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The Remnant, The Parasite And The Masses
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Discussing Bitcoin FOMO: “Take The Time You Can”
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In a fireside chat with podcaster Dennis Porter, he covered discussing Bitcoin with those who don’t get it yet.
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The tenth episode of “Bitcoin Bottom Line” consisted of a fireside chat between host C.J. WIlson and Bitcoiner and podcaster Dennis Porter.
The episode kicked off with Porter’s story of how he discovered mining, which led him to be so obsessed with mining bitcoin that his girlfriend had to pull him away and force him to take a break.
Wilson shares his perspective on the bitcoiner lifecycle.
“There’s a curiosity and accumulation phase, then you get to the finality of the heavy conviction, and then you reach a plateau and realize it’s hard to balance your life,” he said. “Then, you make the choice to stay in the shadows or come out as a bitcoiner and share your story and help others.”
Porter, who is now involved in politics, gained his appreciation for religious freedom from spending several years on the mission field with his parents when he was younger. He jumped into politics with a career perspective, where he was trained in campaign school. Porter worked on four primaries, finding that everything is so divisive, and that in his experience, internal party politics are almost more divisive than red vs. blue.
Residing in the Portland, Oregon area, Porter has experienced the mark of single-issue voters in his community.
“I was annoyed that single issue voters have so much power when they only care about one issue, but the reason was because their livelihood was at stake,” he shared.
After his realization, he gained respect for the single-issue voters and states and added, “I think that we can be the most powerful single-issue voter block in history.”
He also went on to point out that, “We’re single-issue voters that are focused on the economy, environment, family, health, and this gives us an incredible ability to reach a large group of people, but also gives us the ability to dive deep on bitcoin,” he continued. “As a single issue voter for bitcoin, you’re defending your business and your wealth.”
A well-known podcast host, Porter shared his favorite way to listen to a podcast as someone with ADHD is to multitask. Wilson shared that sentiment, explaining that he gives himself an hour every day to rotate through his favorite podcasters while walking his daughters around the neighborhood.
While discussing being a public bitcoiner and educating non-bitcoiners about the asset, Porter shared that “Ultimately, it’s more important to maintain relationships. You take the time you can, and if someone’s interested, you talk as long as they want to talk. The moment they are there to just debate, if your intention is to orange pill them, you need to give them a break.”
The two proceed deeper into the topics of technology, history, consumerism, and the future of bitcoin. Don’t miss this packed episode with C.J. Wilson and Dennis Porter.
Taking The Orange Pill: A Theory Or Reality?
The goal of orange pilling someone has nothing to do with drugs. It is the notion that bitcoin will inevitably become the global reserve asset, while converting people to believe in the bitcoin standard. But, how do Bitcoiners expect this to occur if the vast majority of people still fail to understand what Bitcoin is and truly stands for. Thus, the Bitcoin orange pill theory was formed.
Escaping the monetary Matrix requires choice. Luckily, game theory has provided the masses with two pills for intellectual consumption that are very complex. You are taking the orange pill, which represents Bitcoin, freedom and monetary sovereignty or the blue pill, which means fiat money, debt and blissful ignorance. Physically, there is no pill to take, only knowledge about Bitcoin and freedom gained. Do you remember the years before Bitcoin? Being helpless, saving your money for a home or car then, boom, the value of your dollar is lowered and the home you saved for is now three times more expensive. Bitcoin is about freedom from just that. If you think it’s about how much the price will increase for a single coin in fiat dollars, there is a lot about this technology you do not know. Those who believe they have overdosed on the orange pill get called Bitcoin maximalists. Still, maximalists can be toxic to some people not ready for the intensity of belief that stirs up in their veins of evangelism. So, what is the best approach to taking the orange pill if you are new or curious about Bitcoin? Let’s dig deeper…
Do Not Take The Blue Pill Unless…
Most people are not ready for the unsettling and potentially life-changing knowledge learning about Bitcoin represents and enjoy the beautiful prison they live in. The blue pill would lead them back to ignorance, akin to monetary Stockholm syndrome, living in confined comfort without the fear of declining purchasing power within the simulated central bank reality. The concept of Bitcoin requires an understanding of multiple schools of thought such as economics, history, physics, computer engineering, technological disruption and much more.
Some people do not want or even care to learn about Bitcoin and become overwhelmed at its downright insane solutions for money and ultimately the world. Bitcoin eliminates the arbitrage of a bank. It allows people to deal directly peer to peer rather than indirectly. For those intimidated by that thought, you can’t expect people to understand bitcoin when they are hypnotized by fiat money, thinking it is a better viable option. Most people don’t know what’s good for them. As described by Morpheus from the “Matrix” movie: “You take the blue pill…the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.”
Go Orange Or Enjoy Staying Poor
Falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole entails being bombarded by tons of information. Any orange-pilled pleb will tell you with conviction why bitcoin is the best thing since sliced bread, and the only other option to this is to have fun staying poor. When you go orange, you quickly learn these crucial things about bitcoin.
- It is scarce.
- It can store your monetary wealth.
- It can be used to pay people securely.
- It can be exchanged globally for goods and services.
- It can and will appreciate in value over time.
- It is decentralized so that no government or individual bank is in control.
So, get used to a rigorous debate during your orange pill journey. You will be constantly questioned on what money is, Austrian economics and Metcalfe’s Law. Questions like, “If you divide the world’s wealth by 21 million bitcoin, what do you get?” You will be perplexed and in awe of how the pieces fit together as you search for solutions. Once you realize money is an idea of what is valuable, and that idea isn’t concrete. You ponder.
A bar of gold is just a symbol of what value is. Something man deemed valuable for thousands of years but didn’t mean it would stay that way for another thousand. Gold has been deemed a relic by Bitcoiners, and stocks are proving to be volatile amid massive overprinting by the Federal Reserve. So, people are looking for solutions to their money problems. Americans that invested in bitcoin using their first $1,200 stimulus checks saw a 620% gain. Show me a stock on the traditional market with that type of upward mobility. In this new paradigm, your ideas become wealth. Bitcoin is the best idea of the 21st century for money. The orange pill allows a Bitcoiner to see, while others are blind. We are witnessing the dematerialization of the economy, politics, and the rise of the cyber economy and monetary sovereignty through Bitcoin.
Look Beyond The Obvious And See How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes
The concept of Bitcoin not being able to be destroyed unless you shut down the internet globally is ingenious. Even if a future shutdown occurred, the bitcoin will lay dormant on cold wallets and hard drives until its nodes are awakened again. The orange pill makes a person look beyond the obvious of current ingenuity. Land, for example, is something you can see, touch and build on as a form of an appreciating asset. For centuries, land has been the obvious choice to secure wealth and still is in certain circumstances. The land is apparent and obvious. The land is scarce, but it can be seized, taxed or squatted on. There is less bitcoin than land and it doesn’t hold the liability land ownership does. Not everyone will be able to afford or own land, but bitcoin is available with no barrier to entry. Even the poorest among us can buy into bitcoin and join its network. Bitcoin removes the flaws of physicality; it is a technology you cannot taste, see or touch.
Lastly, the orange pill, which is ultimately the understanding of Bitcoin, teaches you gratitude. It forces you to withhold being wealthy to gain conviction first. Understanding how game-changing this tech is, you learn it transcends money. Gradually then suddenly. Bitcoin will become as ubiquitous in the future as the internet is in our lives today. Rules can be bent, others can be broken. What are the monetary rules in the world of fiat? They are not clear because the rule book is modified by and for those it benefits the most.
Bitcoin fixes this flawed approach and gives a person the ability to see the rules of money and make them elastic or bend them. Like Keanu Reeves who played Neo, you can slow down your time preference and dodge the obstacles of high consumption and high debt. Slowing down time into slices is the best side effect of the orange pill. You can observe things that would have whizzed past and can make sound decisions with sound money.
If you made it this far. The best thing you can do in protest of the monetary constraints we are all under is to buy and hold bitcoin. In the Bitcoin social circles, this is considered a peaceful protest where there is no need for violence or civil disobedience. The inflation filled world we were all dumped into at birth but never opted into is an illusion. Some have taken the orange pill to see how deep the rabbit hole goes and that takes courage. Some are still trapped inside of fiat and don’t even know it. But there is salvation. Bitcoin is the one.
This is a guest post by Dawdu M. Amantanah. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
The Bitcoin Lifestyle Of Stacy Herbert And Max Keiser
Stacy Herbert met Max Keiser in a French internet café in 2003. To that point, her media career had been primarily spent behind the scenes as a script consultant and “development girl” in Hollywood and the stories Keiser was telling her about banking and finance, as well as the energy with which this former Manhattan-based standup comedian regaled her, inspired her to join forces with him.
“I’ve always been the intermediary between the audience and the talent, the movie stars, the TV stars, the comedic writers and stuff like that,” Herbert told Bitcoin Magazine. “Our conversations there were like, how to get the stories Max is telling me onto the screen, how to get it onto a podcast, back in 2003, before there were really podcasts.”
Since then, the pair has produced television content for the BBC and BBC World (a platform Herbert called “very oppressive,” but also the one that first brought her in front of the camera with Keiser), Al-Jazeera, the Iranian state-owned news network Press TV and Russian state-controlled network RT. This content has always pertained to the financial world, framing Wall Street banks as the antagonists and the system as rigged against the majority, but it wasn’t until Bitcoin came along that the pair found their protagonist, their “superhero,” as Herbert described it.
Bitcoin’s First Couple
In addition to working together, Herbert and Keiser are married. Anecdotally, I have rarely seen one without the other sharing a stage or close by. Keiser is certainly the more colorful character of the two (he was called “crypto Willy Wonka” by “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah after a manically-energetic appearance at Bitcoin 2021), while Herbert considers herself his “operating system” (she was the one to confirm our interview appointment and grab Keiser when it was scheduled to begin).
“I always think of our relationship as a gang of two,” Keiser told Bitcoin Magazine. “It’s a very small gang, there’s only two people in the gang, but that’s how we approach our work and our life. We’re out there traveling the world, pushing the Bitcoin maximalist message and we look out for each other, as gang members do, and we trust eachother like we’re in the gang. We have an oath that we took, called ‘marriage,’ like you find in a gang, and we love the gang lifestyle.”
Today, in addition to RT’s “The Keiser Report” and other projects, the couple produce the “Orange Pill Podcast,” which just reached its one-year anniversary and receives 500,000 to one million downloads and views per episode, according to Herbert. I spoke with them as they prepared for the Phoenix, AZ leg of their “F*ck Elon Tour,” live nights of Herbert interviewing Bitcoin thought leaders and Keiser performing standup routines in which he impersonates central bankers in skimpy clothing.
Since participating in the first-ever Bitcoin conference in 2011, Keiser has become Bitcoin’s most reliably-outrageous maximalist, someone who can raise the energy in a room like few others who have as much knowledge and commitment to what is ultimately an open-source software project.
“I’m just channeling the energy of the audience and the audience wants to release, the audience wants to have kind of a Bitcoin orgasm and I can feel it in the air,” Keiser explains of his live stage persona. “And I’m assisting in their, essentially in their coming, simultaneously with this massive Bitcoin orgasm. I’m just there to help that orgasm happen, so I can just feel it in the air and let it happen.”
Herbert said that her process is more research-focused and centered on juxtaposing international headlines with historical precedence, and she certainly seems to focus Keiser’s messages when they share a platform.
Between the two of them, it’s clear that their media products are impacting people around the globe. As Alex Gladstein recently reported for Bitcoin Magazine, the “Keiser Report” serves as a “Trojan horse of sorts, reaching a large number of Cubans and Venezuelans through state programming and onboarding them into the new Bitcoin economy.”
Living The Bitcoin Lifestyle
In many ways, the couple offer a living definition of the Bitcoin lifestyle — traveling the world, regularly talking about and actively trying to convert others to Bitcoin adoption, and essentially viewing every component of life through the lens of this transformative technology. Promoting that lifestyle appears to be the common thread through their podcast, broadcast work and live productions, and they’re optimistic about its power as a cultural force.
“We’re at a point where the Bitcoin lifestyle becomes more the dominant zeitgeist,” Keiser said. “We’ve lived through several periods of cultural revolution. I’ve been through a few, the internet and the ’90s was a cultural revolution… And then, going back to the ’60s, of course… I think Bitcoin is this next and best, final and ultimately the winner in terms of preserving that freedom revolution that we’ve experienced a few times before.”
With their unique combination of outrageous and informative content, delivery of anti-fiat messages on state-sponsored platforms, and reputation as broadcast journalists obsessed with Bitcoin memes, Herbert and Keiser seem to embody the current state of hyperbitcoinization — the process by which Bitcoin grows into the world’s value system. Some may foresee this process as one that ends with Bitcoiners holed up in fortified citadels as the fiat-based world around them crumbles. But Herbert sees the process involving adoption by the powers that be as the fiat world steadily declines and Bitcoin enables more egalitarianism.
“It’s going to be through orange pilling those powers because because hyperbitcoinization is happening right now, it’s in El Salvador, it’s in the ‘Orange Pill Podcast’ Telegram group,” she said. “You saw it at Bitcoin 2021, when somebody like Chamath [Palihapitiya] who’s a billionaire comes in and says, ‘Hey, I’m a billionaire, I know what I’m talking about, listen to me.’ And the plebs go ‘fuck you’ and he’s off the stage. That’s remarkable.”
Keiser, as always, was a bit more cosmic when discussing his vision for the Bitcoin future.
“Every block syncs up everything that’s ever happening in the past and gives us the possibility of there being a mysterious future, because you never know where the difficulty adjustment’s going to land,” he said. “So, everything before us is mysterious, everything behind us is completely on the blockchain and unchangeable. And that gives us the ability to exist in the ever-present now, the infinite now. And now we’re entering that gravity well, we’ve crossed over the Bitcoin singularity, we’re heading now to that point of the face of God, as I like to call it. We’re about to find out why we’re here and that’s incredibly interesting.”
It may not be certain exactly how hyperbitcoinization will continue to unfold. But as it does, you can count on Herbert and Keiser to lead the march, holding hands the whole way.
Bull Bitcoin’s Pleb.Hodl On The Importance Of Orange Pills
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In this episode of Bitcoin Magazine’s “Meet The Taco Plebs,” I sat down with Bull Bitcoin’s newest head of marketing, Pleb.Hodl (@btcplebeian on Twitter) to discuss his unique Bitcoin rabbit hole story, his new position at Bull Bitcoin, the effect Bitcoin has on one’s mindset and much more.
Pleb.Hodl went into detail about his experience being “fiat pilled” coming out of university and the awakening that he had after being around people that advocated for bigger government. Along with this, we discussed the effects that believing in the ideals around Bitcoin has on individuals and society in general.
To finish, we delved into his new position at Bull Bitcoin and the excitement he has for the opportunity to work with the team there and build a phenomenal platform for true Bitcoiners.
Below are some more insights from Pleb.Hodl about his Bitcoin journey.
What’s your Bitcoin rabbit hole story?
My story starts with studying monetary economics at university and getting completely fiat pilled. It’s embarrassing to admit being that lazy, ignorant and/or gullible now, but I bought it all. By the time I finished university, I very much believed in the idea of enlightened government by experts. When I first heard about Bitcoin, I was still under this spell and thought it was a suboptimal solution to our problems. I always thought the focus should be on making the government less corrupt and more competent. I would say the beginning of my path to Bitcoin was when I joined the board for the liberal party in my local riding. Being around people who believed in bigger governmentt, I got to see how they think and how hopelessly flawed my views were. That was 2015 and was the beginning of my red pill journey, which was a necessary precursor for my orange pill.
In 2016 to 2017, I started becoming more open to Bitcoin but still wasn’t taking it seriously. I was also held back by my commitment to only investing in my own businesses… I was pretty cocky and didn’t believe any investment had a better risk/return. By early 2018, a couple of things had happened:
One, bitcoin had crushed my returns over the previous year, even after a 60% drop from its all-time high. And two, something like five to 10 people that I respected were telling me I was wrong about Bitcoin.
One day, I just decided that, at least as an exercise in critical thinking, I needed to steelman my argument. Obviously, as anyone who has ever undertaken that task knows, I failed. I fell down the rabbit hole and didn’t do much other than read about Bitcoin and listen to podcasts for the next year.
How has Bitcoin changed your life?
I mean, the most obvious way it has changed my life was by shifting my investment philosophy 180 degrees… I went from only investing in myself to committing my wealth and future savings exclusively to bitcoin.
It’s a nearly impossible benchmark to beat unless you’re starting a Bitcoin business, and I didn’t have the financial or technical background to pursue anything like that. I’ve never known how to describe myself but it would be something like “analog entrepreneur”… I like building brick-and-mortar businesses where you get to interact with people and communities. As an entrepreneur, that made it difficult to expand my business or start new ones because they needed to be entirely funded by someone else. Investor discussions were always kind of awkward too because — although not explicitly — implicitly the discussion always rests on the investor asking the question “if you were me, would you make this investment?” and the entrepreneur answering “YES!” whereas my answer was, “No, you should put it all in bitcoin but you won’t, so yes.”
Beneath the surface my heart was in Bitcoin and in hindsight it was inevitable that my path would lead me to working in Bitcoin.
This is a really obvious and basic way that it’s changed me but obviously, Bitcoin has this ability to change the way you see everything in life. It’s been far more all encompassing than investing, too.
What is the most amazing thing about Bitcoin to you?
By far, the most interesting thing about bitcoin is its capacity to completely change individuals. A significant part of my worldview is that life is psychedelic. Everything from books to conversations to everyday experiences alters our consciousness… who we are and how we see the world. I’ve become obsessed with “Bitcoin as psychedelic” — I think it’s inevitable that everyone in the world will be orange pilled. Whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, Bitcoin will transform human consciousness on an individual level. This ability to shift all of humanity toward all of the values associated with low-time preference and away from high-time preference fiat values is what makes me completely obsessed… I really believe it’s the most hopeful thing humanity has ever seen.
What are you most looking forward to in the Bitcoin space?
Bitcoin has consumed most of my time and energy since it first clicked for me in 2018. I guess the thing I’m most looking forward to (beyond the shift in human consciousness) — though it’s already begun — is having an outlet for all of that energy… having started at Bull Bitcoin last month as the new head of marketing, I’m unbelievably excited to have the resources to start orange pilling on a large scale. One obvious thing we’re focused on is customer acquisition, i.e., orange pilling no coiners. But Bull is such a unique company in terms of its commitment to using Bitcoin in the right ways… I’m really excited about being able to not just pursue surface-level orange pilling for bitcoin as an investment but deeper orange pilling with bitcoin as censorship-resistant money, freedom tech, etc. We have lots of projects in the works that will allow us to better educate our existing clients on self custody and privacy best practices that will hopefully nudge them further down the rabbit hole. It really feels like a unique opportunity for me to contribute to the Bitcoin project in a meaningful way.
Price prediction for the end of 2021, and the end of 2030?
For 2021, I’m going to be super boring and guess the middle of the range I have in mind… $85,000. I think anything can happen short term, especially if we see another round of lockdowns in the fall which I fully expect. With that being said, I think the ten-year bull run is far from over and I wouldn’t be surprised to see $500,000 within 12 months.
For 2030, I would be surprised if we’re still under $5 million. At that point, nominal predictions are kind of useless so let’s say $5 million in 2020 purchasing power.