Beautifully said. Thank you for your words. My father, possibly because he grew up without money- was always concerned about the money I didn’t have. I get it. He was looking out for his child. But my father was also a teacher and a lover of all things wild. He taught me to love the trees, to speak with the earth and hear their replies. I am richer by far for not focusing on rising up within the machine of capitalism. Rather my wealth is something that cannot be measured in coins, only heartbeats. Appreciate who you are in this wide world. ❤️
Thank you for this -- I have moments when I wonder what I was thinking not playing the game, not building a money legacy for grown children for whom the world is so much harsher every day. But if I'd jumped in the game they wouldn't have been home educated and become the free-thinking people I admire. I wouldn't be eking a living in wonderful forest in France and so much more. We need to remind ourselves of this in a world intent on making people they have missed out by choosing life over money.
First time commenter :-) Thank you for all your beautiful, poetic, and thought provoking words Greg. I enjoy reading your poems, stories and perspectives. I find them to be incredibly fresh and open minded.
I understand your thesis (at least my understanding of it) of this lovely article you wrote is to stop acting like crabs in a bucket, to stop destroying any and all integrity and stop defiling and disrespecting the Earth as well as each other on our selfish quest to the endless path of MORE.
See, the thing is though, Bitcoin is not in the same school of hedge funds, greed, exclusion, oppression, discrimination, big pharma, or the destruction of the environment.
I will do my best to try and not convince you of anything. Understanding Bitcoin is a long personal journey, it is an epiphany…which is a highly personal and profound experience that can rarely be communicated to others with the same potency as it was originally experienced. In my experience, and with all due respect, the only people who are against Bitcoin either don’t understand it, or it threatens their tyrannical grip on society.
I still do feel it’s important to pass on what I have learned over the last 4 years.
Id like to offer you a number of different perspectives regarding Bitcoin and blockchain technology. And I will lead with this, Bitcoin is not destroying Mother Earth, on the contrary, it may be the one thing that will help humans coexist with each other as well as the earth. The “Bitcoin is destroying the earth” common misconception that usually stems from a couple different misguided schools of thought. 1) There is no need for Bitcoin/it serves no purpose and 2) The energy it uses is completely wasteful because there is no need for Bitcoin/it serves no purpose and its only for the rich and greedy.
Would helping billions and billions of people to gain even some of the financial liberties we all enjoy in the west as well as escape the tyrannical financial oppression of dictators around the world justify the energy usage? In my opinion? It absolutely would without a doubt. And that is only one use case for Bitcoin.
We are lucky being in the United States, our inflation rate is around 3%-5%. Add that to the debasement of our currency of about 8% per year, and that gives you about a 10%-15% hurdle one needs to earn on their cash so it is not lost. What does that mean? If you are not making 13% on your investments or savings, you are loosing money every year. Say you have $100,000 in the bank earning the lovely .01% interest that is currently offered. You loose $13,000 of purchasing power every year. For about 2 billion people the inflation rate they have to suffer is anywhere from 30% to well over 200% Do the math.
I invite you to try and look at things from a different perspective. Instead of looking at “how everything is so expensive these days”, look at it from the perspective that the Dollar, the Peso, the Euro, the Yen, is simply worth less due to the dilution of it, so it requires more of these monetary units to purchase the same amount of apples for instance.
This is why Bitcoin is important. Bitcoin is not about becoming rich, Bitcoin is about not becoming poor.
Ive spent the last 4 years studying Bitcoin, cryptography, proof of work, and a myriad of subjects related to Blockchain. Ive spent thousands and thousands of hours listening to interviews, podcasts, and presentations about this space. Just finished my 15th book on Bitcoin (many of which ive read multiple times) and the technology behind it. Id say I spend on average 2 hours a day learning about Bitcoin and Blockchain, and I am still learning every…single…day.
All new technology is met with misinformation, disinformation and fear. Especially disruptive technologies like Bitcoin, the internet, the telephone, electricity, or the printing press. It’s a tale old as time. Do you think people understood the automobile when it was invented? Or how about electricity? Or what about the internet? They were things that the world had never seen. They made no sense whatsoever to the people at the time. There was no need for such things when they were first introduced according to the masses. They got in the way, jobs were going to be lost, they were going to destroy the world, they were only used by criminals… They were banned.
How’d that work out?
Why centralization is bad….
The problem with power, is it tends to centralize. Whether it was the Church, especially in the dark ages, or war mongering governments, or crooked banks, or big Pharma, wall street or even huge conglomerate’s like Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. When things start to centralize, corruption always follows without exception.
The beautiful thing about bitcoin, is it is completely decentralized. Meaning no single government, person, company, race, religion, or gender controls it. Bitcoin cannot be banned. It cannot be censored, it cannot be controlled. Why is this important? Since the dawn of time, the centralized powers or governments have controlled the money supply. We have given our trust to such entities to do the right thing, but and time again, they have manipulated the money, funded countless bloody wars with it, debased it and an inflated it away right in front of our eyes.
Fix the money, fix the world...maybe
Do you know what Fiat is? Not only is it a shitty car, it’s also a shitty form of money that has been around for about 50 years. Fiat is money that is not backed by anything, all currencies in the world right now are fiat currencies. The US dollar has not been backed by gold since 1971. (just for fun, google “WTF happened in 1971”) Fiat can and is created at any time the powers that be see fit. This negatively affects the people as the money is essentially diluted and the purchasing power declines, savings evaporate overnight. Until 2020 (and 2008), only countries like Zimbabwe, Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey, Sudan, Iran, Ghana etc had to deal with this. But when the governments printed (created) an insane money during covid pandemic (The US increased their money supply by 40% in 2 years for instance) we all felt it. Massive abuse of power.
Currently the US is spending about 1 Trillion just on the interest on the debt they hold (36 Trillion as of today)… just on the Interest! It i estimated that about 30% of our tax money in 2024 will just go to servicing the interest on the debt that the US government has accrued. Not very sustainable if you ask me.
There are billions of people around the world with zero access to banking services. And this number is only growing. Bitcoin gives the farmer in Ghana, Sudan, or Iran the possibility of not only having a bank account on their phone, but to actually BE a bank. It allows oppressed Afghan women and countless other oppressed people around the world to actually have and own their own money. Bitcoin is a revolution for human rights, it will, and is, liberating millions and millions as we speak.
What happens when people actually have something to save for, a future to hope for? When they have the option to opt out of the hyperinflation of their local currency? Perhaps then hope will spring up, maybe that is when we all will begin to cultivate instead of decimate.
Look, I cant encapsulate what Bitcoin is in a few paragraphs. Some think the greatest thing that Bitcoin might do in the near future is balance power grids, save and store stranded electricity, as well help far flung communities harness the sun, hydro or wind and build savings doing so. Like I said, I've been studying it for years and I still have a hard time grasping what it actually is. The world has never seen anything like it before. Proof of work and Bitcoin will change the world, and change it for the better.
Money is older than writing. Animals use money. Children create abstract forms of money on playgrounds. Money is not bad, money is not the root of all evil. Money is a powerful form of communication, it connects communities and societies across the world, but few of us are educated about it.
Humans have been using money for 10’s of thousands of years.
We are alive, right now, in this little 20 year window in time where quite possibility the whole foundation of money is changing. A new form of money is being introduced for the first time in 10,000 years, just ponder that for a while.
I encourage you to spend some time reading up on Bitcoin.
Thank you for this Raynor. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. And as is true for everything I share here, to borrow the words of one of my favorite bands, Over The Rhine, “Like all true believers, I am truly skeptical of all that I have said.” I share what I experience and feel. And once in awhile a good soul like you does the same. And in this exchange, this sacred coming together, we learn. I learned from you just now. Thank you. All blessings.
Thanks for responding Greg. Love the quote, Love the humility. To be completley honest, I have never been outspoken on this subject. Ill answer questions if someone is interested, that's about it. I don't feel that is it my job to convince others of the positives of Bitcoin, or anything else for that matter. However, you being a free thinker, incredibly eloquent writer, communicator and someone who lives their life in such a beautiful and poetic way, I thought you of all people might be open to some of my thoughts on Bitcoin. Happy Holidays to you and your family :-)
Thanks for this. All so true! I'm 73 and bought my place in Oregon's Columbia Gorge well before "the great acceleration" with bitcoin and rest of it. My girlfriend's two sons are realtors and builders in the Aspen area and as much as I like them, it's all sickening to watch and even though I stay in one of their places for free every winter and totally enjoy basking in the winter beauty thanks to them, I look around and try to just observe and not judge. Most are so caught up in the race to cash in that they are clueless as to what they are missing and the mess they endorse daily. There really is not much to do except watch it play out and ready oneself for total collapse which surely is on the horizon.
I relate with every word, and the tears that you inspire have so many layers. I'm still here struggling in one of those mountain towns that has changed drastically since my arrival to Durango in '97 (though Crested Butte was a second home during my childhood & my gateway to the Holy Mountain Wilderness as well). Like so many, I feel I have missed the boat while simultaneously I continue my efforts to keep up/ expand/ be flexible as I reevaluate my small business game plan for 'next season'...hoarding whatever cash is coming my way. Do I stay and keep hoping to catch a break? Do I sell everything and become more mobile? I surrender to the present moment, inviting the awe and wonder to return in this dark 'winter' time. 'Winter' because it was almost 60 degrees today. Thank you for your ponderings Gregory, they help me to remember that my dreams are meaningful even if they seem drowned out by the hamster wheel at times. Big love to you all 💞
Appreciating the clarity and alignment with what truly constitutes an "honest" living. Thanks for writing this; it came to me via our mutual friend Angela V. People do get panicked when they think they've missed the boat, until they realized it's the Titanic that set sail without them. No amount of money could saved the wealthy in those moments from drowning in the frigid waters. In the same way, nor will it magically make food appear on shelves in that moment you go in store to find them empty.
This reminds me of COVID times. Our farm is a seed saving farm. Suddenly, when all the people in Bangkok realized then they could no longer depend on the fancy new grocery stores for everything because of lock down restrictions, we started getting lots of calls. Everyone wanted seeds again. We cannot rely on convenience. But abundance is all around us if instead we invest in wisdom. Thanks for sharing Shawn.
Straight talk, gratefully received. It’s cognitive dissonance you’re describing! Or dissociation. I too didn’t optimize my opportunities and am now proud to live on a teachers pension shoestring (not an ample one as I didn’t get into the game until I was in my 40s). I was lucky to be able to buy a humble house (my first) ten years ago in a place where covid migration from NYC has put housing out of reach for the non-rich. I’m a bit old to start a permaculture farm but my (homeschooled) daughter just might. Very appreciative of what you do and how you write about it
Beautifully said. Thank you for your words. My father, possibly because he grew up without money- was always concerned about the money I didn’t have. I get it. He was looking out for his child. But my father was also a teacher and a lover of all things wild. He taught me to love the trees, to speak with the earth and hear their replies. I am richer by far for not focusing on rising up within the machine of capitalism. Rather my wealth is something that cannot be measured in coins, only heartbeats. Appreciate who you are in this wide world. ❤️
Love=MORE Love. May you continue to be blessed.
Thank you for this -- I have moments when I wonder what I was thinking not playing the game, not building a money legacy for grown children for whom the world is so much harsher every day. But if I'd jumped in the game they wouldn't have been home educated and become the free-thinking people I admire. I wouldn't be eking a living in wonderful forest in France and so much more. We need to remind ourselves of this in a world intent on making people they have missed out by choosing life over money.
Your children are very lucky. And I hope that one day we can visit you in your forest in France! Sounds amazing to me!
Hey Greg,
First time commenter :-) Thank you for all your beautiful, poetic, and thought provoking words Greg. I enjoy reading your poems, stories and perspectives. I find them to be incredibly fresh and open minded.
I understand your thesis (at least my understanding of it) of this lovely article you wrote is to stop acting like crabs in a bucket, to stop destroying any and all integrity and stop defiling and disrespecting the Earth as well as each other on our selfish quest to the endless path of MORE.
See, the thing is though, Bitcoin is not in the same school of hedge funds, greed, exclusion, oppression, discrimination, big pharma, or the destruction of the environment.
I will do my best to try and not convince you of anything. Understanding Bitcoin is a long personal journey, it is an epiphany…which is a highly personal and profound experience that can rarely be communicated to others with the same potency as it was originally experienced. In my experience, and with all due respect, the only people who are against Bitcoin either don’t understand it, or it threatens their tyrannical grip on society.
I still do feel it’s important to pass on what I have learned over the last 4 years.
Id like to offer you a number of different perspectives regarding Bitcoin and blockchain technology. And I will lead with this, Bitcoin is not destroying Mother Earth, on the contrary, it may be the one thing that will help humans coexist with each other as well as the earth. The “Bitcoin is destroying the earth” common misconception that usually stems from a couple different misguided schools of thought. 1) There is no need for Bitcoin/it serves no purpose and 2) The energy it uses is completely wasteful because there is no need for Bitcoin/it serves no purpose and its only for the rich and greedy.
Would helping billions and billions of people to gain even some of the financial liberties we all enjoy in the west as well as escape the tyrannical financial oppression of dictators around the world justify the energy usage? In my opinion? It absolutely would without a doubt. And that is only one use case for Bitcoin.
We are lucky being in the United States, our inflation rate is around 3%-5%. Add that to the debasement of our currency of about 8% per year, and that gives you about a 10%-15% hurdle one needs to earn on their cash so it is not lost. What does that mean? If you are not making 13% on your investments or savings, you are loosing money every year. Say you have $100,000 in the bank earning the lovely .01% interest that is currently offered. You loose $13,000 of purchasing power every year. For about 2 billion people the inflation rate they have to suffer is anywhere from 30% to well over 200% Do the math.
I invite you to try and look at things from a different perspective. Instead of looking at “how everything is so expensive these days”, look at it from the perspective that the Dollar, the Peso, the Euro, the Yen, is simply worth less due to the dilution of it, so it requires more of these monetary units to purchase the same amount of apples for instance.
This is why Bitcoin is important. Bitcoin is not about becoming rich, Bitcoin is about not becoming poor.
Ive spent the last 4 years studying Bitcoin, cryptography, proof of work, and a myriad of subjects related to Blockchain. Ive spent thousands and thousands of hours listening to interviews, podcasts, and presentations about this space. Just finished my 15th book on Bitcoin (many of which ive read multiple times) and the technology behind it. Id say I spend on average 2 hours a day learning about Bitcoin and Blockchain, and I am still learning every…single…day.
All new technology is met with misinformation, disinformation and fear. Especially disruptive technologies like Bitcoin, the internet, the telephone, electricity, or the printing press. It’s a tale old as time. Do you think people understood the automobile when it was invented? Or how about electricity? Or what about the internet? They were things that the world had never seen. They made no sense whatsoever to the people at the time. There was no need for such things when they were first introduced according to the masses. They got in the way, jobs were going to be lost, they were going to destroy the world, they were only used by criminals… They were banned.
How’d that work out?
Why centralization is bad….
The problem with power, is it tends to centralize. Whether it was the Church, especially in the dark ages, or war mongering governments, or crooked banks, or big Pharma, wall street or even huge conglomerate’s like Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. When things start to centralize, corruption always follows without exception.
The beautiful thing about bitcoin, is it is completely decentralized. Meaning no single government, person, company, race, religion, or gender controls it. Bitcoin cannot be banned. It cannot be censored, it cannot be controlled. Why is this important? Since the dawn of time, the centralized powers or governments have controlled the money supply. We have given our trust to such entities to do the right thing, but and time again, they have manipulated the money, funded countless bloody wars with it, debased it and an inflated it away right in front of our eyes.
Fix the money, fix the world...maybe
Do you know what Fiat is? Not only is it a shitty car, it’s also a shitty form of money that has been around for about 50 years. Fiat is money that is not backed by anything, all currencies in the world right now are fiat currencies. The US dollar has not been backed by gold since 1971. (just for fun, google “WTF happened in 1971”) Fiat can and is created at any time the powers that be see fit. This negatively affects the people as the money is essentially diluted and the purchasing power declines, savings evaporate overnight. Until 2020 (and 2008), only countries like Zimbabwe, Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey, Sudan, Iran, Ghana etc had to deal with this. But when the governments printed (created) an insane money during covid pandemic (The US increased their money supply by 40% in 2 years for instance) we all felt it. Massive abuse of power.
Currently the US is spending about 1 Trillion just on the interest on the debt they hold (36 Trillion as of today)… just on the Interest! It i estimated that about 30% of our tax money in 2024 will just go to servicing the interest on the debt that the US government has accrued. Not very sustainable if you ask me.
There are billions of people around the world with zero access to banking services. And this number is only growing. Bitcoin gives the farmer in Ghana, Sudan, or Iran the possibility of not only having a bank account on their phone, but to actually BE a bank. It allows oppressed Afghan women and countless other oppressed people around the world to actually have and own their own money. Bitcoin is a revolution for human rights, it will, and is, liberating millions and millions as we speak.
What happens when people actually have something to save for, a future to hope for? When they have the option to opt out of the hyperinflation of their local currency? Perhaps then hope will spring up, maybe that is when we all will begin to cultivate instead of decimate.
Look, I cant encapsulate what Bitcoin is in a few paragraphs. Some think the greatest thing that Bitcoin might do in the near future is balance power grids, save and store stranded electricity, as well help far flung communities harness the sun, hydro or wind and build savings doing so. Like I said, I've been studying it for years and I still have a hard time grasping what it actually is. The world has never seen anything like it before. Proof of work and Bitcoin will change the world, and change it for the better.
Money is older than writing. Animals use money. Children create abstract forms of money on playgrounds. Money is not bad, money is not the root of all evil. Money is a powerful form of communication, it connects communities and societies across the world, but few of us are educated about it.
Humans have been using money for 10’s of thousands of years.
We are alive, right now, in this little 20 year window in time where quite possibility the whole foundation of money is changing. A new form of money is being introduced for the first time in 10,000 years, just ponder that for a while.
I encourage you to spend some time reading up on Bitcoin.
With respect,
Raynor
Thank you for this Raynor. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. And as is true for everything I share here, to borrow the words of one of my favorite bands, Over The Rhine, “Like all true believers, I am truly skeptical of all that I have said.” I share what I experience and feel. And once in awhile a good soul like you does the same. And in this exchange, this sacred coming together, we learn. I learned from you just now. Thank you. All blessings.
Thanks for responding Greg. Love the quote, Love the humility. To be completley honest, I have never been outspoken on this subject. Ill answer questions if someone is interested, that's about it. I don't feel that is it my job to convince others of the positives of Bitcoin, or anything else for that matter. However, you being a free thinker, incredibly eloquent writer, communicator and someone who lives their life in such a beautiful and poetic way, I thought you of all people might be open to some of my thoughts on Bitcoin. Happy Holidays to you and your family :-)
Thanks for this. All so true! I'm 73 and bought my place in Oregon's Columbia Gorge well before "the great acceleration" with bitcoin and rest of it. My girlfriend's two sons are realtors and builders in the Aspen area and as much as I like them, it's all sickening to watch and even though I stay in one of their places for free every winter and totally enjoy basking in the winter beauty thanks to them, I look around and try to just observe and not judge. Most are so caught up in the race to cash in that they are clueless as to what they are missing and the mess they endorse daily. There really is not much to do except watch it play out and ready oneself for total collapse which surely is on the horizon.
I relate with every word, and the tears that you inspire have so many layers. I'm still here struggling in one of those mountain towns that has changed drastically since my arrival to Durango in '97 (though Crested Butte was a second home during my childhood & my gateway to the Holy Mountain Wilderness as well). Like so many, I feel I have missed the boat while simultaneously I continue my efforts to keep up/ expand/ be flexible as I reevaluate my small business game plan for 'next season'...hoarding whatever cash is coming my way. Do I stay and keep hoping to catch a break? Do I sell everything and become more mobile? I surrender to the present moment, inviting the awe and wonder to return in this dark 'winter' time. 'Winter' because it was almost 60 degrees today. Thank you for your ponderings Gregory, they help me to remember that my dreams are meaningful even if they seem drowned out by the hamster wheel at times. Big love to you all 💞
I rather liked this one!
Im happy to here that Yoli! I lost a few with this one:)
I have always missed the boat, and will keep on missing the boat - in order to keep those values of humanity alive. Blessed Be Gregory.
Well done brother, well done!
Appreciating the clarity and alignment with what truly constitutes an "honest" living. Thanks for writing this; it came to me via our mutual friend Angela V. People do get panicked when they think they've missed the boat, until they realized it's the Titanic that set sail without them. No amount of money could saved the wealthy in those moments from drowning in the frigid waters. In the same way, nor will it magically make food appear on shelves in that moment you go in store to find them empty.
This reminds me of COVID times. Our farm is a seed saving farm. Suddenly, when all the people in Bangkok realized then they could no longer depend on the fancy new grocery stores for everything because of lock down restrictions, we started getting lots of calls. Everyone wanted seeds again. We cannot rely on convenience. But abundance is all around us if instead we invest in wisdom. Thanks for sharing Shawn.
Still here for it 😊
Good to be here with you, Johanna! :)
Straight talk, gratefully received. It’s cognitive dissonance you’re describing! Or dissociation. I too didn’t optimize my opportunities and am now proud to live on a teachers pension shoestring (not an ample one as I didn’t get into the game until I was in my 40s). I was lucky to be able to buy a humble house (my first) ten years ago in a place where covid migration from NYC has put housing out of reach for the non-rich. I’m a bit old to start a permaculture farm but my (homeschooled) daughter just might. Very appreciative of what you do and how you write about it
Very inspiring Janet. Thank you for sharing. And thank you for your kind words.