Six months into sobriety, I stumbled onto Bitcoin. It was late 2024, just before the U.S. election, and the finance world wouldn’t shut up about this BS called Bitcoin. I’d always written it off as a scam. Why? It didn’t play by the rules of traditional finance. Big banks run by egotistical CEOs hoarded the world’s wealth, propped up by a certain orange politician vowing to “make our country great again.” It was different, so I ignored it. But the addict in me was always hunting for the next high, and my fiat mindset was about to crash into something real.
Addiction wired my brain for instant gratification. Alcohol was my go-to, but any dopamine hit would do: YouTube videos promising to fix procrastination, hollow hookups, or stock picks that’d let me retire at 28. Short-term feel-goods always trumped long-term progress. That’s the fiat mindset. High time preference in a nutshell. “Hurry up and get your fix before inflation eats your paycheck. The money printer’s on, and the liquor store closes soon.” That impulse-driven life kept me blind to the greatest asset ever created, trapped in a cycle of consumption.
Then came the night I got orange-pilled. It was late, around midnight, and I’m pretty sure a Michael Saylor video flipped the switch. I don’t recall how I found it, but I remember the feeling: I’d discovered the one asset that could satisfy my cravings without destroying me. Bitcoin’s finite supply, 21 million coins, no more, hit like a revelation. If I buy some, you buy some, there’s less to go around. I’d pay any price because one day, it’ll all be gone. And no way am I letting central bankers print away the value of my time and energy. It was a middle finger to the system, and we all could use a little of that.
College gave me a crash course in economics: supply and demand, opportunity cost, inflation. I got it, but it was abstract. Satoshi Nakamoto made it concrete. He took those principles, coded them into an unchangeable protocol, and gave it to the world for free. No gatekeepers. No elite club telling me, “Sorry, you don’t qualify.” Bitcoin doesn’t care who you are. Compare that to fiat, where those closest to the money printer, call it the Cantillon effect, win every time. The same insiders guarding the gates run the presses. It’s rigged.
With Bitcoin, there’s no need to sift through sketchy stocks or pray a CEO doesn’t tank the company with a scandal. It’s a risk-off asset built for one thing: number go up. Not a portfolio, not an index, just one ticker: BTC. It’s the only asset I trust to outlast the noise.
Sobriety taught me to value what lasts. Bitcoin does too. It’s not just money; it’s a mindset shift from chasing highs to building wealth that can’t be diluted. If you’re still stuck in the fiat trap, running from one quick fix to the next, try Bitcoin. It might just be the high you’ve been searching for, one that doesn’t crash.
