Freedom = Personal Responsibility

Less freedom in exchange for less personal responsibility and more hand holding.

More freedom in exchange for more personal responsibility and less hand holding.

How much freedom do you want?

How much responsibility are you willing to take?

How much hand holding do you need?

Choose accordingly.

#freedom #bitcoin #selfcustody #liberty #life

Working out Costa Rica style.

#travel #fitness #costarica

No one gets followers by being middle ground. Extreme views create traction and interaction so all we hear are the wild opinions of unbalanced people.

It’s not popular to talk about a balanced diet, it’s vegan or carnivore. You can extrapolate this concept out across the board.

I look forward to a time when the middle ground is appreciated again.

#balance #themiddlepath

Bitcoin has a beautiful cyclicality to it. The rhythm of the four-year cycle is bringing a stability into my life that mirrors the four seasons and the corresponding feelings that accompany them. Cycles bring a predictability to life that gives me a focus, and something to work towards. In this way as much as any other Bitcoin has been a positive influence on my wellbeing.

You can look at the four-year cycle as a mirror of the seasons with each season extrapolated out to roughly one year. My journey began in the Bitcoin Fall of 2021, just as prices were approaching their ATH and greed was peaking. It was this anticipation of a harvest that pulled me into my first purchase as I saw those around me bearing the fruits of their labours. My own ignorance of the Bitcoin cycle also led me to believe that demand and price appreciation would only go up from here and it was with the naivete of one who has never seen a harsh winter that I jumped into the cycle late in the day.

The winter following shortly after was harsh. A plummeting fall in price from such lofty heights was especially hard on those who had not enjoyed the fruits of their labours, and the Bitcoin winter which came in 2022 took many by surprise. In my case due to having not actually been through a Bear market, the fall in the fiat price was welcome news and I began the process of steadily storing away Sats over the year that followed. When the winter became especially grim after the collapse of FTX my conviction simultaneously grew that the sun would shine again and I worked my arse off that year to stack as many sats away in my cold storage locker, knowing a great harvest would be mine someday. It was this exact goal that pulled me through a very difficult year and brought hope when all was bleak in the World.

Spring came with a bright bloom of new hope in 2023. The world was opening again, and Bitcoin had survived another Winter. I was no longer a complete newbie and the value of having something tangible to focus on was becoming clear. Spring in the Bitcoin cycle as with the season is a vibrant time. The appreciation in the value of my holdings accumulated during the winter was becoming obvious and my conviction began to grow. I started absorbing more Bitcoin focused content and summer seemed to loom close. This part of the cycle is uplifting for the soul, and I felt in a way I’d never felt before that there was a predictability to this asset class that I could depend upon. The dollar price became less important other than waiting for pullbacks so I could convert more of my devaluing fiat into as many sats as possible. I began to dream of the freedom that BTC could bring me and my family in the coming summer if I could only double down on my conviction and work harder. I did.

When 2024 rolled around I had changed entirely. Not only had I survived a gruelling Winter, Spring had revitalised and encouraged me, and I was using this passion to learn new skills including running my own node, setting up more advanced cold storage, and considering how I would secure my families harvest into the future. Utilising a multi-signature vault was intriguing me, and the value of my assets continued to rise, be it in a volatile manner. The volatility began to bother me less as I started to see with clarity that all that matters is how much I can put away. This summer coincided with literal summer in my work and gave me the energy needed to put in long days with total conviction that something great was coming. It became clear to me that this cycle was going to be a permanent fixture in my life and that winter would return with all its opportunities. Suddenly what was most important was how I would enjoy the upcoming Bitcoin Summer, where I would be for Fall, and most importantly the following Winter. The cycle had captured me and was now a driving force in my decision making.

Midway through the Summer I felt an intense compulsion to change my life and start fresh. Bitcoin had given me a focus, hope for a better future, and a reason to work hard. It had inspired me to dream bigger well empowering me with the means to break free of another cycle I was perpetually stuck in.

I finally broke free in July this year. With my family I left NZ and set forth with the hard earnt BTC locked in a multi-sig vault as a confident assurance that I had the means to start anew somewhere else. Bitcoin is fuelling my current adventure and allowing me the possibility of planting roots somewhere new, ready to sow a late season crop and reap an even greater harvest in the Fall of 2025.

The Winter will come again and the motivation that accompanies it. The Bitcoin cycle is bringing a structure and purpose to my life that I never had before. I look forward to completing a full Bitcoin cycle and the breadth of experience it brings. It is a beautifully un-predictably predictable thing.

#Bitcoin #Bitcoincycle #life #seasons #finance #wisdom

We all have our blindspots 🤣

Keep yourself seperate enough to stay clean and involved enough to stay aware 🙏

If you aren’t learning you’re stagnating.

Life is one great opportunity to learn new skills, understand new concepts, and create new ways of being and relating. More so now than ever before.

For thousands of years you would have been restricted to the information you could access via listening, reading and apprenticing under a master. If you were lucky enough to be taught to read, then you also had to access written material. You could only listen when someone was willing to teach and you had the available time to be attentive. Finding a master to teach you was difficult and most teachers were specialists who could teach a lot on a niche but little on anything else. In other words, living in any period prior to the last 30 years was rather restrictive upon your ability to learn consistently, and should you have been born in a place without basic education in reading and writing then it was even worse. Education was a true luxury of the wealthy, the highborn, and males. If you were positioned otherwise in society, you would get so far and no further.

This is no longer the case. People in developing nations now have access to 24-hour information through the internet, online libraries, YouTube and large language models like Chat-GPT. These are free and available for learning audibly and visually, and every day more tertiary institutions are opening their courses for one and all. Even in a menial labour job it is now possible to put in ear buds and learn entirely new ways of thinking and behaving as you work. For more people than ever education is not a privilege but a right, so what humanity now faces is not access to learning but the desire to learn. Curiosity is lacking.

You must cling desperately to your love of learning, the voracious curiosity of your youth, and the passion to understand. Do not allow the simplicity of much of the world’s noise to cloud your senses and dull your mental faculties. More than at any time in history before us things are moving fast, and many are being left behind. Learning is itself a skill and the more you absorb the better at it you become. To be a master learner is to thrive in a world of rapidly evolving opportunities, and for the avid self-educator the time is ripe to excel in the field. 

Prosperity can be defined as the ability to solve problems, and we have plenty to choose from. As you learn your mind becomes more plastic, open and responsive. This type of mind is broad and deep, it is expansive and can see things from an interconnected view. Your mind when exposed to breadth and depth becomes a master problem solving computer that will aid you in your pursuit of prosperity and meaning.

Do not wallow in the mire of stagnation of the mind. Learn every day, across a wide range of topics. Think like a polymath and allow your intellect to grow and flourish under the education of an in-exhaustible flow of high-quality information. It is the time to learn, and you have every tool at your disposal. Use them.

#learning #education #personalgrowth #excellence #life

They want you to keep your assets on the exchange and work hard at making it discouraging to withdraw. I keep a small amount of BTC on crypto.com I use for spending through their debit card. Useful for travel.

I went to withdraw some yesterday to my lightning wallet and was caught out with a 60,000 Satoshi fee… couldn’t believe it. Worst of all is that the fee is fixed and I never even purchased the BTC on there. I sent it there from my Jade.

Cheeky bastards. I gave some feedback.

‘They were naked and they were not ashamed.’

The symbolism of Adam and Eve resonates throughout the ages as the ideal of human physicality. You can be naked and not ashamed when you are proud of your body. The body should be the pride of not only the young but any adult in their prime of life and at any stage of life it is possible to be vigorous for your age.

We have been given amazing bodies with the capability to be strong, muscular and upright, if we would only use them well.

All of us are different in our composition. Some are tall, others short, some lean and others broad. Not all of us have the capability to look like fitness models, however we can all develop our physiques into something we can be proud of. When we take care of our physical selves we feel more confident, have better energy and vitality, and experience an overall improvement in our wellbeing.

The four V’s; Vitality, Vibrancy, Vigour and Virility are all greatly enhanced through the development of a strong, balanced and fit body.

How we achieve this is totally personal. The necessary core elements are to regularly use our bodies in ways that test our strength, agility, balance, endurance and mobility, gradually increasing the difficulty over time.

There is nothing to be proud of without effort and consistency.

Pride in our bodies, the pursuit of physical capability, and the development of a physique we can be naked and not ashamed of is a worthy pursuit we can work on our entire lives. 

The best time to start is now.

#fitness #strength #posture #wellbeing

How does my life depend on stacking sats? In what way will not stacking sats threaten my life?

I’m a sats stacker, I just find this statement puzzling 🤔

Surfer at sunset

Uvita Beach, Costa Rica

#travel #photography

Bitcoin Jungle is a great vibe. After 6 weeks in Costa Rica we finally made it to Uvita and the Saturday #Bitcoin markets.

Super nice vibes, lovely produce and products. Almost all vendors accepting sats as payment. Felt so good to spend peer to peer for once. Lightning ⚡️ worked a dream.

#bitcoinjungle #costarica #travel #lightningnetwork #worldschooling

Crypto.com charge a fee of 0.0006 BTC for every single BTC withdrawal. That’s 60,000 sats or around $40 USD at todays prices.

Wild stuff. How are retail entrants new to Bitcoin supposed to deal with this?

Crypto does much to reinforce the same toxic issues plaguing traditional finance.

#Bitcoin fixes this, but only if you can find the right exchanges to buy it and get it into custody.

It is time to renew the power and passion of ancient mythology, welcoming it back into our collective psyche. For lack of stories about ourselves we are rapidly losing our depth of tradition, character, feeling and expression. We need myths to guide us safely through the transition phase that is happening now and into a brighter future.

Myth is embracing of life in all its rich tapestry of experience. The world of myth refuses to cast strong moral judgments on its characters’ flaws but rather dives deeply into the human condition, embracing and even celebrating the dark, light, and all the shades which lie in between. Myth suits the times we are in, much as it suited the Greeks, Romans and Norse mythologies of the ancient West, or the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Jews of the Middle East, there are moments in History where myth must by necessity find itself experiencing a resurgence. Re-written and interpreted anew to bring back meaning and purpose where we have lost our way.

The person who is comfortable with ambiguity understands that morals are more a concern of Religion than myth and story. Yahweh of the Old Testament is extremely concerned with moral behavior.  Zeus on the other hand is not. Religion, especially the monotheistic ones are strictly adhered to and certain interpretations on behaviour and the nature of God and man so concretised as to be almost impossible to shift our understanding on. One such example is that of Solomon. According to the traditional interpretation Solomon’s wisdom was given him by God in a dream, downloaded like a new software program as a reward for choosing the gift of wisdom over wealth and pleasure. As the story goes Solomon then chose to pursue wealth and pleasure anyway and in the end was led astray by his hundreds of wives and mistresses. This can of course be interpreted differently. Solomon more likely developed his wisdom over decades and was in fact positively influenced into a less warlike and more open-minded reign than his father before him through his exposure to all the cultural, religious and behavioural differences of his wives and lovers. This was clearly the experience of the Greek King of the gods Zeus who’s many love affairs, conquests, mistakes and adventures led him to grow in wisdom and understanding over time. Zeus is a nuanced character and Greek mythology can accept that. Christianity on the other hand cannot accept a God who is not perfect, or a man who learns as much through his sin as his spiritual devotion. Hence we have the mythic Christ, made into a real life character who is supposed to be the literal incarnation of a perfect God, intolerant of any moral deviations whatsoever.

At times in history such a mythology as that espoused by the major Abrahamic faiths has been welcomed, relevant and even necessary for society to thrive. This is not one of those times. Hard and rigid ideas around morality, behaviour, relationships, ethics and faith are not what most people are looking for. We understand that rigid concepts can quicky lead us into tribalism, fear and hatred of those with different views to our own. Do we really need to go back here? Mythology on the other hand has no problem with fallible human nature; mistakes, death, hedonism, taboos (incest, patricide, rape and homosexuality) and even welcomes these concepts as deep parts of ourselves that we entertain but do not openly admit. Myth has a way of bringing the dark to the light and exposing our more shameful desires and behaviours for what they are, human. Mythology when followed loosely for its lessons and guiding principles on behaviour does not demand of us to judge others when they show themselves to be flawed, in fact it is our expectation that they are indeed flawed, for mythology has shown us this and taught us to accept and expect it. If the gods are flawed, and the heroes of humanity also, it is no surprise that our neighbours, colleagues and family members are also capable of doing hurtful, prideful and selfish things.

This is exactly why myth is more empowering for culture than religion. It has a lighter touch and in so doing allows for more flexibility and growth of new concepts and ideas. Religion moves slow and struggles with evolution (there are some exceptions of course), in general it is fixed. Myth is fluid and this fluidity opens it up for constant new iterations and additions to the story that naturally evolve as our concepts of the world shift and move. Religion and science struggle to see eye to eye, myth has no problem with it as they are completely distinct and separate realms of thought. It is the same in politics, religion worms its way into it, myth stays separate and is more commonly found in the arts, performance, film and storytelling. There is a beauty to its form and function that more closely follows nature.

At its core the stories of myth change but the essential themes remain. It is to these themes we much look for our inspiration and our guidance. Despite their antiquity they are as relevant now in these modern technological times as they were in ancient Babylon thousands of years ago. We cannot say the same for the religions practiced by the ancients, their archaic behaviours would in no way suit modern Western culture, because religion has a way of getting stuck. It is related to a fixed mindset in a way that myth is not. In the times we are in, fixed mindsets cannot possibly serve us. During a transition phase what is needed is flexible and malleable minds and behaviours that can adapt to rapidly changing environments. Closed and ossified beliefs and ideals will crack and crumble under the pressure of rapid and sustained change, or at best simply become obsolete leaving the individuals and cultures who observe them in the dust of the ones who can pivot quickly to a new way of living.

Let’s reconsider the ancient themes behind the myths, not becoming hung up on the stories themselves but rather on the characters, how they faced challenge, where they won and lost, their successes and failures, and their willingness to embrace all sides of their divinity and humanity. Without the richness of myth and the lessons gained from embedding it into our psyche, culture, and education we risk slipping into religious fanaticism, the emptiness of cynicism or the vagueness of confusion. At worse we will slip backwards into a dark age of violence, tribalism and fundamentalism that undoes decades of progress towards a more open minded, collaborative and equitable future for all humanity.

Myth has power to focus our minds, aid us in accepting our flaws, and bring passion and purpose into our lives individually and collectively. Let’s embrace it, grow with it, reinvent it, and create new traditions and practices suited to the times we now find ourselves in. Myths contain hope for a brighter future.

#myth #wisdom #lifelessons #life #philosophy #religion

Information technology is moving so fast, if you aren’t using it you are losing it. We are being offered an extremely rare opportunity to harness emerging tech that can rapidly and radically change our quality of life. The only caveat is that we must make the choice to adopt it now on our own terms, or be forced in the future to adopt it on somebody else’s.

Artificial Intelligence will become completely centralised and captured by big tech companies if we do not concurrently support and use decentralised and secure money. Humanity cannot flourish individually or collectively, under a centralised totalitarian political system that controls the information, the money, and the technology.

We can and must choose the path of decentralisation towards small, local, autonomous nodes interconnected on global networks much too large and secure to be censored or controlled by any centralised entity. One way or another we will be forced to use AI and digital money, currently we have a choice to make. Do we support and use the networks being built by the people for the people, or will we reinforce the bars of our own prison by choosing big tech and big state controlled and funded networks?

Many have not yet consciously used a large language model or purchased a cryptocurrency. Others have used LLM’s through search engines without understanding that this is AI. Some will ape into meme coins and other tokens this bull run hoping to make a quick buck, not realising the financial hope they desperately need is best placed in a decentralised and secure network like Bitcoin.

This is a race, and if you are not running you are losing by default. The gap between the early adopters of information tech and everyone else is broadening, the race for freedom or control well underway. Yet for the non-participant, ignorant to the titanic shift happening, they will find themselves playing catchup into a new world they had zero conscious input in creating.

We must spread the word, utilising the gift of time we still have to choose our own path and fight for our future freedoms. We must use it, or we will lose it.

#Bitcoin #AI #freedom #freedomtechnology #cryptocurrency #autonomy

I love AI image generation. It’s all about your imagination and how you can imagine your fantasies to life.

Playing with a concept around the Babylonian goddess Ishtar on Midjourney.

#AI #imagegenerator #midjourney #ancientsymbolism

The mouse is not king of the beasts, nor wolves farmed like sheep. Hornets do not make honey nor great white sharks kept in sea water cages.

Apex animals and their kind remain free for they are not easily dominated, coerced or controlled. Their unpredictability and potential for savagery are the key to their success at remaining wild.

Easily domesticated creatures can be made docile and in so doing are reduced to servants of their human masters. Are we any different?

Humans are the only apex predator that willingly gives away its freedom in exchange for a life of control. When did we decide that subservience was preferable to autonomy?

When we provide no threat we will inevitably be controlled by someone stronger. It is important to keep a little wildness alive. Let some unpredictability and savagery out at times. It will let people know we stand on our own two feet and stand free.

#wild #freedom #strength

I love these. #1 encapsulates so much.

Contained within the extremes of your character are your possible greatness and potential demise.

#life

Mediocrity is insidious. It sneaks up on you slowly and infiltrates your consciousness. Much as small amounts of poison built up subtly in the blood over time are not noticeable, so mediocrity builds into your character and you may not notice its effects until it’s too late. There is an antidote to the poison that grips so many, and it is the only one that has any lasting effect. The antidote is excellence.

Life is always pushing against you, rubbing you up the wrong way, challenging you. It can get to be so overwhelming at times that the temptation not to stand against it becomes very strong. Ease is a desirable state to crave and the harder life seems the more attractive it is. The mistake you can make is to equate average with enjoyment, as if by being mediocre your life will be better. This common misconception that by not trying, life becomes more enjoyable, is perpetuated by more people than you’d care to admit.

Some people espouse this ethos of mediocre living with evangelical zeal. According to them life is about taking the easy way out, just doing enough, and always chasing the good times. The fruit of such a philosophy is evident to everyone around them, except themselves. They are degrading into less of an inspiration with each year that goes by, yet remain convinced they are winning in life. Such is the nature of man, it is easier to see the results of mediocrity in others than it is in yourself. 

If you consider society at large you can see the poison of mediocre thought and action seeping its way into civilisation. Corners are cut, shortcuts taken, and challenges avoided. Socialist governments encourage this as mediocre people are dependent on them for support and this offers the excuse needed to print money and take control. Welfare is more commonly used to support people living mediocre lives than it is used to help those desperately in need.

When you live in mediocrity you will seek out activities that help you accept your own lack of purpose and drive. The poison that is eroding your desire for excellence will push you to numb yourself with things that help you feel good in the short term. Symptoms of the poison include the desire to feel less; escape pain, avoid struggle and remove risk. To achieve without work, have thoughts without thinking, and live without meaning. If you are experiencing these symptoms consider that you may have lapsed into mediocrity.

There is a way out. It is difficult, and there are no shortcuts. You must look with clarity at your life, with brutal honesty at each component of what makes up your character. Your thoughts, feelings, health, relationships, work, and finances. Where are you allowing mediocrity to seep in and poison yourself? If you can identify it and acknowledge that you alone are responsible for allowing the average to become the norm, then you can reverse the effects and begin striving for excellence.

The pursuit of excellence has the opposite effect on your life. It will also infiltrate your consciousness and shape your character but in a totally different way. Its effects are powerful and revolutionary on the way you think, act and behave. It will positively improve your thoughts, feelings, health, relationships, work, and finances because in each of these areas you will be embracing pain, struggle, challenge and risk. You will know that these are the instruments of your perfection and only through the refining of yourself in the crucible of life can the poison of mediocrity be flushed from your system. There is no other way.

Look around you at the life you are creating for yourself. Is it mediocre or is it excellent? Where are you letting yourself off, where is your character falling short, where could you do better?

When you take the easy path you repeatedly swallow the poison of mediocrity, and if left long enough it will kill your drive to life the life you deserve. Stop expecting life to be average, and you will level up accordingly. Make excellence your life ambition and stand against the tide of degradation that is sweeping through our culture like a tsunami. Be the best you can.

#life #personalgrowth #learning #lifelessons #wisdom #excellence