My adult me would have paid EVERYTHING to have receive a mail like this 15 years ago, so listen up. I will make this worth your time. Concise. And priceless.

In the last month alone 5 friends asked me about Bitcoin, and if you follow the market you might have seen that today it crossed $100.000, so I thought I invest some time to explain what I found out since the first time I heard of Crypto and I went down that rabbit hole back in November 2017 that I already shared with them.

Before you raise your eyebrow, remember what I typed: ‘I will make this worth your time. Concise. And priceless.’

NONE OF THE FOLLOWING IS FINANCIAL ADVICE.

You might have noticed this newsletter is focused on health, BUT given that the way I have learnt things in the last 3 decades has been by obsessing about things for a undefined portion of time for eventually walking away with a new skill when boredom and/or burnout crawls in (and that I do not want to feel stuck in a two dimensional space, I want to start providing value in a wide range of subjects, all essential to provide you with the tools to achieve freedom, so let’s define it’s focused on self sovereignty.

You get a FREE Ride on a Time Machine

If you could go back in time to a 18 years old self and share with them everything that will matter in the future , would you do it? And most importantly, would your younger self listen?

I thought and talked about this a lot and I came to the conclusion that if the receivers of a message of change haven’t had the preparation for change to happen, change won’t last long. Take the Lotto winners for example. There is a pattern to what happens to them within a year or two. Losing all the money, and worse.

Like Back to the Future where (SPOILER ALERT, if you lived under a rock) Marty McFly realised at the end that reacting to provocations every time he is called a chicken won’t lead to anything good and he chooses not to race.

Biff (aka the bad guy but as a old man) on the other hand steals the book of the 100 years of bets, goes back to the past and gifts it to his younger self, which becomes filthy rich overnight. With a lot of money pouring in, his personality does not change. It’s amplified.

I’m here to help you making a belief shift first.

Your Imprinting on Money comes from your Parents

When I was a kid my parents had a pear shaped wooden money box in the kitchen. Coins of 1 and 2 Euros coins were put in there. Which means, as a young boy, that I had access to unlimited funding for buying books, comics and manga.

Great on the short run, terrible on the long run.

No sense of value for money, no sense of saving.
Buying things over experiences and Mentors.
Liabilities over investments.
The Poor Dad, Rich Dad scenario.

Regardless of that, I was a good saver growing up. But I never grew with a strategy to saving money or even to investing them.

And I know for a fact that this represents most of the world. Over 60% of low-income households are living paycheck to paycheck, with the average at 50%.

The main reason responsible for this, in my opinion, is we are not taught how money works. Not in the household. Not In school.

YOUR MINDSET SHAPES YOUR REALITY

Your mindset manifests a specific reality.

In my family money were not associated to great things. People making a lot of money were not represented in an elegant way but rather greedy, manipulative, self centred. Like Scrooge from A Christmas Carol.

To this day my dad does not associate the world Business to anything positive.

If you feel money as a negative thing, you won’t attract much of them.

It works like that for everything.
And money, being energy manifesting in a physical form, are not different.

HOW MONEY WORKS?

It took me 20 years to learn concepts like seigniorage and the difference between sound money and fiat money.

Seigniorage is a mechanism that central banks and governments (the Lords) leverage to generate significant profit from the issuance of fiat money.

It’s how banks have maintained their ability to make profit and control financial and political power since Feudal Times (aka the Middle Age).

Take 100 €: The Central bank prints a piece of paper (that they can potentially print ad infinitum) and lends it to banks which lend them to business and individuals, for a price (interest).

Production Cost of 100€ (0.5%): 0.50 €
Printing and Materials: €0.10–€0.20

• Logistics and Distribution: €0.20–€0.30

• Central Bank’s Profit (99.5%): 99.5 €

  So when you ask for a mortgage as a business or as an individual you borrow money the bank can print as easy as clicking a button but you need to pay back with decades of your real time.

This are the main differences between sound money and FIAT money.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MONEY
(2000 years or so)

Before money there was banter.
Banter was then followed by Commodity Money (shells, salt, precious metals).
Coinage started in 7th Century BCE with the first standardised coins minted in Lydia and made of electrum (a gold-silver alloy).

It was with the Roman Empire that the first widely accepted monetary system was introduced. It made it easy to trade things and to pay taxes.

Each coin in circulation had a standard amount of precious metal in them, until even the Roman Empire realised how unsustainable it was and they slowly (and quietly) reduced the amount of silver from 90/95% of it to 2/5% within few generations (around 200 years).

Fast forward 1701 years and Nixon took note and removed the Gold Standard, and from that from that moment onward the supply of US$ in circulation was not backed anymore by gold.

MEANING

The following ones are visual representations of why Bitcoin might play a big part in the near future, right before we get to the juicy part.

• In the last 4 years (2020/2024) the $ value decreased of ~22%.

• If we take the very bottom of BTC (March the 13th 2020 - 3500$ for 1 Btc) in comparison Bitcoin rose ~2,757.14% (considering the price of $100,000 at the time of writing this)

Michael Saylor (one of the biggest investor and advocates in Bitcoin) compared Bitcoin the Dune’s Spice (if you lived under a rock, it’s a sci fi novel, that inspired Start Wars, where Spices, the most expensive Commodity in the Universe, are used as a currency and a tool for intergalactic travels).

WHY BITCOIN MATTERS?

Now, stay with me. This will make a lot of sense. Like one of those game of dots where once you connect them all you see the big picture.

I wish someone explained it to me like this 15 years ago.

The idea Bitcoin started on the day of Halloween 2008, with Satoshi Nakamoto (the nickname for god knows who) published a whitepaper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."

Bitcoin would be officially launched on January 3, 2009, with the mining of the genesis block, the first Bitcoin and its WHY was to prevent the collapse of 2008 to Never happen again. In fact, satoshi inscribed the genesis block with the following note: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

The quote is from the headline of a front-page article in The Times, a UK newspaper, on January 3, 2009.

HOW IT STARTED

It all started with a mailing list (Metzdowd Cryptography Mailing List) where Satoshi first released the Whitepaper and started discussing about it with few people interested in cryptography. Hal Finney (a software programmer) was the first to receive a transaction of 10BTC from Satoshi.

Then on the 22nd of Nov 2009 Satoshi launched Bitcointalk Forum to attract people.

Not many cared. Few helped him though: you might have heard of a transaction of 10.000 BTC for 2 Papa Johns’ large pizzas from Laszlo.
This very day they would be worth 1 Billion $. Ouch.

Among those, these, the name that matters the most is the one of Martti Malmi (Sirius back then) and he is relevant because in February of 2024, Martti Malmi released his email correspondence with Satoshi because of his role as a witness in a U.K. trial involving Craig Wright, who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

The FIRST BTC Exchange

Martti was one of the first people to also make a transaction: he sent 5000 Bitcoins for 5$ at the New Liberty Standard, the first Bitcoin Exchange accepting $$$ through Paypal in exchange of Bitcoin: the minimum daily transaction they accepted was 1$, the max was 100$.

On October 5, 2009, the New Liberty Standard established the first recorded Bitcoin-to-USD exchange rate, valuing 1,309.03 BTC at $1.00 USD ($0.000764 per Bitcoin).

They are also the reason why Bitcoin symbol is ₿ like the Thai Baht.

In the emails, dating between 2009 and 2011, you can see how Satoshi and Sirius explained exactly:

• HOW Bitcoin would have worked (it DID end up working as described)

• What problems it would have solved

  
  Bitcoin is mined through machines/computer which only purpose is to solve equations. This process is called proof of work (PoW) which is the base of how Bitcoin works.
  
  Every transaction is verified, verifiable and propagates through all the nodes (into the blockchain) meaning that at any given time anyone can see any transaction ever made and even if all the computers but one would shut done, the moment they would go back online, they would synchronise with the remaining node, restoring the entire blockchain history.
  
  This ensures that the blockchain is resilient, immutable, and continuously accessible, making it nearly impossible to lose transaction data or tamper with the ledger (a record-keeping system that tracks transactions, balances, or other relevant information).
  

  HOW MINING EVOLVED

  
  At the beginning (2009/2010) Bitcoin could have been mined with your computer CPU/GPU at around 2 blocks/100BTC a day but as the difficulty of the processes to be solved increased, it needed more computing power and electricity.
  
  Each time an equation is solved, the miner is rewarded with a set amount of Bitcoin.
  
  It started at 50 BTC each block mined and the reward halved every ~4 years, or every 210,000 blocks, looking like this:
  

• 2009–2012: 50 BTC per block.

• 2012–2016: 25 BTC per block.

• 2016–2020: 12.5 BTC per block.

• 2020–2024 (current): 6.25 BTC per block.
  
  What mining looks like today (the one below is a facility in Russia)
  

  

  
  The reason Bitcoin is still working to this day is because Satoshi (and the people that worked on Bitcoin even after he disappeared) solved few problems that previous attempt to create a cryptographic currency did not solved.

In the last 15 years there has been a gargantuan investment of money and resources from media and brilliant minds to demonise it. If those people had spent some time really understanding the WHY behind Bitcoin and how it actually works, they would be wealthy now.

HOW IT STARTED

HOW IT’S GOING

(these amounts are not calculated at 100k, which makes them even higher now)

WHY DOES IT MATTER TO YOU?

Few days ago I was listening to a Joe Rogan’s Episode with Marc Andreessen, the creator of the first internet browser (Mosaic) and he (the guest) was talking about people getting DeBanked, aka the government shuts down your bank account with no foreseeable reason leaving you with the only choice to rely on cash.

He describes how it happened to many people, relevant or not, with no notice and with no entity to appeal to. A Black Mirror Episode basically.

Bitcoin is a store of value for your assets.
As long as you store it in a cold wallet (more below) it’s transferrable between borders without relying on third parties, banks or governments.

DO YOU REMEMBER CYPRUS?

At the beginning of 2013 Bitcoin price was around 30/40$. Then something happened in Cyprus:

The small island faced a banking crisis due to exposure to Greek debt.
To secure a bailout from the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Cyprus imposed a bank levy on deposits over €100,000, effectively confiscating a portion of depositors' funds.
I remember watching videos of people protesting outside banks with employees looking at them from inside of a locked bank.

After the news spread, Bitcoin surged to $260 per BTC.
There is a saying in Crypto: not your keys, not your cheese.
People then figured out that with banks it does not apply.

THE PROPAGANDA

It has been labelled as bad for the environment because of the energy consumption, which is the price of having the blockchain working the way it is, with every transaction recorded forever (imagine the effect on our economy and on politics in terms of transparence).

It has been spread multiple times through the use of news, economists, celebrities how Bitcoin funds terrorism, it is used to buy drugs and as a currency on the black market: it might be true, but it’s also true that every transaction can be tracked by anyone that can read the blockchain back to its source, and many drug dealers that believed that Bitcoin allows full anonymity (it does to some degree) learnt it was a lie at their expenses.

Imagine if politicians had to show their public address. It would be easier to understand why certain laws are passed and who is accepting money from who.

TO SUM IT UP

(glad to see you got this far)

What I said to my friends is exactly what I will tell you:
AGAIN, THIS IS NOT A FINANCIAL ADVICE
Invest as a long term investment, not to get your lottery ticket.

If you woke up to Bitcoin today because all in a sudden you see how much it shines despite all the people that threw s#!t at it, this is what the market looks like:

13,000+ cryptocurrencies, Altcoins, 200+ Blockchains, Meme Coins, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Bitcoin Ordinals, Ponzi Schemes, Liquidity Pools, Crypto Launchpads, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), Layer 2 Solutions, Stablecoins, GameFi, DeFi, Privacy Coins, Tokenized Real-World Assets, Regulatory Battles, AI-Integrated Crypto.

So, what I would do considering this train won’t stop any time soon (this is the worst time to get in because we are approaching the top of the rollercoaster) is dollar cost average (DCA) anything I can spare without impacting my lifestyle (50$ a week for example) into Bitcoin.

The way to do it?

You set a recurring buy of Bitcoin through a Centralised Exchange (CEX - A digital crypto Bank like Binance) so that each week/month you get a set amount of $ out of your bank account converted into ₿ and you transfer all of them into your cold wallet, where nobody, unless they get your seed phrases (uniquely generated 12 to 24 words associated with your digital wallet) or you can access to.

COLD WALLET

A cold wallet (like trezor or ledger above) is the opposite of a hot wallet (either a browser extension of a Decentralised wallet like Metamask or Xverse or a wallet on a centralised exchange).

YOUR BITCOINS/CRYPTO ARE NOT STORED IN THE COLD WALLET:
You have to imagine it as a key that allows you to access a specific part of the blockchain where your data (bitcoin and any other crypto asset) is stored.

You lose the key and/or the access to it, you lose your cheese. Like THIS guy.

• You do not sign contract with your cold wallet.

• You do not connect it to other computers/devices rather than your safe computer connected to a safe wifi.

• You do not share your seed phrases and passwords with anyone else.

• You store your seed phrases and your cold wallet in different locations.

In 10 years from now, the Bitcoin you are looking at now with shiny eyes and bitter hopes will be much higher. You just have to do the opposite of 99% of people out there.

Set a clear strategy and be patient.

The ones above are all the information you need to form an idea about Bitcoin and where it’s heading.

If you need any help setting up an account, set up a DCA recurring payment, understand what cold wallet to buy and how to use it and be looked after at each step of the way:

You can book HERE

Either way, happy investing. Be safe out there.