When a chance encounter with a Stephan Livera podcast started my Bitcoin journey almost exactly ten months ago, I could not have dreamt how much that journey would change me.

Bitcoin has had a profound effect on almost every aspect of my life, whether directly by lowering my time  preference and incentivizing me to save, or indirectly by opening up numerous other rabbit holes in economy, history, spirituality, religion, diet, psychedelics and so much more.

This is a retrospective from a class of 2020 pleb.

Money & Savings

I was never much of a saver.

I really liked spending money on random stuff that I didn’t actually  need, like new computer hardware, games I’d never play or posters I wouldn’t hang up anyway. Now, I have more money than I could have ever imagined having as a poor student. Of course, NgU technology helps in that regard, but, except for essentials, I’ve spent less this year than I would have spent in a single month.

Bitcoin has completely obliterated my materialistic side.

For every  purchase I want to make, I think about whether or not I really need it. Most of the time, the answer is ‘no’. 

Economy

Before I started this journey, I was an avid socialist.

I just didn’t understand how anyone could vote right, except for selfish reasons. “Social”ism is great branding, and I fell for it. Now don’t think that this was because I didn’t know anything about economy; I had six years of both economics and management basics in the highest level of Dutch high school. Obviously though, those classes were  based on Keynesian economics. We were taught about how government interference did cause inefficiencies in the market, but without it, capitalism will just make the rich richer and the poor  poorer. I never really doubted what I was taught, but in hindsight it’s obvious. 

The one thing we were never taught in class, was the moral case for free markets.

The moral case for socialism was obvious: nobody wants others to starve, not get healthcare or not have a roof over their heads, so you provide that for them. But we forget one thing when we say that healthcare should be a universal right: something cannot be a universal right when it infringes upon the rights of others. In this case, universal healthcare needs taxation, and that’s a problem.

I’d heard the phrase taxation is theft before, but never really let it bounce around in my thick skull.

Now I realize that  it’s more profound than I could’ve imagined. Taxation IS theft. Literally. I’m parting with my  rightful property under threat of literal violence. Of course, you’ll be fined first if you don’t pay up, but what happens after? You’ll be thrown in jail by men with guns if you don’t pay up for long  enough. Your right to healthcare infringes upon my right to my property.

Freedom and free markets are not only the most efficient way to a prosperous future for everybody, but also the most moral way.

It’ll take most people a while to get to that conclusion after years of living in the system, but libertarianism is very well thought-out. I urge everyone who thinks we need government to read more. Read Mises, not Marx. If you bring up “them bitch-ass roads” (h/t  EricDJuly), start here: Privatization: Roads and Highways. If you want to know what socialism leads to, start with The Gulag Archipelago.

Productivity 

The lower time preference has also made me realize what I’m working for.

I used to kinda coast through life, doing only what school told me to do and getting reasonable grades. Since this year, I’m motivated. I actually have something that lights a fire under my ass, a goal that drives me. I’ve  always wanted to help others and improve the world, but never really saw how. Now, with Bitcoin, I have a way to do that. 

I barely game anymore, where that used to constitute most of my day. I deleted reddit from my phone (though Twitter partially took its role), and all the time I save not gaming or redditing I’m now spending working or learning. I’ve read more books this year than ever before, including the years I had mandatory reading from school. I swapped out all the entertaining podcasts I used to listen to for educational ones, mainly related to Bitcoin.

Religion & Spirituality 

Bitcoin has also brought me to religion and spirituality through people like Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.

I have a pretty bad relationship with religion. My mom forced me to sit in church every sunday when I was younger. I couldn’t stand sitting still for hours on end listening to some dude on a bit chair talk about how some other dude 2000 years ago died for our sins. I stopped going as soon as she  stopped forcing me and I became a militant atheist thinking people who believed in God must be superstitious idiots. 

Aging already made me less militant (seriously, let people just be religious. You don’t need to concern yourself with that), but Dr. Peterson’s lectures on the bible made me think that there might be something more behind it. I can highly recommend listening to ‘The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories’. It’s super interesting and it’s not about turning you into a Christian at all.

I didn’t do much more with that until I listened to Aleks Svetski’s recent ‘Bitcoin Preachers’ podcast. They recommended the book ‘There is a God’, which should soon arrive on my doorstep. It’s not that I’m actively looking for religion in my life (Bitcoin already serves that purpose :P), but Bitcoin has also taught me to actively look for ways I could be wrong in my assumptions. Maybe religion is one of those points where I’m wrong. 

Health

Another 180 turn I made this year is in my diet: whereas I was a vegetarian before, I’ve only eaten  meat for the past 2-3 months.

There are quite a few carnivores in the Bitcoin community, and I started out (probably like most of you reading this) thinking it was a weird bro-culture macho diet of some fringe Bitcoiners looking to prove their manliness. But, like with so many things this year, I was wrong. Eating only meat might sound extreme, but it’s actually a very logical, evolutionarily consistent and scientifically substantiated diet.

Hear me out:  

At age 21 I was finally diagnosed with ADHD after a whole childhood of obvious ADHD behavior. Ever since then I’ve used Ritalin daily, and I wouldn’t know how to get through a day without that. I often couldn’t even concentrate on fun stuff like hanging out with friends without my medication. I took at least ten 5mg pills per day, often more, to feel ‘normal’.

Medication wasn’t the only thing that helped me, therapy and coaching also had massive results. I shifted some other things, which I’ll go into later, that helped. But there was an almost instant, massive shift in how I felt after stopping my vegetarian diet. I noticed I was a lot less tired all day and could actually focus on things. I took all kinds of supplements and had blood tests indicate I wasn’t missing any nutrients, but meat still represented a massive change in my energy and concentration levels.  

I did a lot more research before cutting out everything but animal products. I can recommend Paul Saladino’s ‘The Carnivore Code’ and his podcast. If you’re concerned about the moral case of killing animals, check out carnivoreisvegan.com and the Sacred Cow documentary. 

Now if you’re happy and healthy with your diet, stick with it. But the results have been amazing for me and I would recommend anyone just try carnivore for a few months. Believe me, you don’t  know how great you can feel. I really noticed this during this holiday, when I ate the same stuff as my family again. I was much more tired, and got irritated about stuff much more quickly. Nothing except my food changed.

Small warning: going carnivore can suck for the first month or so.

You’ll feel like shit, get diarrhea or have other side effects. This is your body adjusting to a different way of  producing energy. And you know what also sucks for the first bit? Quitting drugs. It’s the same deal. You’re addicted to carbs. If you want proof, just keep a tab on what percentage of your calories come from carbs daily. It’s a lot. 

Next to that, halfway through this year I fixed my sleep schedule and move around a lot more. I go to bed at ten and wake up at 7 every day, and I hit the gym at 7:45 on weekdays. I used to take at least an hour to fall asleep, now I’m unconscious in 15 minutes. I almost always wake up before my alarm. A regular sleeping schedule and no more eating after seven PM really helps with falling asleep and sleeping well. Sleep is massively important and it’ll help you feel even better. It just takes some willpower to go to bed.  

There are many more small things I did, like taking cold showers, having a small feeding window throughout the day and giving up comfort in many scenarios (seriously, being comfortably warm all day makes you lazy).

There’s too much to mention here.

Conclusion 

Bitcoin’s patented number-go-up technology is what got me into it at first.

If you view Bitcoin as a  way to make money, you’re probably right. But you’re also blind to most of the rabbit hole. I  haven’t described all of the ways I’ve changed this year, and I don’t feel like I’m even close to exploring the entire rabbit hole.

Bitcoin is just an entryway into the rabbit hole of truth.

Bitcoin has changed me for the better and it can change you too. Taking all of this into account, I’m convinced the ‘bitcoin fixes this’ mantra is not an exaggeration. In 10 months it’s transformed me from a poor, materialist, socialist, distracted, unmotivated, vegetarian atheist into a rich(er), libertarian, focused carnivore. 

I know we Bitcoiners look like nutjobs, but if you’re reading this as a skeptic, we all started where you are now. Every one of us thought that it was a crazy idea or that it couldn’t work. We changed through hard work and constant learning. And there’s no group of adversarial thinkers more ready to change their minds than us. But we won’t, at least not on Bitcoin. Because we’re right. And if you doubt us, have.