In terms of usefulness, both are useful, just in different places and different ways. EVs help transport people in the West around, and are about convenience.
Bitcoin's fastest adoption has been outside the West where it helps people transport and store money without high remittance fees, high inflation and the lack of a banking network - and is often about existential need.
The end of Bitcoin mining gaslighting in mainstream media
Litmaps, a powerful research tracking tool, reveals that patient zero for all junk science on Bitcoin's environmental impact was a single 6 page "commentary" by Alex de Vries. (A commentary in the context of an academic journal means a short opinion piece that does not to go through a full peer-review process and which does not use novel empirical data).
The method he used to claim that Bitcoin's environmental damage was a growing concern was his fundamentally flawed "energy use per transactions" method (Bitcoin energy use does not come from its transactions, therefore it can scale transaction volume exponentially without increasing emissions).
de Vries' metric was later debunked in no fewer than 4 separate academic journals as part of full length academic papers.
*Masanet et al 2019
https://researchgate.net/publication/335456595_Implausible_projections_overestimate_near-term_Bitcoin_CO_2_emissions
*Dittmar et al. 2019
https://nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0534-5
*Sedlmeir et al, 2020
SpringerLink
The Energy Consumption of Blockchain Technology: Beyond Myth - Business & Information Systems Engineering
When talking about blockchain technology in academia, business, and society, frequently generalizations are still heared about its – supposed...
*Sai and Vraken 2023
https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096720923000441#br0070
The entire body of de Vries' work was systematically debunked by Sai and Vranken in late 2023
source:
https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096720923000441#br0070
Immediately after Sai & Vranken's study, all mainstream media outlets stopped covering de Vries' Bitcoin "research"
In fact, 22 mainstream media outlets have now flipped to covering Bitcoin's environmental benefits (source:
https://x.com/DSBatten/status/2007095059963949217) which have been well established in 24 peer reviewed full length academic studies. (source:
The Changing Narrative on Bitcoin Mining
What
A further 15 sustainability media outlets are now also covering Bitcoin mining's environmental benefits:
source:
The Changing Narrative on Bitcoin Mining
What
But just as years after the myth "all fats cause cholesterol" was debunked, many people are still unaware of the science, the same is true of Bitcoin mining
In both cases, the population was misinformed over many years. As a result, many people are still unaware that the contemporary academic literature, case studies and grid operators themselves all overwhelmingly support Bitcoin mining's environmental benefits
source:
https://x.com/DSBatten/status/2013987189256810703
It is only a matter of time before policymakers, regulators, political leaders and investment committees catch up.
Once they do we will see mainstream adoption of Bitcoin, and mainstream adoption of Bitcoin mining as part of climate action (aka: what the peer reviewed research tells us it is)
source:
https://x.com/compose/articles/edit/2009351000952279040
While many media outlets are now objectively commenting on Bitcoin, others (Financial Times, The Economist, Verge, Wired, New Scientist) have simply pivoted to changing the type of Bitcoin misinformation they publish.
www.batcoinz.com/p/what-would-the-world-look-like-if
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