Tag Archives: blockchain

What Is Money, Really? A Fresh Look at Why Bitcoin Matters

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💡 Money Isn’t What You Think It Is

Most of us think of money as the bills in our wallets or numbers in our bank accounts. But money isn’t a physical thing—it’s a system of IOUs. It’s how we track value we’ve created, whether that’s building a fence, baking bread, or writing software.

Here’s the key insight: money itself doesn’t hold value.
If it did, you’d want to hoard it. But you don’t. You probably try to get rid of your dollars by putting them into stocks, real estate, or gold—anything to escape inflation.

🧱 A Story About a Fence (and a Broken System)

Imagine this:
You build a 100-foot fence for someone. They pay you $100. One year later, you ask them to build a fence for you. They say, “Sure, but now it’ll cost $105.”

Why? Inflation. Your money didn’t hold its value. The effort you gave last year is worth less this year.

And while the U.S. has “low” inflation, other countries—like Argentina—see 100% inflation annually. In places like that, people rush to convert their paychecks into food, bricks, or U.S. dollars just to preserve value.

But let’s be honest: the U.S. dollar and Argentine peso aren’t fundamentally different. Both are government-issued currencies that lose value over time due to overspending and excessive money printing.

⚙️ Enter Bitcoin: Fixed, Transparent, and Decentralized

Bitcoin was designed to fix this exact problem.

  • There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins.
  • Each one can be divided into 100 million sats (Satoshis).
  • Bitcoin is basically a global, digital IOU ledger that nobody controls—but everyone can verify.

Think of it as an open-source Excel spreadsheet that tracks who owns what. But instead of one person controlling it, thousands of computers (nodes) maintain the same list and agree on changes only when a valid transaction is made.

🔨 How Bitcoin Transactions Work

  1. You send a transaction using your app or wallet.
  2. It enters the mempool, a kind of digital waiting room.
  3. Miners select and bundle transactions into a block.
  4. They solve a math puzzle to earn the right to add the block to the chain.
  5. Once added, it’s permanent—and verified by the entire network.

Each block takes about 10 minutes to process. Miners are rewarded with both newly “unlocked” bitcoin (currently 3.125 BTC) and small transaction fees—typically less than 1%, cheaper than credit cards.

🆚 Bitcoin vs “Altcoins”

Bitcoin has no premine, meaning the creator didn’t secretly give themselves coins before anyone else could buy them. Most altcoins (alternative cryptocurrencies) do. That makes many of them less like open money and more like disguised businesses.

Ask yourself: What real problem is this altcoin solving?

The answer is likely that the coin is built around a company structure, because it can’t solve the store of value problem. Bitcoin already solved that problem.

💸 How to Buy Bitcoin Today

Option 1: Brokerages

  • Buy FBTC, the Fidelity Bitcoin Trust, just like a stock or ETF
  • Available through Fidelity, Schwab, and others
  • Small fee: ~0.25% expense ratio

Option 2: Direct Purchase

  • Use apps like Strike, River, or Cash App
  • You can hold your own Bitcoin (self-custody) or keep it with the app

📈 Why Bitcoin Could Hit $13 Million

There are $750 trillion in global assets.

Asset CategoryEstimated Value (USD)
Real estate~$360 trillion
Equities (stocks)~$110 trillion
Bonds (debt markets)~$135 trillion
Broad money (M2)~$100 trillion
Gold (above ground)~$14–15 trillion
Private businesses, art, collectibles, etc.~$20–30 trillion (est.)


If even $273 trillion of that (stocks, real estate, bonds, money supply) flows into Bitcoin, that’s:

$273 trillion ÷ 21 million BTC = $13 million per coin

This isn’t speculation—it’s about monetary premium, the extra value people add to assets (like real estate or art) just because they don’t trust cash.

Bitcoin is absorbing that value because it’s better money.

🧠 Strategy: It’s Not Too Late

A $10,000 investment today could get you 0.1 BTC.
If Bitcoin hits $13 million, that’s worth $1.3 million.

Of course, you shouldn’t invest money you can’t afford to lose. But for many, $10K is a small bet with a big upside.

Bitcoin isn’t just about price—it’s about a fundamentally better way to store and transmit value.

🎯 Final Thought: We’re All Fish in Fiat Water

You’ve lived your whole life in a system where money loses value. It feels normal, but it’s not natural.

Bitcoin is a new kind of money: scarce, digital, decentralized, and global.

Once you understand what money really is, it becomes clear: Bitcoin is not just better money—it’s the future of value itself.

Post Labor Econonomics Videos – David Shapiro

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Update 7-27-2025 – He added a 5th video Post-Labor Economics Lecture 05 – “Bridging the Gap” (2025 Update)

as well as a long podcast – Full Post-Labor Economics Deep Dive and Book Preview! Interview with Dalibor Petrovic

I am looking forward to the book.

original post below

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been diving deep into David Shapiro’s Post-Labor Economics lecture series (linked below — all around 40 min). I’ve listened to each one twice, and then used a mix of ChatGPT, Copilot, and Grok to create four 10-point summaries — one per video. Then I asked ChatGPT to synthesize those into a single meta-summary of the core ideas.

Here are the 4 videos. Each about 40 minutes long. 

Post-Labor Economics Lecture 04 – “Day 1 Implementation & Solutions” (2025 Update) 

Post-Labor Economics Lecture 02 – “Economic Agency Paradox” (2025 update)

Post-Labor Economics Lecture 03 – “That which gets measured gets managed!” (2025 update)

Post-Labor Economics Lecture 04 – “Day 1 Implementation & Solutions” (2025 Update)

ChatGPT – Here is a 10-bullet-point meta-summary that synthesizes the key themes and insights from all four “Post-Labor Economics” video summaries:

  1. Automation is Inevitable and Transformative: AI and robotics are displacing human labor across all sectors, making wage-based employment increasingly obsolete while simultaneously threatening consumer demand and economic stability.
  2. Economic Agency is the Core Concern: Individuals require labor rights, property ownership, and voting rights to retain agency. As labor rights erode, property rights become the cornerstone of financial autonomy.
  3. The Demand Paradox: Businesses want to automate to cut costs but still need paying customers. Without jobs, people can’t spend—creating a structural contradiction that leads to economic collapse unless resolved.
  4. Rethinking Metrics: The EAI: Traditional KPIs like GDP and unemployment are no longer sufficient. The Economic Agency Index (EAI) measures household income sources (property, wages, transfers) and highlights the need to prioritize ownership income.
  5. UBI: Helpful but Not Enough: Universal Basic Income is necessary as a safety net but inadequate on its own due to inflation risk, governance issues, and centralization. It must be paired with decentralized, property-based income streams.
  6. Ownership is the New Wages: Future economic resilience depends on expanding access to trusts, wealth funds, co-ops, patron equity programs, and digital tokens to replace lost labor income with ownership-based dividends.
  7. Counties as Innovation Labs: With 3,100 U.S. counties, local governments are ideal sites for experimenting with and scaling post-labor economic models, offering granular data and tailored policy solutions.
  8. Banks as Economic Interfaces: Banks will evolve into the primary economic hubs, managing dividend flows, investment portfolios, and identity verification, replacing the role of traditional employers in financial life.
  9. Guardrails Against Technofeudalism: Preventing elite capture and concentrated corporate control is critical. Transparency, participatory governance, and broad-based ownership are essential safeguards.
  10. Market-Driven, Not Ideological: Post-labor economics distinguishes itself from socialism and communism by preserving markets and private property. Its goal is not wealth redistribution through state control, but wealth inclusion through distributed ownership and market-based tools.

I continued to have a conversation with ChatGPT to understand further. 

I asked it “”How does post-labor economics differ from individuals simply investing in the stock market to generate passive income?”

It gave a very nicely formatted response, below. 

🧩 TL;DR: It’s Not Either/Or

Buying stocks is one tool — a good one — for individual financial freedom.

But post-labor economics is about designing an entire economy where capital income is as normal, widespread, and accessible as having a job once was.

It’s not just you winning the game — it’s everyone getting a seat at the table.

Great question — and an important one.

🤔 At first glance, post-labor economics might sound like:

“Just buy stocks and live off dividends — problem solved.”

But post-labor economics goes beyond that in a few key ways. Here’s how it’s different from individuals simply investing in the stock market:

🏛️ 1. System Design vs. Personal Strategy

  • Stock investing is an individual solution — you build capital and income for yourself.
  • Post-labor economics is a system-wide redesign — it’s about building structures where everyone can participate in ownership, even if they don’t have savings, brokerage accounts, or financial literacy.

💵 2. Barriers to Entry

  • The stock market requires:
    • Disposable income
    • Access to financial tools
    • Risk tolerance
    • Education
  • Post-labor models focus on lowering those barriers by:
    • Distributing residency-based dividends
    • Creating local trust funds
    • Offering non-transferable community equity (you don’t have to “buy in”)

🏘️ 3. Ownership of Local, Tangible Assets

  • The stock market mostly involves ownership of national or global corporations.
  • Post-labor economics emphasizes ownership of local assets: businesses, land, water rights, data, energy — things that create direct, community-level income streams.

Owning Amazon stock ≠ owning the gas station, solar field, or rental housing in your own town.

🤝 4. Shared Governance & Resilience

  • When you buy stock, you have no governance power, unless you’re a billionaire activist investor.
  • Post-labor structures are built on shared governance — resident voting, dividend boards, and community stewardship.

💬 5. Not Everyone Can or Will Invest

  • A huge portion of the population has no stock market exposure. About 45% of Americans own no equities at all — and among the bottom 50% of income, it’s more like 10–15%.
  • Post-labor economics seeks to bake ownership into the system so that even non-investors receive income from capital.

🧠 6. Ownership as Policy, Not Privilege

  • Stock investing is optional and personal.
  • Post-labor economics treats ownership as infrastructure — like roads or clean water. It should be available to all by design, not just those who planned ahead or got lucky.

🌐 7. Resisting Elite Capture

  • The stock market concentrates wealth — the top 10% own over 85% of equities.
  • Post-labor models try to decentralize ownership — giving communities a stake in the economy before everything gets bought up by private equity or mega-corps.

🛠️ 8. Designed for the Age of Automation

  • Stock market investing was never intended as a wage replacement for the masses.
  • Post-labor economics is explicitly built to answer:

“What happens when jobs disappear, but people still need income?”

My next question. 

“What mechanisms does post-labor economics use to avoid the tragedy of the commons when assets are collectively owned?”

✅ TL;DR:

Post-labor economics avoids the tragedy of the commons by turning shared access into structured, incentivized, accountable co-ownership.

It’s not a free-for-all — it’s a designed economy, where people are rewarded for taking care of what they collectively own.

Excellent question — and one of the core design challenges of post-labor economics.

The tragedy of the commons refers to a situation where a shared resource is overused or neglected because no one feels personal responsibility. In a post-labor economy — where ownership is distributed rather than concentrated — this is a real risk. But it’s not unsolvable.

Here’s how post-labor economics intentionally designs around the tragedy of the commons:

🧩 1. Move from “Common” to “Co-Owned”

  • The key shift is from open access (commons) to structured, governed co-ownership.
  • Think: community trusts, resident shares, dividend boards — where everyone has skin in the game, not just access.

📜 2. Define Clear Rights and Responsibilities

  • Successful post-labor models include smart governance charters:
    • Who can vote?
    • Who maintains assets?
    • How are profits used?
    • What happens if you leave?
  • This clarity prevents freeloading and aligns incentives for stewardship.

💰 3. Tie Participation to Rewards

  • Dividends aren’t just handed out — they can be tied to local contribution:
    • Show up to meetings
    • Volunteer hours
    • Local residency
    • Use the service or shop locally
  • This ensures that ownership feels earned, not distant or abstract.

📊 4. Transparency and Dashboards

  • Many models propose using public dashboards to show how community-owned assets are performing.
  • When people see the numbers — usage, revenue, maintenance costs — it creates accountability and pride.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 5. Decentralized Governance Structures

  • Rather than one central authority, post-labor systems push decisions downward:
    • Counties manage their own trusts
    • Co-ops elect local boards
    • Banks help automate compliance and distribution
  • Local control = stronger stewardship.

🏦 6. Hybrid Ownership Models

  • Some assets are shared (like land or solar arrays), while others are individually owned (tokens, local equity).
  • This creates a blended structure where people benefit both as individuals and collectively, reducing the temptation to abuse shared goods.

🛡️ 7. Guardrails Against Elite Capture

  • Ironically, many “commons” in the modern economy (like housing or water) have already been captured — just not by the public.
  • Post-labor models bake in protections: voting caps, local-only ownership, anti-speculation rules, etc.

It’s a powerful framework. Personally, I’m still focused on achieving my own financial freedom — and I encourage everyone to do the same. But once we secure our own foundations, we’re in a much better position to help build a freer, more equitable world for everyone.

The Intellectual Stagnation in Academia: Ignoring the Corporate Shift to Bitcoin

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Introduction In recent years, the corporate world has witnessed a historic shift in treasury strategies, with several prominent companies incorporating Bitcoin into their reserves. Despite these significant changes, many finance professors continue to dismiss or ignore the implications of this trend. During my MBA studies, I have personally discussed or emailed with six finance professors over the last three years about Bitcoin. None of them have shown any curiosity or willingness to engage in meaningful discussions about this topic. While I cannot speak for all finance professors, this has been my experience with those I have interacted with. This paper aims to highlight the lack of intellectual curiosity among academics in the face of obvious transformations in corporate and global environments.

The Corporate Shift to Bitcoin The adoption of Bitcoin by companies such as MicroStrategy, Tesla, and Block Inc. marks a pivotal change in how corporate treasuries manage their assets. These companies view Bitcoin as a strategic asset, providing a hedge against inflation and currency debasement. MicroStrategy, for instance, has aggressively acquired Bitcoin, making it the largest Bitcoin treasury in the world. This trend began around 2020 and has continued to gain traction, signaling a shift in corporate treasury management.

In the last month, several other companies have also announced Bitcoin treasury strategies:

  • Genius Group: An AI-powered education group that has committed 90% or more of its current and future reserves to be held in Bitcoin 1.
  • Worksport: A U.S.-based provider of pickup truck solutions that is adding cryptocurrency to its corporate treasury strategy 1.
  • Rumble: A video platform targeting a conservative audience, planning to invest up to $20 million of surplus cash in Bitcoin 2.
  • Metaplanet: A company with clearly stated strategy reserve asset goals and reasoning 3.
  • Strategy (previously MicroStrategy): Continues to lead the way with its Bitcoin treasury strategy 3.

Government Recognition of Bitcoin The U.S. government has also acknowledged the significance of Bitcoin by establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile. This move underscores the growing acceptance of Bitcoin as a store of value and its potential role in national economic strategies.

Personal Experience with Academic Dismissal Over the past three years, I have personally discussed or emailed with six finance professors during my MBA studies about the topic of Bitcoin. Despite the clear and significant changes in corporate treasury strategies, none of these professors have shown any curiosity or willingness to engage in meaningful discussions about Bitcoin. This lack of interest is particularly surprising given the relevance of Bitcoin to contemporary financial practices and corporate strategies and the fact that there are not many innovations in Corporate Treasury operations. When a new idea comes along you would expect people to be interested to consider if it has any value.

The Importance of Intellectual Curiosity Intellectual curiosity is a cornerstone of academic excellence. It drives innovation, fosters critical thinking, and encourages the exploration of new ideas. The reluctance of finance professors to engage with the topic of Bitcoin reflects a stagnation in intellectual curiosity that is detrimental to both students and the broader academic community.

Conclusion The corporate shift to Bitcoin represents a significant change in treasury strategies that warrants academic attention. Professors should embrace intellectual curiosity and explore the implications of this trend, rather than dismissing it. By doing so, they can provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the evolving financial landscape and prepare them for the future.

Essay: Why Gary Stevenson Should Rethink Bitcoin

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@garyseconomics

Gary, your crusade against inequality is spot-on—the rich hoard wealth, wages stagnate, and housing slips out of reach. You’ve nailed how the system’s rigged, profiting off disparity as you did at Citibank. But your dismissal of Bitcoin as a “scam” or “musical chairs” misses its point. Let’s break it down through your lens. You see value in what’s tangible—property, bonds, cash flows. Bitcoin’s different: it’s digital scarcity, forged by energy-intensive mining, not free “points on the internet.” It costs real resources—miners burn electricity rivaling small nations to secure it. That’s not hype; that’s a backbone. You’ve said wealth concentration tanks demand, keeping rates low. Bitcoin flips that script. It’s not controlled by banks or governments printing money for the elite—it’s capped at 21 million coins, a hedge against inflation you’ve seen erode workers’ lives. You fear Satoshi’s a shadowy puppetmaster, selling off a million coins to dupe the masses. Check the blockchain—those wallets haven’t moved in 16 years. No secret dump, no conspiracy. Bitcoin’s transparent; anyone can verify it. You’d spot a scam in derivatives a mile away—apply that here. It’s not a rich man’s toy; it’s open to anyone with a phone, from East London to Lagos, leveling a field you know is uneven. You’re right about speculative bubbles, but Bitcoin’s survived crashes—$20K in 2017 to $3K, now thriving in 2025 with institutional buy-in. It’s not about quick riches; it’s a store of value, like digital gold, for a world you’ve seen fail the poor. You’ve bet against broken systems before. Bitcoin’s a bet for one—decentralized, fair, and tough as nails. Give it a trader’s eye, Gary. It’s not the enemy; it’s a tool.

@satmojoe

@Jcastweet

@PeterMcCormack

@HawkMcFlipster

@Oriflamme87

What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve? part 3 Buckminster Fuller, F.A Hayek & Henry Ford’s comments

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I’ve written a few things about why bitcoin is the solution to many problems. 

Here for What problem does Bitcoin solve part 1 and here for what problem does bitcoin solve part 2 and here for “Why Bitcoin?“

I wanted to share a few quotes from history to highlight that the control and debasement of money by governments has been an issue for a long time. The faster everyone understands this the faster we can all get on the bitcoin standard for value preservation. 

I explain here why we should support the bitcoin experiment. It solves the problem. If it ends up failing for some reason in the future, we need to recreate Bitcoin and address whatever issue made it fail because we need a currency that can’t be debased by governments. 

The Idea of Bitcoin Needs to Succeed, Even if Bitcoin Fails

“It is utterly clear to me that the highest priority need of world society at the present moment is a realistic economic accounting system which will rectify, for instance, such nonsense as the fact that a top toolmaker in India, the highest paid of all craftsman, gets only as much per month for his work in India as he could earn per day for the same work if he were employed in Detroit, Michigan.  – Page 112 Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth, Buckminster Fuller

F.A. Hayek in 1984: “I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop.”

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

― Henry Ford

Ford, who founded Ford Motor Company in 1903, told the publication:

“Under the energy currency system the standard would be a certain amount of energy exerted for one hour that would be equal to one dollar. It’s simply a case of thinking and calculating in terms different from those laid down to us by the international banking group to which we have grown so accustomed that we think there is no other desirable standard.”

Bitcoin is $100k, Should I Buy It Now Or Is It Too Expensive?

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Bitcoin recently breached the $100k price per bitcoin on December 4th 2024. It has retreated slightly but has continued to hover between $90k -$108k/bitcoin. 

Historically bitcoin has had a performance of 3 positive years followed by 1 negative year. While you can’t expect history to repeat itself, it might!

Looking at the below chart you can see we are on track to repeat that performance so far. While not shown 2024 was also a great positive return year for bitcoin so we have 2 years of positive returns. 2025 would be the 3rd year. 

Due to that expectation I fully expect bitcoin to have a good performance in 2025. It is also possible that it has a negative year in 2026 if it continues to follow the historic trend. 

 Of course it is also possible it has a negative year in 2025! We could break the trend. 

We could also break the trend and see that we have a positive year in 2025 and 2026! The future is unknown and unknowable!

https://twitter.com/CryptoKidcom/status/1746139639809720395/photo/1

When people ask me if they should buy bitcoin now I say that they obviously don’t understand bitcoin. If you don’t understand it then I would say “No” you probably shouldn’t buy it. What I tell people is to continue to learn more about why other people buy it. 

Learn about “What problem bitcoin solves.” I have written 2 articles about that here. 

What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve?

We, every person in the world, is in a fight with their own government to keep as much of the value they create as they can.  The government explicitly taxes you, which we can debate but at least it is obvious.  But the government also stealthy steals value from your bank account or savings via inflation and money printing that you have no control over.

What is Money? (What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve -2)

Bitcoin is not an investment. Bitcoin is a store of value. The value you create. Bitcoin is an agreement between people who create value in the world that they will trade their value for other value. The value you create and store in Bitcoin cannot be debased or inflated away by any government by money printing.
I’ve also created a list of great resources to learn more about bitcoin here. 

Books & Videos to Learn About Bitcoin

What I generally recommend people to do is to buy just a little bitcoin so that they will start creating a little interest with themselves. This is how I did it. I bought just $100 and then that made me interested to learn more about what I had bought and why.
You should not plan to sell the bitcoin you buy. This is true for most investments, in my opinion. You should only be investing money you are ready to have invested for 5+ years. 

You shouldn’t try to time the market. You aren’t smart enough for that and neither am I. 

Just buy things that you understand and continue to do research. 

Why Bitcoin?

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I hope with my bitcoin advocacy to help people think more long term.

Why do I spend so much time thinking about bitcoin?

Why do I spend so much time trying to get others to understand bitcoin?

I have thought about a lot of other things in my lifetime. I am a mechanical engineer. I like making thing work. I am a philanthropist. I am a humanitarian. I care about making others’ lives better. I have worked at businesses and nonprofits that have helped make the world a better place. I have thought about how to create businesses and nonprofits that make the world a better place. 

Through it all, I keep looking for ways to make the world better. 

Bitcoin is the best way I have found to make an impact on EVERYTHING! It has become clear to me through all my reading and interacting with people and companies and nonprofits and thinking about issues that at the very base, fiat money is inherently causing a lot of problems in the world. 

Fiat money is unfair. 

The government causes as many or more issues than it solves by creating inflation through money printing. This is both in the USA and all other countries. 

I talked with a friend who was supporting a business in Sri Lanka. The business would dye clothes with natural processes. The point was to help people get a job that otherwise wouldn’t have access to a job. But the Sri Lankan economic crisis happened and the business failed. It made me think about the base infrastructure of all our economies. If the currency fails many businesses fail. A stable currency leads to long term planning and thinking. The fact that all countries have money that is steadily losing value leads to short term thinking. The rush for analysis of quarterly returns for public companies adds to this short term thinking, but steady inflation, caused by government money printing is a major contributor to the short term thinking. I wondered, what is the point of developing businesses if they will fail due to factors outside your control?

That is why I am so passionate about bitcoin. It fixes these short term problems. This is a problem is many countries around the world. 

People in many countries can’t save in their local currency because they lose value so fast. In the USA we recently had 1 year of 8% inflation and everyone went crazy! 

I fully expect that increased inflation to come back to the USA sometime in the next 10 years, unless we cut the yearly deficit. 

Even if it doesn’t come back for a few years, the way the current system is, fiat money, there is always steady inflation (3%-4%) which still incentivises short term thinking.

I hope with my bitcoin advocacy to help people think more long term. 

0.1 Bitcoin

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There are about 8 billion (8,000,000,000) people in the world. 

According to Kiplinger, globally there are about 59 million millionaires. 

59,000,000/8,000,000,000 = 0.007375 =  0.7375% of people in the world are millionaires. So less than 1% of people are millionaires. 

If you divided the 21 million (21,000,000) bitcoin among the 8 billion people

21,000,000/8,000,000,000 = 0.002625

0.002625 x $60,000/btc = $157.50

You only need to buy $157.50 worth of bitcoin to get “your share” today. 

There are 21 million bitcoin that will ever be made. 

There are 59 million millionaires. So it’s not possible for every millionaire to have 1 bitcoin. 

If we divide the 21 million bitcoin by 59 million millionaires we get 

21/59 = 0.35593220 btc per millionaire.

 0.35593220 x $60,000/btc = $21,355.93 if every millionaire wanted to get “their share” of bitcoin and it was only split among millionaires.

If we go down to units of 0.1 bitcoin then 210 million people could own 0.1 bitcoin.

That is still only 

210,000,000 people/ 8,000,000,000 people = 0.02625 = 2.625% of people would have 0.1 bitcoin.

0.1 bitcoin x $60k/bitcoin = $6,000 to buy 0.1 bitcoin today.

If I was someone with no bitcoin today I’d think hard about setting a goal of getting to 0.1 bitcoin. 

The market capitalization of Gold is $16,590,000,000,000 ($16.59 Trillion) as of 8-11-2024 when I write this.  Note that this changes daily as the price of gold fluctuates and as more gold is mined each year. 

If bitcoin was to attaining the same market capitalization  

$16,590,000,000,000/21,000,000 bitcoin = $790,000 per bitcoin

$790,000 x 0.1 bitcoin = $79,000

If bitcoin was to reach a value of $10 million per Bitcoin then 0.1 bitcoin would be worth $1 million. 

Plenty of people have made a prediction in the millions for the future price of bitcoin. You will have to do research for yourself to determine if you think this is reasonable. But I would encourage you to be inquisitive about why people are prediction such a high price for Bitcoin. 

This isn’t all to tell you you have to buy bitcoin. But it’s to encourage you to look into why many people think bitcoin has value. 


There is not much bitcoin and we are still early as far as world wide adoption. You don’t need to buy much (0.1 bitcoin = $6k today) to potentially have $1 million in the future. 


Of course, only buy as much as you are able to lose! Many people are able to have a risky bet of $6k and if it did happen to go to $0 (which is of course a possibility) they’d still be fine. 

But if that is not you then definitely DON’T buy bitcoin. 


But if you are a person who has sufficient assets, you might try thinking about why so many people have such a high conviction in bitcoin. 

Letter to Iowa State Senator Kevin Alons about Bitcoin

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I sent the below letter to Iowa State Senator, Kevin Alons, related to Bitcoin. I encourage you to copy and send, or modify and send, to him at kevin.alons@legis.iowa.gov

Senator Alons

I read through your bill IA SF2273 related to gold and silver coinage. I appreciate the sentiment and wish you luck with your bill in the future if you continue to pursue it. 


I wanted to appeal to your hard money side with some data about the emerging hardest money ever created, Bitcoin.


As you know, Gold backed currency has failed in many different countries in history for the same reason. The government always centralizes the gold and prints more paper than can back the bills. Even in Ancient Rome when the money was silver, there was coin clipping and physical debasement where existing coins were recalled and melted down to a lower percentage of gold. 

Another issue with Gold is that we don’t actually know how much there is. More gold is mined everyday and more is mined as the price goes up. 

Bitcoin addresses all the shortcomings of Gold that have caused it to fail in the past. 


Bitcoin has a perfectly limited amount, 21 million.

Bitcoin is quickly and easily transmitted across the world. You need a lot of military hardware to transport any significant amount of gold.
Bitcoin is also easily transacted in very small amounts. The smallest unit of 1 bitcoin is 1 satoshi. There are 100,000,000 satoshis in 1 bitcoin. 

0.00000001 Bitcoin = 1 Satoshi. 

Bitcoin currently has a market capitalization of about $1 trillion.

Once 1 BTC = $1 million, it will have a market capitalization of $21 trillion and 1 satoshi will = 

$0.01

Using the lightning network consumers are easily able to make very small transactions such as at a grocery store or a restaurant. 

If you read this post on my website, https://mywheellife.com/2024/06/23/2024-bitcoin-adoption/, you will see that there are a lot of large institutions like the Wisconsin state pension adding bitcoin to their portfolio.
It is also legal tender in El Salvador and they are buying 1 bitcoin a day also to ad to their treasury.

As you have probably seen there are now ETF’s available that have bought 1 million bitcoin this year in the USA only. 


The available supply of 21 million bitcoin is draining quickly. 

I would encourage you to investigate more about bitcoin.

Perhaps you have heard that President Trump has recently endorsed Bitcoin. He is speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in Tennessee this Sunday, 7-28-2024. You should be able to find it on Youtube later.


I would also point you to this video that just came out “Thank God For Bitcoin”

It is one of the best videos I’ve seen to explain the benefits of Bitcoin.

I’d encourage you to introduce a bill, similar to Arizona, to direct the IPERS pension fund to investigate adding bitcoin to the IPERS portfolio. That would be a first step.

A 2nd step would be to have a state reserve of Bitcoin.


Thank you for your time.

2024 Bitcoin Adoption

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Bitcoin adoption has been progressing rapidly in the first 6 months of 2024. 

Wisconsin’s pension fund has added bitcoin to its balance sheets, buying more than $160 million worth of shares in two newly approved funds earlier this year.

While $160 million is a lot of money, Krause said it’s a small fraction of Wisconsin’s overall pension fund. At the end of December, SWIB held more than $155 billion in assets, with the vast majority of that representing assets in the Wisconsin Retirement System.

“Like any good portfolio manager, you want to diversify,” Krause said. “And now that bitcoin has been around for well over a decade, we’re aware that not only does it offer pretty strong returns — sometimes over periods of time quite phenomenal returns — but it also has diversification capabilities. It doesn’t move directly, in tandem with stocks and bonds.”

I suspect this won’t be the last pension to buy bitcoin,  especially since “The Arizona State Senate is considering a proposal to encourage the Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) and the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS) to explore the inclusion of Bitcoin ETFs in their investment portfolios.”

Also, Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the world’s largest pension fund by assets under management, announced that it is seeking information on “illiquidity assets,” including bitcoin, as part of its exploration into potential new investments. 


In addition to various pension funds, more companies have started using bitcoin as their treasury reserve asset. 

The Japanese company, Metaplanet, has set bitcoin as it’s treasury reserve asset. 

The Metaplanet, treasury, was christened with the 1 billion Japanese Yen (worth approximately $6.5 million) injection into Bitcoin by the former. Metaplanet said it is set to make Bitcoin its treasury asset moving forward. It said it will start making Bitcoin bets to mimic the related embrace of the coin by American business intelligence and software firm MicroStrategy.

Another company, Semler Scientific, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMLR), a pioneer in developing and marketing technology products and services to healthcare providers to combat chronic diseases, announced today that its board of directors has adopted bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset. In addition, Semler Scientific announced that it has purchased 581 bitcoins for an aggregate amount of $40 million, inclusive of fees and expenses.

The pioneer company of this strategy, Microstrategy, has also Acquired 11.9K More Bitcoin for $786M in June 2024. This is after in March 2024, the company added 9,245 BTC for $623 million after raising money in a similar debt issuance.

In addition to launching 12 Bitcoin Spot ETFs in the USA in January 2024, other countries are continuing to also launch Bitcoin Spot ETF. Australia was the latest. 

Finally, some interesting nation state interest has been shown in Bitcoin. 

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, has been reelected for a 2nd 5 year term. He made bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador in 2021. No country has followed, yet. But there have been many positive developments since then in El Salvador. It seems only a matter of time before another country makes it legal tender. 

Perhaps Argentina?

During an exchange on X (formerly Twitter), he (Argentina’s President) declared: “There will be a free competition of currencies, so if you wish to use Bitcoin, there will be no problem.”

Bitcoin Miner Marathon Digital Signs Deal With Kenya to Invest in Green Energy Projects

The company will help monetize stranded energy in the African country and help manage its renewable energy production.

The “problem bitcoin solves” is described in this article. 

Many people are obviously waking up and realizing that bitcoin solves a problem they have.