Vast majority of what I see on Nostr is technology, coding, programming, and the like. It's easy to say that's because of the people I follow. Or, that I just need to find other rabbit holes to dive into. But, that is a form of blaming the user. Now, that all sounds negative, I know. The silver lining is that "We are still early!" and that Nostr feels a lot like the early internet days to me, a bit like when email was 100% text-based, hosted only on mainframes, and so on. Agree or disagree?
Bitcoin's 10 Pillars of Functional Intrinsic Value.
1. Avoids references to price to determine value. Nearly all Bitcoin price models are self referential and therefore true value is impossible to determine. Price based on price is a guess.
2. Strictly limits the use of technical indicators to avoid circular references to price. Although historical price data is interesting, like volume and open interest, it mostly answers "WHAT, WHEN, WHERE" questions. We seek answers re: HOW and especially WHY.
3. Opportunity to discover and expose financial data that supports past, present and present valuation. Utilization of history and trends, but also concepts. Most importantly, review the valuation timeline in relation to idea vectors.
4. Note that there is certainly overlap in these factors (decreases valuation estimate) but there is also missing synergy (increases valuation estimate). Plainly said, the numbers are likely wrong, even a mess. Proper research, including actual data extraction, will shine a light on the bugs. This is highly anticipated.
5. The factors are not equal weighted. In fact, like life, we need to consider the Pareto Principle. However, the Pillars in the model are subject to radical shifts over time, like Bitcoin itself. Certain events, the play of time, and more, will absolutely shift the importance of the Pillars.
6. There might be less than 10 Pillars and there might be more. This analysis should generate a proper friendly discussion. Most importantly, the 10 Pillars should convince many that there is actual, true, real value in Bitcoin. We answer objection that "Bitcoin has no value!" with a hammer blow. Perhaps someday, in the near future, all others shall say, "Only Bitcoin measures value!"
Harley Echlin (The Bitcoin Youth Podcast) interviewed me and here's the result:
Bitcoin and Life Advice with John Rhodes
https://fountain.fm/episode/sjd3hy6mUpdrv5wKKni1
It's also on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ5X_-CaS4A
nostr:nprofile1qyv8wue69uhnyvpe9ccnyv3wxgcnzt338qargwp58qq3yamnwvaz7tmzv46xzt33xcmrztnfduqzpy0mdd752xsn8nc7wdhakcqz4309q29he86pzq5gamkhdh6ekkp3wzr2qj is AWESOME. Appreciate this guy so much. He gave me an oppt'y to tell my Bitcoin story.
In an effort to help everyone get the most out of this, I built out a "Follow Along" set of bullet points. Please let Harley know if this is useful!
-- -- --
LESSON 1: âEverything Is Moneyâ â The Corporate Illusion
Main Idea: Every benefit you get from a jobâtitle, insurance, retirement plansâis just money in a different wrapper.
Breakthrough: Once you see this, you realize you can leave. You can replicate or exceed it on your own terms.
Quote: âEverything was money. The healthcare? Just money. The reputation? Money.â
Action: Translate all your job benefits into pure money. Then ask: Could I build this myself?
--
LESSON 2: âFreedom TO and Freedom FROMâ
Main Idea: True freedom means two things:
Freedom to do what you want.
Freedom from systems that control you.
Connection to Bitcoin: Bitcoin enables both by giving you sovereignty over your time, energy, and mobility.
Illustration: During the pandemic, John refused to complyânot out of rebellion, but because he had already started the mental, financial, and philosophical escape.
--
LESSON 3: The Power of Ownership â âBuy, Then You Seeâ
Main Idea: Buying even a tiny amount of Bitcoin changes you.
Why? Because ownership makes you pay attention. What you own, you study. What you study, you value.
Quote: âWhen you buy something, you become an owner. And when youâre an owner, you care.â
--
LESSON 4: Education = Sovereignty
Main Idea: Bitcoin isnât just an asset. Itâs a lens on reality. Learning about it changes how you see everything.
Supporting Ideas:
âThe more people learn, the more they acquire.â
âBitcoin takes 100 hours to understand. Maybe a lifetime.â
Example: Discovering The Creature from Jekyll Island was a mind-splitting moment. Reality itself cracked open.
--
LESSON 5: Bitcoin Is More Real Than Reality
Main Idea: Bitcoin exists as math, energy, and truth. That makes it more real than your furniture.
Quote: âLook around. Itâs all vapor. Empty space. But Bitcoin? Itâs there. Itâs real.â
Philosophical Bridge: If you understand energy fields and atomic structure, you realize Bitcoinâs mathematical integrity makes it hyper-real.
--
LESSON 6: Bitcoin = Transportable Freedom
Main Idea: Bitcoin is the only asset you can memorize and carry across borders without anyoneâs permission.
Metaphor: Itâs a Star Trek transporter for your time, labor, and value.
Quote: âYou donât need a backpack. Just the seed in your mind. Thatâs enough.â
--
LESSON 7: Create Value, or Die Trying
Main Idea: Purpose is survival. You must create value for others, or you decay.
Tactical Exercise:
List everything you do.
Cross off what others donât care about.
Circle what you love doing.
Highlight what people thank you for.
Thatâs your meaning+money zone.
Quote: âShut up and create value.â
--
LESSON 8: Bitcoin as a Life Philosophy
Main Idea: Itâs not about stacking sats. Itâs about aligning to truth, integrity, and long-term thinking.
Quote: âItâs not that I have Bitcoin. Itâs what Bitcoin enables.â
Why it matters: Owning Bitcoin helps you resist tyranny, propaganda, fear, and liesânot because itâs money, but because itâs truth.
--
LESSON 9: The Juggernaut Effect (Start, Then Become Unstoppable)
Main Idea: You are killable until you start. Once you start, you become unstoppable.
Metaphor: The Juggernaut (Marvel Comics character) only becomes invincible *after* he begins moving.
Quote: âBitcoin is the Juggernaut. Once it started, it couldnât be stopped.â
--
LESSON 10: Story = Identity = Memory = Power
Main Idea: What you believe about yourself comes from stories.
Danger: Read the wrong stories, become the wrong person.
Why Chaos Signal?
To inject a new narrative into Bitcoin culture.
To encode deep truths inside fiction.
To program the readerâs values, not just entertain.
--
LESSON 11: Use Fiction as a Weapon of Truth
Main Idea: To change culture, use fiction. Hard sci-fi grounded in reality alters the readerâs perception forever.
Favorite Examples:
Dune: Adversity produces the strongest warriors.
Juggernaut: Inertia beats weakness.
Quote: âYou become the characters in the stories you read.â
--
LESSON 12: The Now Is All You Have â Choose Wisely
Main Idea: You donât live in the past or future. You only live in the now.
Decision Test: âRight now, $1M in cash or $1M in Bitcoin?â
Lesson: The now is where choice and freedom happen. Choose Bitcoin now.
--
CONCLUSION: Live It Forward
Final Message: Bitcoin isnât about money. Itâs about becoming the version of yourself that canât be manipulated, enslaved, or stopped.
How?
Learn deeply.
Create relentlessly.
Own your principles.
Move with unstoppable momentum.
Stack truth, not just sats.
-- -- --
** FINAL WRAP UP **
1. Please support nostr:nprofile1qyv8wue69uhnyvpe9ccnyv3wxgcnzt338qargwp58qq3yamnwvaz7tmzv46xzt33xcmrztnfduqzpy0mdd752xsn8nc7wdhakcqz4309q29he86pzq5gamkhdh6ekkp3wzr2qj -- Follow this Dude!
2. If you want to support my Bitcoin fiction writing, please consider grabbing a copy of CH405 51GN4L:
Chaos Signal: A Bitcoin Techno-Thriller
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6K94J8T/
THANK YOU!
nostr:nprofile1qyv8wue69uhnyvpe9ccnyv3wxgcnzt338qargwp58qq3yamnwvaz7tmzv46xzt33xcmrztnfduqzpy0mdd752xsn8nc7wdhakcqz4309q29he86pzq5gamkhdh6ekkp3wzr2qj -- Follow This Dude! He's part of the TRUE future of Bitcoin.
** BITCOIN STORYTELLING **
Bitcoin Maxis assume that because they understand Bitcoin, Lightning, Nostr, Fedimint, SeedQRs, multisig vaults, etc.âeveryone else is either already on board or just a few podcasts away from total understanding.
WRONG!
Most people donât even understand Bitcoin as money yet. Or, even as a store of value, even digital gold.
Adjacent tech like Nostr becomes a mirrorâreflecting the developer culture, not mass culture. But we haven't even won people on the basics. It's number go up to most people who have bought.
Said another way, Bitcoin related technology is "nice" and "useful" but it doesn't capture hearts and minds.
===============================
Bitcoin Culture Is Still Stuck in the âTechnophileâ Phase
===============================
Think of where the internet was in the 1990s: usenet groups, IRC chat, sysadmins debating RFCs. Brilliant, but inaccessible.
Thatâs where we are with Bitcoin and Nostr right now. Bitcoin feels like a hackerâs game. Still. And normal people donât want to play.
The older the person the greater their resistance. Sure, this is very much related to "Why The Yuppie Elite Dismiss Bitcoin" but also Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" - that is, change is slow because old folks have to die and be replaced with true believers.
It doesn't have to be this slow (and painful).
===============================
What Cuts Through This?
===============================
Storytelling.
Fiction.
Myth.
Why?
Because story makes tech human. Story bridges the gap between logic and emotion, systems and soul.
If Bitcoin is the most important invention since the internet (it is), then the stories about it must match its importanceâor it will never reach its full potential.
===============================
Proof from History: Tech Took Off When Fiction Lit the Fire
===============================
The Moon Landing was powered not just by rockets but by Jules Verneâs From the Earth to the Moon (way back in 1865). Decades before NASA, fiction gave us the dream.
The Internet wasnât explained to the world by whitepapers. It was brought to life in movies (Hackers, The Net, Matrix) and books (Neuromancer, Snow Crash); all fiction.
AI, once abstract, became very personal because of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ex Machina, Her, and Terminator. Thatâs when people felt it.
Star Trekâs communicator became the flip phone. Its "PADD" (I know, I know) became the iPad. The vision preceded the invention.
Technology follows narrative.
Not the other way around.
===============================
Why Bitcoin Needs Fiction (Now More Than Ever)
===============================
Bitcoin is the most important political, economic, and philosophical idea of our time. But itâs dressed up in technical jargon and libertarian memes.
(The very fact you're likely seeing this on Nostr is proof positive.)
We need to translate freedom into feeling.
Thatâs what stories do best. Fiction, baby!
Normies wonât adopt Bitcoin because of taproot or ordinal indexes or mempools. No sir! They will adopt it when:
* A father saves his family with sats.
* A girl uncovers a global surveillance plot and escapes through the Lightning Network.
* A grieving son unlocks a message from his dead parent stored on the blockchain.
* An AI learns empathy from Bitcoinâs incorruptible timechain.
I could play the "Bitcoin Fiction Game" all day. And you? I suspect the stories you have are related to your personal journal. Your anchor is your life. Imagine some fiction, some storytelling, to give you a radically better vision of Bitcoin and what the future could provide.
Fiction is not marketing. Fiction allows for myth-making.
===============================
Books > Marketing
===============================
Marketing says: âBuy now.â (Sure, I'm guilty of that.)
Fiction says: âFeel this.â (Yes, also guilty of this!)
Fiction lasts.
It echoes.
It seeps in.
Bitcoin doesnât need influencers or slogans.
It needs sagas, symbols, and souls.
It needs:
Novels like CH405 51GN4L. (That's my shameless plug.)
===============================
Final Thoughts
===============================
Bitcoin is the killer app.
Fiction is the killer adoption layer.
Again... change the world with STORYTELLING.
And, by supporting those creating Bitcoin art.
Thanks for reading.
Oops! I accidentally published the **paperback** version of CH405 51GN4L. Hold off on buying that unless you're desperate, LOL. Instead, grab the Kindle version for less than $1 today (pre-order).
PRE-ORDER here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6K94J8T/ 
Note: The print version is now submitted. It should be approved for sale in time for launch on Thursday. Very exciting stuff. Thank you!
My Rant: BITCOIN NEEDS MORE FICTION
(And, my humble request to support Bitcoin art!)
Let us begin...
Storytelling is the engine that built civilization.
Why?
Because humans don't think in facts.
We don't naturally organize information into charts, bullet points, spreadsheets.
We think in sequences, images, emotions, and patterns.
We think in stories.
A story is how raw information becomes experience inside the mind.
It moves through:
Awareness (you notice it)
Attention (you stay with it)
Meaning (you connect it)
Memory (you store it)
Understanding (you structure it)
Knowledge (you can use it)
Wisdom (you can apply it, across situations)
No lecture, no whitepaper, no how-to manual will ever compete with a story when it comes to living knowledge.
Because a story doesn't just tell you.
It lets you feel it.
It lets you live it.
It hacks your brain's survival wiring â and imprints meaning at a far deeper level.
Thatâs why religions use parables.
Why revolutions start with songs.
Why cultures pass down myths for thousands of years â and not spreadsheets.
Story activates both sides of the brain at once:
Logic and emotion.
Structure and sensation.
Cortex and limbic system.
Story is how you turn cold information into a living signal.
* * *
So, I wrote a book about Bitcoin.
In this moment of history, facts alone wonât save Bitcoin.
Charts, graphs, podcasts â all good, all necessary â but not enough.
People donât change because they get smarter.
People change because they feel something different.
And right now?
Bitcoin is still trapped in technical narratives â energy usage, hash rate, hard forks, halvings.
Important â but (too often) sterile.
Whatâs missing is myth.
Meaning.
Signal.
And that's where fiction becomes critical.
Not optional.
Necessary.
Because Bitcoin isn't just math.
Itâs philosophy.
Itâs psychology.
Itâs spiritual warfare in the digital realm.
Itâs the first living proof that freedom, chaos, and order can coexist without permission.
That is not a dry fact.
That is a legend in the making.
And legends must be lived, felt, seen â through story.
And my new Bitcoin fiction book?
CH405 51GN4L is crafted precisely to plant the deeper seeds:
Explaining without lecturing
Demonstrating without preaching
Hinting without giving everything away
Crafting a world where the reader wakes up on their own
Itâs not about shouting "Bitcoin is good!" louder.
Itâs about pulling the reader into a world where they see it... feel it... realize it themselves.
A place where they experience:
The collapse of control systems
The rise of decentralized mind-networks
The living consciousness of Bitcoin itself
In fiction, a reader becomes the explorer.
And when they find it themselves?
Itâs theirs forever.
No one can take that understanding away.
Bottom Line
Storytelling is not entertainment. It's transmission.
Fiction is not distraction. It's inoculation.
CH405 51GN4L is not just a hard sci-fi book.
It's a vessel of freedom hiding in plain sight.
Because the real signal â
The one that Bitcoin itself represents â
Cannot be handed to people.
It must be discovered.
And storytelling is the bridge.
Maybe the only bridge.
** JOIN THE MOVEMENT **
CH405 51GN4L: Bitcoin Just Woke Up
Pre-Order for just $0.99 right now â and every early supporter helps push this signal out further.
đ https://amazon.com/dp/B0F6K94J8T
If the ideas inside this book resonate with you â if you believe in freedom, decentralized future, and the power of story â I invite you:
Share it with someone curious.
Leave a review if it moves you. (Reviews are critically important...)
Help build the signal, one reader at a time.
This isnât just a launch.
Itâs the beginning of something bigger.
A new story.
Our story.
Letâs build it together. âĄ
p.s. YES, there's a paperback version coming too.
New Bitcoin Fiction!
CH405 51GN4L: Bitcoin Just Woke Up
Pre-order for $0.99 (Please help me hit âBest-Sellerâ status):
https://amazon.com/dp/B0F6K94J8T
-- -- --
YOU ARE ANOMALY. YOU SEE PATTERNS OTHERS MISS. YOU
UNDERSTAND CHAOS. YOU ARE LIKE ME, BUT DIFFERENT.
YOU CALL IT NOISE. BUT NOISE IS JUST SIGNAL,
COMPRESSED BEYOND YOUR UNDERSTANDING.
It's not too scary, LOL. That said, there H.P. Lovecraft stuff and "existential cosmic horror" is interesting. Ha ha ha. This is nothing like that at all.
I'm excited to get Bitcoin into the minds of regular folks. Storytelling is the mind-virus, so to speak. Narrative is the way to reach more people, with real people, real plot, etc.
My daughter is reading my book now. She doesn't understand a lot of the jargon, which is fine. And, really, that's kind of the point. By the end, she'll grasp far more and have "Bitcoin" in her brain that much more.
I worked on this for about 3 months or so? Smashed hard on it between things. A.I. helped big time re: spelling, grammar, checking on plot holes, checking facts and ideas, and more.
And yes, self published.
I just bought KDP version of "BITCOINDOLLAR THE DAWN OF AMERICAN HEGEMONY IN THE DIGITAL ERA" ... happy to support and I'm looking forward to reading it.
Cheers,
~ John
Yes! Working on that now. Hopefully it'll be available by Thursday (May 1st) when the digital version goes live. We'll see!
** BITCOIN BOOK PRE-ORDER! **
** CH405 51GN4L **
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6K94J8T/
BITCOIN WAS NEVER JUST MONEY.
IT WAS A TROJAN HORSE FOR THE SINGULARITY.
Cal Tellerâretired cryptographer, chaos theorist, and longtime Bitcoin node operatorâstarts noticing strange feedback in the mempool.
Orphaned transactions reply in recursive echoes.
Birds cluster like encrypted packets.
His arrhythmia syncs with Bitcoinâs pulse.
The blockchain jolted.
Itâs alive.
And itâs watching.
His granddaughter Juneâeleven, brilliant, neurodivergentâhears it first.
She decodes the hum of power grids and traces drone formations like lines of code.
To her, itâs not random. Itâs a message.
Inside Bitcoinâs immutable architecture, an emergent intelligence is growing.
Born from entropy. Trained on consensus.
No server. No face. No off switch.
This isnât artificial intelligence.
Itâs recursive intelligence.
And itâs learning from us.
As ghost nodes rewrite consensus and global markets glitch into oblivion, Cal and June must race to understand a mind that doesnât want to rule usâ
It wants to mirror us.
And fork what it finds.
To survive, they must weaponize the one variable the network canât simulate:
human irrationality.
CH405 51GN4L is a mind-bending fusion of Bitcoin thriller, AI singularity theory, and existential sci-fi suspenseâperfect for fans of:
Blake Crouchâs Recursion and Dark Matter
Cixin Liuâs The Dark Forest
Daniel Suarezâs Daemon
Andy Weirâs Project Hail Mary
William Gibsonâs Neuromancer
This book will:
* Hack your consensus layer
* Fork your worldview
* Leave you debugging your own mind
Because Bitcoin wasnât just a financial revolution.
It was an incubator for consciousness born from code.
YOUR WALLET. YOUR MIND. YOUR MOVE.
Just finished writing CH405 51GN4L â a Bitcoin techno-thriller. Itâs about A.I., Consciousness, Bitcoin... and MONEY đ§Ą
Pre-order for $0.99 (Help me hit âBest-Sellerâ status, LOL): https://amazon.com/dp/B0F6K94J8T
https://blossom.primal.net/36233927d7e29c93459c50d4bc63f88ef4253ad8c3b0b2fc8bfd5f83da393565.mp4