Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. I am not a financial advisor or investment guru. I am just a guy living life. I write these articles for entertainment and information purposes only. You should do your own research and consult any advisor you deem prudent before making investment decisions. Google tells me that Warren Buffett is worth about $148 Billion Dollars. An amount of wealth that just seems unfathomable to the average person. Needless to say, I respect Warren Buffett's approach to wealth building immensely. But even billionaires can be wrong sometimes. Sometimes they can be dramatically wrong. At the 2022 Berkshire shareholders meeting, Buffett explained his stance on Bitcoin saying, "If you told me you own all of the Bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn't take it because what would I do with it? I'd have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn't going to do anything." This was said in April of 2022, a time when Bitcoin had reached prices of more than $40,000 per coin but the price was also trending downward losing nearly 50% of its value. Had Warren Buffet purchased $148 Billion Dollars of Bitcoin in 2022 at $40,000 per coin, he would have initially lost about half of his net worth, but today just a couple years later it would have more than doubled his total net worth. He would be worth about $357 Billion Dollars today with Bitcoin trading at about $96,500 per coin. Not a bad return on investment. So why the dramatic statement that he would not give even $25 for all of the Bitcoin? He would rather have four or five McDonald's big macs than all of the Bitcoin in the world? Really? If we take his statement at face value, his opposition to Bitcoin is that it "isn't going to do anything" which to Buffett is a major downside. On the surface, that makes sense. Bitcoin doesn't really "do anything" as Buffett says. Meaning, it doesn't produce an iPhone like Apple, or a crop like farmland does. It doesn't make a car like Tesla, or processing units like Nvidia. But Bitcoin is not a business. Why should we expect it to do business things? Bitcoin is a digital asset and digital commodity. It is a store of value and unit of account. Therefore, Bitcoin's most direct competitors are not exactly businesses. Bitcoin is an alternative to traditional stores of value such as gold, silver, the U.S. Dollar, the Euro, the Japanese yen, and the Mexican peso. But it also is a competitor to all other stores of value such as securities (like stock in Berkshire Hathway), fine art, exotic cars, and real estate. Bitcoin, therefore, competes with just about everything as a store of value. And the question becomes, not whether Bitcoin produces a product or anything for that matter...of course, it does not. It's not even something you can tangibly hold. It is, in the end, basically numbers appearing digitally on the screen of your computer or phone, but created and supported by advanced programming and technology and one of the largest, most power networks in the entire world. Bitcoin doesn't even have the beauty of gold or silver, that you can hold in your hand or fashion as jewelry. But that doesn't mean Bitcoin isn't valuable. To determine whether Bitcoin is valuable, we should ask: how does Bitcoin compare with all other assets as a store of value and unit of account? Much of the wealth generated by the world is stored. In fact, it must be stored, or it is lost. Would you work a 40-hour week without your effort wasn't being "stored"? What if employer told you that instead dollars, you will be paid for your labor in apples (not the company but the fruit)? You would have some value from that, enough to survive momentarily. You could eat the apple and make apple juice. This would keep you alive. But not for long. You would have to be able to store the apples, and the apples would soon rot. Perhaps you might get lucky and set-up an apple stand where you can sell the apples for dollars or something else of value that you need. This sounds like a lot of work. All your effort wouldn't be store...it would just be lost (or require additional work to capture). In reality, the same issue of store of value exists with the U.S. Dollar and all other world currencies. Suppose you get paid $1,000 per week at your job, But then the U.S. government prints trillions of Dollars. Yes, Trillions. For example, the Federal Reserve printed $3.3 Trillion Dollars in the year 2020 alone. This is not only poor policy, it's evil. It's wicked. It's disastrous. The $1,000 you earn in 2019, is not really worth $1,000. Sure your bank account will still show that you have $1,000, but its true value has been eroded by the printing of money. You may as well only have $500 now. The value of your dollars are constantly decreasing (typically at the rate of 7% to 10% per year). Review every government created currency over time, and you will find that it erodes in value over time. In other words, as a store of value, government created currencies are a total failure. But what about other stores of value? Fine art. You need to be rich to own, or use a company like Masterworks (which is more akin to a security than owning a valuable piece of artwork). Even if you could own the fine art directly, you need to be able to store, preserve, insure it, and protect it from theft, destruction, disaster etc. What about real estate? You can't really buy real estate for merely $1,000. But even if you could, you would have to pay insurance on it, protect from disaster, and manage it if renting it. Sounds like a lot of work. What about securities like stock in Berkshire Hathaway? Any company is only as good as its centralized management, and board of directors and CEO, not to mention the necessary continued success of its product or service. Companies don't last forever. This brings us to Bitcoin. Bitcoin eliminates inflation by its fixed supply. Bitcoin is less subject to theft, natural disaster, and far more secure to store than nearly any other asset. In factor, arguably it can be stored better and safer than any other asset. Through self-custody, you are able to store your Bitcoin without a bank (which could fail) or any other third party. For the first time in history, your money is your money. A thief can't break into your self-custody wallet, unless they have your 12-word key. Bitcoin is decentralized and not subject to the whims of a CEO. Bitcoin is not perfect, but it is the best form of money and store of value ever created. It is the apex store of value in today's world and it is just getting started. The world has not yet fully realized it. When it comes to the business of storing value, Bitcoin is king. Forget the world, not even the oracle of Omaha (Buffett) has realized it yet.

In May of 2016 you could have bought one Bitcoin for less than $500. Today, as of this writing on November 21st, 2024 at 7:53 a.m. Central Time, one Bitcoin is worth $97,532. If only I had spent $5,000 back in 2016 on Bitcoin, I would be a millionaire today. I know what you're thinking...you also missed the boat. It 's too late to buy Bitcoin. I don't have $97,000. Heck, some of you may not even have $1,000. It's okay, because we are here to disrupt everything and head to higher ground together. I started investing in Bitcoin around year 2021, acquiring Bitcoin at an average cost of $46,805. The past is the past, and investment is all about the future. It's not where you've been, but where you're going that counts. And that's really the question for Bitcoin. Would you spend $97,000 on Bitcoin if you knew in two years it would be worth $500,000? Absolutely, unless you knew of some other better asset that would more than 5x your money. The truth is no one can predict the future. I am not here to proclaim Bitcoin as infallible. But I do think it is clearly a paradigm shift that we haven't seen since the creation of the internet. Bitcoin is different. People far smarter than myself have realized this, and they realized it well before me. Today, all the "smart money" realizes Bitcoin is different. I am talking billionaires, millionaires, and even "trillionaires" like Blackrock and Fidelity and world governments. Massive organizations that are buying Bitcoin and will continue to do so. But you and me? We are just the little guy. And one thing that is intriguing about Bitcoin is that the little guys like you and me can benefit just as much from Bitcoin (if not more so). You don't need to be a millionaire to buy Bitcoin. You just need a bit of knowledge and to be proactive with your wealth management. You can buy $10 of Bitcoin, or $100. In fact, in 2021 I transferred exactly $100 to my cold wallet and left there to the present day. It's now worth over $300. If I had put all of my money in Bitcoin at that time I would have tripled my net worth. This works whether you are rich or poor. And if you're poor, arguably you have less to lose and more to gain...namely, getting out of poverty once and for all. Now you may say, I don't care about money. It doesn't matter. Well, no, money doesn't buy happiness. It doesn't buy love or health. But let's not be stupid. Money is important. A God-fearing man that won't provide for his family is worse than an unbeliever. The Bible says, "Wisdom is a defense, and money is a defense: but the excellency of knowledge is that wisdom gives life to those that have it." If you have to choose between wisdom and money, choose wisdom. For by wisdom you can get money and everything else including life itself. So what does wisdom tell us about money? We can't predict the future. We can only do our best to make good decisions today based on information and using our reasoning abilities. So let's reason together: You have to store value somewhere, and the alternative to Bitcoin is the dollar, gold, silver, securities in companies, real estate, fine art, collectibles, and so on. Bitcoin has outperformed them all over recent history. Gold, silver, real estate, and other collectibles and commodities can be good investments but they are difficult to store and preserve, and can be easily stolen or ruined in a disaster. . This leaves cash and securities. Your cash sitting in a bank account degrades in value over time because of inflation. If you have $100 saved today it will be worth $70 tomorrow, and then $50, and then $30, and eventually it will be worthless paper if left unattended long enough. Paper is not valuable. Assets and commodities like gold, silver, real estate, stock in companies, are valuable. And Bitcoin is a commodity (much like gold but better). If you earn interest on cash in a bank account, you pay taxes. If Bitcoin goes up in value, you don't pay any taxes (until you sell it). This makes owning Bitcoin, all things equal, better than holding U.S. Dollars. (This should be abundantly obvious, but I am talking to the beginners here). Your cash in a bank really belongs to the bank. It doesn't belong to you. You've just lent it to the bank until you ask for it back. Just ask them for your money if the bank fails. It will be nowhere to be found. Not only this, but the bank is also using your money to make way more money (that's how they can pay you any interest at all). The bank makes millions you make pennies. That's just how it works in the "normal world." But we are here to disrupt everything, escape the "system" that is the normal world so we can finally be financially free. Now let's consider ownership of stock and businesses. Your stock in companies is subject to a counterparty.... namely, the company itself. The counterparty may be negligent or devious (even if you are the owner of the business! You should trust yourself too much!). The company may fail entirely. In which case the stock will be worthless. Bitcoin is not centrally controlled or centrally owned. You actually own your Bitcoin, (particularly when stored in a cold wallet). Only you have access to the Bitcoin and nobody else. Bitcoin can be more securely stored and preserved than any other asset type in the world. Banks fail, businesses fail, the dollar fails. Real estate must be maintained and has costs, and can also fail (i.e., destruction by flood, hurricane, fire, property taxes, etc.) Bitcoin is a scarce commodity. The value of something is based to a large extent on the desirability (or usefulness) of the item in question, and its scarcity. We are approaching a time when everyone will realize that Bitcoin is a better store of value than everything else. This creates intense demand which is already seen with regard to the "smart money." Money invested by people with expert knowledge and serious power. Think of Blackrock for example. But there will only be 21 million Bitcoins in existence ever. What we can expect to see is increasing demand for Bitcoin and less Bitcoins being available. Or to the extent that they are available...will be had at a higher price. Bitcoin isn't perfect. It isn't in infallible. But when it comes to storing value, and making investments, nothing is perfect. All you have is a multiple-choice question, of which every answer is imperfect. My opinion is that Bitcoin is a disruptive technology in the financial world that will continue to appreciate in value for the foreseeable future. Even at the current prices, Bitcoin is still therefore a good investment and can be a remarkable investment.

This not financial advice. I am not a financial advisor. (In other words, I don't take 20% - 30% of your wealth to provide services you can readily do on your own... I joke, I love financial advisors. Shout out to financial advisors). You can call me The Founder. I am a freedom-loving, guitar playing, song-writing, amateur golfing, artist wannabe, regular guy. I figure there might be a lot of regular people out there like me. Just doing your thing. Whatever your thing is, it's cool with me as long as it's not illegal or whatever. I am mostly just trying to make good decisions in life. Aren't we all? Right now, I am operating at about a 50% success rate. So, you may not want to listen to me unless your success rate is worse than mine. However, today, I wanted to talk about Bitcoin and five reasons I invested in it. This is not five reason Bitcoin will save the world. I decided to become a Bitcoin investor, not a Bitcoin fanboy. To invest in something, it should be valuable. Do we really need Bitcoin? What function does it serve? Let's go back to 2018, when I had no money and no real plan on how to make money. Sure I had ideas, and some friends. We thought maybe we could start a company doing apparel and art...or something. We didn't really know. But when you try new things, it can lead down some interesting paths (sometimes in a good way, and sometimes in a bad way). Back in 2018, I had never heard of cryptocurrency, or digital currency, or Bitcoin or Ethereum. We thought we could promote our freedom-loving music and art for our new company on Minds.com, the freedom-loving alternative to Facebook. So, I found it strange I could boost posts to get more views on Minds.com using something called cryptocurrency. All I needed was something call Ether or Ethereum. It sounded ummm, fake. It sounded weird. But hey, if I could get more views for my company using it...why not? I had to figure out how to get it, which led me to Coinbase.com. A cryptocurrency exchange platform. I didn't understand any of it, but I bought $50 worth of cryptocurrency that I could then use on Minds.com. Think of it like advertising money. Except I only used probably about $1 worth of it or so to actually promote the company. Then I forgot about it. The company my friends and I were trying to start got sidetracked. The cryptocurrency I left on Coinbase.com, I forgot about that too. After all, it was only about $50. Not exactly life-changing money. Although, when your net worth has been as low as $25 (yes, total) you start to appreciate the value of a dollar. Now let's flash forward, about four years. I hadn't given cryptocurrency any thought, except that it had popped up in the news here or there. I don't remember exactly when, but several years later a thought popped into my mind as I was sitting at my desk working. "Didn't I have about $50 on Coinbase? I wonder if I can remember my login credentials?" Thankfully, I remembered my login username and passowrd to Coinbase. Also, thankfully Coinbase had not collapsed ala FTX (which could have happened). Sure enough, my money was still there. Except it wasn't $50. It was over $400 since the value of either had gone up about 9x in value. At the time, I really needed the money too. It was delightful, surprising. A stroke of luck for a regular guy just taking a divergent path in the world. So, what did I do? Buy more ether? Realize I just stumbled upon a pathway to become a millionaire? Log back into Minds.com and promote the crapp out of my music and art, etc.? No, I did what any fool would do and cashed out immediately. I needed groceries, or whatever. But it did open my mind to investing. Maybe I should be investing in stuff. Stocks? I remember in college opening an E-trade account and was about to start investing. I never really got around to it, but that's probably a good thing because the market collapsed soon after I opened that account. My timing is typically terrible. So I opened up a TD Ameritrade account and a new Coinbase account and started buying things. Once again, I am no financial expert. However, my time investing has led me to invest in Bitcoin for the following five reasons. Number One: The Dollar is Not Reliable Let's set Bitcoin aside for a second, and just consider the primary form of money. The U.S. Dollar. It's paper. It's owned and controlled by the U.S. government and the Central Bank and Federal Reserve. They can print as much as they want, whenever they want. It is essentially monopoly money. As in, the children's board game. They can manipulate the value of the U.S. Dollar intentionally or unintentionally. Money is simply a store of value. Price is determined by supply and demand. The worst thing you can do if you want a reliable currency system (i.e., money) is to change the supply frequently. That's exactly what government and central banks do. In fact, if you do nothing and simply leave your money in a bank, your purchasing power will decrease over the next several years. In other words, if you have $50,000 saved today, in several years you will have the equivalent value of $25,000 due to inflation and printing of money. Number Two: Bitcoin Has the Potential To Cure Inflation Issues of The Dollar, and Dollar Alternatives There will only be 21 Million Bitcoins in existence. That's it. No printing more money or having a central authority own the currency and creating more of it to serve its own purposes (unless of course the protocol for Bitcoin were changed). However, the possibility of having a fixed amount of currency solves the inflation issue and potentially makes Bitcoin a very valuable commodity. If someone were to ask me, what does Bitcoin do? I would answer that it serves as a stabilized store of value. As discussed above, the U.S. Dollar serves as a store of value...but NOT a stable one. Another alternative store of value is gold or silver. But those are not fixed commodities. More gold and silver can be mined. Bitcoin is sort of a climate-controlled gold. A more accurate and reliable gold. An easier and less costly to store gold. Bitcoin is a type of gold that can readily be transfer and exchanged and converted to any type of currency imaginable nearly instantaneously. Number Three: Banks are Not Reliable or Trustworthy, and with Bitcoin you can BYOB (Be Your Own Bank) Your bank could fail, collapse or easily steal your money. If that happens, you may be able to recover some of it through federal insurance programs. But how reliable is our government? And what if you had more money that the insurance covers? You may as well kiss your money goodbye. You could keep your money or physical gold in your house or storage facility. But it could be stolen from there as well. Much that banks do also irk me. Banks offer me a few tiny points of interest, while they use my money (make gobs of money on it probably buying Bitcoin...or potentially lose my money altogether which is fine for them as long as I don't suddenly come knocking on their door for it). Meanwhile, the value of my money is eroding all the time as the central banks and federal governments do their best to ensure the dollar inflates and collapses. Bitcoin offers an alternative. A cold wallet. A cold wallet allows me to store value digitally outside the risk of failure or misuse of my money from a bank or any other party. When I finally had my cold wallet and my digital currency stored there, it was as if a lightbulb went off. I am the bank now. I don't need a bank now. Instead of relying on the bank, I now rely on myself. I can send money to anyone without using a third-party bank. I can store my money without relying on a third-party bank or storage facility. It's more secure than keeping gold in a safe in my home. Basically, the only risk to losing my money is if someone were to access my key seed phrase (i.e., the password to my cold storage) or if I lose my seed phrase (in which case not even I could access the digital currency any longer). It seems scary having that level of responsibility. But would I rather lose money because I screwed up, or because some dimwit banker or government official eroded my money while they live lavishly in their mansions and vacation homes and private jets? I think the answer is obvious. Number Four: Bitcoin is Becoming Increasingly Accepted The SEC has approved Bitcoin ETFs. Translation...our government is allowing the digital currency revolution to move forward. And yet most people do not understand digital currency nor own digital currency. Number Five: I View It as Low-Risk, High Reward Michael Saylor is probably the world's leading Bitcoin advocate. I believe he has said Bitcoin is either going to $0 or it's going to $1 Million plus per coin. I agree with him. Bitcoin is either a revolution of money as we know it, or a bust that will not survive. If it's a revolution there's almost no limit to its value. Buying Bitcoin today is like buying a block of New York City in the year 1800. Except I expect the appreciation of value in Bitcoin will be much higher and faster than the value of a NYC city block, if Bitcoin really achieves what it promises to achieve. For that reason, I view it as low-risk, high-reward. You likely don't need a lot of Bitcoin to become wealthy. You just need some before the price explodes. If I'm wrong and it goes to $0...well, I've lost some money. I'll pick up my guitar and probably write a song about it. I've been nearly penniless before, and I am still here. It's not that bad being poor honestly. It's manageable. If I'm right, I'll post a pic on my blog of my much nicer car in the near future.