}

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I tried to understand and play along with the established financial systems of the world. It just didn't work. I felt like money was not for me. I felt like a misfit, and a loser. Then came bitcoin.

Something in me — even as a child — was offended by the endless credit, quantitative easing, logic-less financial "infrastructure" of the current financial paradigm. Of course, I couldn't define it as a kid. But I could feel it. There was a palpable sense of debt and being "behind." Being overwhelmed by a rising tide. It just felt like nobody around me was at the helm of their own lives. It would take years, but a new money would later teach me that I wasn't crazy, after all.

Treading the seas of swelling debt

I remember watching my mom pay too often with credit cards at the mall, for things we needed but couldn't really afford with cash on hand. I wondered: "where does all this money come from?" It didn't make sense to me. And I could feel in my gut that it just contributed to a cycle of greater want and lack for our family.

It soon began to seem to me that however wrong it felt, anyone could have money anytime they wanted it. Just get a loan. Just get a credit card. I began to take an interest in how all this bizarre magic worked. In 6th grade, when I tried to get into the stock market to see if I could strike it rich at 12, no one around me could explain it to me. I need to call a stock broker? What is that and how does it work?

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I began to have this feeling that money was for everyone else, and not for me. I began to have this feeling that there must be something wrong with me. The feeling would only grow stronger as I grew older.

From there it would be a series of learning experiences, poor financial decisions, and a clearer understanding of what was really going on:

The state —the entity with a legal monopoly on violence — controls the money supply. Regardless of sound economic principle or mathematical logic, the state (or more accurately, the private central banks it approves) prints money as it pleases. Those closest to this fountain of cheap, easy new credit (created effectively at the barrel of a gun) do the best. They get the freshly-printed stuff before inflation strikes too hard, and invest in hard assets and real estate. The rest of us, well, we get the scraps of devalued paper left over. And a shitty non-education about how to be successful by straining until we die to attain these scraps.

My feeling was right. The whole thing really was hocus-pocus bullshit. I should have known after university. Student loans are another trap altogether. So my problem really was two-fold: I didn't know how to manage or save and invest money well, and I further felt like even trying to participate was a waste of time, because the whole setup made zero sense to me.

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Enter Bitcoin

After becoming a full on Voluntaryist here in Japan, and becoming increasingly interested in how the state's counterfeit-money-making racket really works, I came across Bitcoin. Some guy I had never heard of was being called "Bitcoin Jesus" and I saw a meme someone had created of him. It was just a picture and a quote. The quote stated that Bitcoin — something I was vaguely aware of but had no idea how it worked — had the power to starve the governments of the ability to wage war.

Now I was listening.

Further, the stuff was said to be much sounder than the government money I had come to be disillusioned with and even to hate. The blood money of the state which I had no choice but to chase after to survive. There were only 21 million of these bitcoins. Not an infinite supply. A heady rush of anarchist FOMO surged through my body and mind and spirit. I gotta have it. I want to get out of debt. I want to starve the state. And after a long and complicated process of multiple conversions and weird virtual-money-from-video-games transactions through what seemed to me to be shady websites with terrible user interfaces, I had it.

From there I would experience Bitcoin's power more directly, writing articles for BTC via a jobs posting hub on Reddit. Seeing those meager bitcoin decimals in my wallet, and knowing no one could touch them, or really even know about them if I didn't want them to, made complete and total, invigorating sense to me. This was my money. No one else's. And I can do with it as I please. And there is no violent government in control of it.

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Reclaiming my lost sense of dignity, through sound money

Of course I'm into Bitcoin Cash now, as BTC is no longer practically usable as money for everyday payments and trade. But the magic remains. And is stronger than ever. As crypto is increasingly commandeered by the mainstream, sold by mega-banks, and faces regulatory violence from states all around the world, I am still happy. Why? I finally know I was not crazy. I was ahead of the game, not taken in by the lie, and simply wanted sound money and for things just to make sense. Sophistry and lies be damned. Go rot in hell.

This money made sense to me. In this paradigm, I fit in perfectly and had a home.

Here is clean money. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

***

My long-form articles on HIVE are posted here, and @ read.cash exclusively. Thank you for reading.

Support Voluntary Japan via BCH: bitcoincash:qp2960re3yu7k4xfxd9yemqnh9y4hchh4uhjk2np9p

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