Review
Dedicated to bitcoiners, who stand to benefit financially from the great wealth transfer that is taking place while the fiat system is being demonetized, the book emphasizes that true wealth is in the inner virtues and not in the outer. Virtues are the spirit in which we do things; they are the most important thing because they define who we really are, beyond what we have.
Real wealth comes from the virtues we live by.
As we navigate through periods of darkness, transition, and madness, marking the end of one cycle and the start of another, bushido serves as a beacon of light for those who seek to comprehend their own virtuous selves and contribute to the development of civilization. It recognizes that virtues serve as the foundation, a metaphysical science or natural law that surpasses religious beliefs.
The Bushido of Bitcoin serves as a guide for individuals seeking personal growth and a higher purpose during this period of change and adversity. We cannot acquire these values with fiat, gold, or bitcoin; we must cultivate them with patience and practice them on a daily basis. This is the ultimate form of lowering time preference: considering our legacy and future generations.
The War of All Ages
It is important to recognize that we are at war. This war is not new; I call it the war of all ages, and it is a war between slavery and freedom. Our ancestors have been fighting this war for millennia, and it is thanks to the warriors of the past that we are here now, enjoying our freedoms and all the things of modern life.
This eternal war is interdimensional: it is a spiritual, intellectual, and physical war. To win, or at least have a worthy battle, we must start from the spiritual realm, the source of all. Only by becoming strong spirits and expanding consciousness can we win on the mental and physical plane.
However, if we confine ourselves to the physical realm and attempt to combat and shape ourselves from there, we are unlikely to attain any significant outcomes. The war starts from within (against ourselves), and this book is here to help us understand exactly that.
How you act physically shows your intellectual and spiritual state. The physical is the result of the metaphysical, and only by understanding this can we understand the immorality, the criminality, the ugliness, and the failure of the present system. These are the harmful fruits of a poisonous tree.
Aspects of the war & the virtues we must embody to win
It’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.
The Bushido of Bitcoin virtues are justice/righteousness, courage, compassion/love, honor, honesty/integrity, responsibility, excellence, respect, duty/loyalty, and restraint/self-control.
These are the qualities associated with leadership and responsibility. It takes active cultivation and practice to develop this set of virtues, but they are the key to achieve success in whatever we want to. (…) In the materialistic world we are living in, these virtues are scarce, and as we know scarcity for something desirable makes it more valuable. Especially honor, responsibility and excellence virtues that are very difficult to find in the marketplace.
*> We transcend childhood by taking responsibility. (…) The price of freedom, or more specifically autonomy, is responsibility.
All these virtues are necessary to become real men and give a worthy fight during this war we call life, because the war starts with our biggest enemy: ourselves.
A war against ourselves
-Individuals = micro
The fiat system aims to crush our spirit and steal our soul. In order to win, we need to become the best version of ourselves. We need to improve in the fiscal, emotional, spiritual, and psychological aspects. How we all live and behave reflects our values back into society. Our behavior shapes who we become.
*The Samurai believed in doing, not saying. Action and behavior demonstrated their faith, knowledge, and values more than words ever could.*
The miracle of being alive means that we had 4096 ancestors during the last 10 generations before us. That implies that there were 2048 couples of men and women who overcame hardship, built civilization, learned, taught, fought, reproduced, and died. They went through all of this, and who knows what else had to happen for us to be here and now.
This is a sign of gratitude to be alive and an awakening of a desire to honor our ancestors and our descendants. We have in our blood a strand of DNA that contains unique information from all of them. If we fail to follow the lineage of our ancestors, we are essentially discarding centuries of biological, intellectual, and economic wealth.
THIS IS WHY BUILDING A STRONG FAMILY IS OUR PRIMARY DUTY.
*True mastery lies in the real beyond comfort, and requires you transcend technology, by becoming the protagonist of the story. (…) You are either the producer or the product. You are either the master of your domain, or you are a slave to circumstance. You either establish your own territory, or you are a guest (or a captive) of somebody else (…) Territory is not only physical, it is also metaphysical; it includes the body, the mind and the spirit.*
In order to be a protagonist, you need to be honest with yourself; you need to take responsibility and stop outsourcing the result to politicians, priests, or experts. We possess the power, and we must reclaim it as we relinquished it voluntarily. If we outsource the responsibility, we are victims or slaves. Victims and slaves are weak; they are domesticated humans.
Victims are not free; they are slaves of their fears, beliefs, and circumstances. Being free is about taking responsibility, making everything you can shape your fault, and placing yourself at the cause and not at the effect. It’s not what happens to you but what you do with it that matters.
Without self-control, you are a slave; you are at the behest or control of something else—be it the circumstances, impulses, or another person. It’s not virtuous to be a slave, to live dependent, or to impose ideas on others that you do not live by.
*> If courage is the peak virtue of a warrior, then self-control is the peak virtue of the leader.
Lying is a sign of weakness, dishonor, and shame. And this starts with the lies we tell ourselves, before we lie to others. In order to be free we have to recognize we are slaves sometimes in some ways, and it has always been like this.
As the battle for the soul of humanity rages on, Bitcoiners, being the most likely group to ascend economically speaking, have a duty to become better people, and men in particular must lead.
Given the current leadership crisis, it is imperative that we develop into strong leaders as soon as possible. If we don’t, then who will? And in order to do this, we must lead by example, especially by resisting impulses that might lead to harmful or destructive behaviors.
Becoming stronger, wiser, and richer is not an option; it is our duty. If we are soft of the body, we are also soft of the mind and spirit.
Whether the goal is strength, endurance, courage, or self-control, instead of trying to minimize pain all the time, we might seek instead to gradually increase how much pain we can bear. The goal being not an escape from pain, but a transcendence or integration of it.
Also being mindful of your relationships and time with others is your greatest asset.
*The ability to say no is a superpower. Slaves must say ‘yes’ to everything, but the master and the sovereign individual is he who can say no.*
You are in charge of your own destiny.
Culture war
-Sum of the individuals = macro
The materialistic view of humanity is what brought us here: Marxist, Keynesian, collectivist, mob rule democracies, and every ideology and system that ignores the universal truths. Such systems are bound to collapse from their inception. The immorality of the monetary system, which supported the information war against us through lies, indoctrination, and false mental models that most people operate under, is the direct cause of these systems’ failure.
Dystopian societies are built on micromanagement, interruption, interference, and surveillance. They are built on the idea that the human beings who make them up are numbers on a spreadsheet that can be mathematically manipulated as though they’re all equal.
History has repeatedly demonstrated the failure of this ideology and its system. The only thing keeping it alive is the infinite debt system. However, the cycle is nearing its conclusion, and the fiat system has reached its peak; there’s no turning back.
Argentina has become aware of this phenomenon and has expressed its desire for freedom and a reduction in state intervention. They have come to understand that socialism is the root of all evils, a realization that began with their central bank. Even the former president recognized this fact and communicated it to the people, educating them about Austrian economics. This is a sign of the changing times we are going through.
Not only do we believe fairy tales about world affairs in this culture war, but we also learn toy versions of economics, law, and politics. Not only do they teach us to despise our history, our ancestors, and those “backward systems,” but they also instill a hatred for our past.
People tell us that the founding fathers of our republic were racists and tyrants, that the Bible and the constitutions were merely a creation of primitive minds, and that its significance has diminished in modern times. This is all part of a plan to create chaos and weaken the foundations of our society so they can gain control.
To be truly honorable and worthy of remembrance is to have respect for yourself, for others, for tradition, for authority, and even for your enemy.
If we use our common sense and judge by their fruits, paying attention to the architecture, the arts, the literature, and the culture of the time, it’s easy to see that they were achieving better results than those we are experiencing today. So we should ask the question: Why?
Of course, weak money has a significant influence on our time preference, but it’s not the only factor. The root cause lies in the virtues; it is evident that the religions, cultures, and governments of the past performed their function more effectively than we do today because they were somehow more truthful and virtuous in their intentions.
We are transitioning, but we are still living in a culture that incentivizes weakness and immorality while disincentivizing strength and character. Cheap dopamine and excessive comfort are depleting our energy and purpose, contributing to the high rates of depression and suicide.
It’s our responsibility to start changing this. We are going through a death spiral that is destroying families, the fundamental core of our humanity, with debt, inflation, and taxes. The ideologies, distractions, and challenges of the modern world are leading us in a completely opposite direction to the one our ancestors followed, and it is not difficult to see that that direction is the abyss.
*Family is the most important unit and is precisely what’s been attacked by the globalist, communist, slave, and ghoul classes of the world because it is an institution of saving and compounding, not only for material wealth, but for biological, intellectual, and spiritual wealth.*
The power structures are actively pursuing this goal through various means. The power structures are not only extracting our economic wealth through fiat money, which is in danger of collapsing, but they are also taking our spiritual and biological wealth. This is the real three-dimensional war I talk about.
Instead of needing to rebuild again from scratch, the new generation of strong men can make the necessary repairs and build onwards to new heights. (…) allow humanity to better converse and compound its progress. This is the key to real civilizational progress.
The status quo has reached this level of madness and tyranny because people do not want to see, hear, and speak the truth. Lying is a sign of weakness, dishonor, and shame; these are common aspects of today’s democratic systems and fiat institutions, which act as magnets for dishonest people and parasites.
As G. Michael Hopf said: *‘Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.*
We are going through hard times created by weak men that were corrupted by power, not because power is evil.
It’s very easy to see people selling their soul for material possessions, and this is a clear sign of weakness and a lack of self-respect. (…) Slaves and parasites sell their souls, their dignity, and their honor for money. The point of being sovereign is that you do not.
“For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Jesus Christ
Now we are transitioning, strong men are rising to create good times again.
These are the acts of a hero: to tell the truth in a world of lies. To inspire others to do the same.
But saying the truth is not enough, we need to take action, create, expand and protect.
Economic war
Thanks, Satoshi, for Bitcoin!
Empires and nations crumble along with their currencies and trade. Financial education is crucial to navigate this process and emerge stronger, rather than weaker.
Money is power, and you must learn how to channel it (…) We must master money like we master the sword or the pen (…) You have to both adopt the virtues laid out in this book and master the economic game. Money is power, and power is necessary—not evil. Power is just your capacity to channel energy, and money is fundamentally just that: energy.
*By becoming better, smarter, and more affluent, we will beat them at their own game. (…) To ultimately wrest control from the parasites, we need a new class of leader: warrior-merchant-philosopher-king.*
Not all value can be measured in money, and this is critical for maintaining a relationship to the ‘moral’ or sacred dimension of the universe. While material wealth is important, spiritual wealth remains something no amount of money can buy.
*How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver! Proverbs 16:16*
Satoshi solved one of the biggest problems in human history: an unjust monetary system. Specifically, the debt-based fractional reserve system that the moneychangers created to steal from producers.
Broken money breaks everything else downstream. It destroys the individual, the family, and the community, and in time, it destroys the state itself, unless they have full, digital, panopticon control over it—which is why they want CBDCs so badly. They will distract you with fairy tales about AI, racism, and climate change, while the real threat is coming to a bank account near you.
This system and its traps are as old as civilization itself, from the times of Jesus Christ to Napoleon to the present. The immorality and criminality of this system have significantly impacted various aspects of our civilization and culture, including the economic situation, education, communication, and the food and health industries, to name a few.
We need to understand and respect the stage of the cycle we are in, recognize it, and adapt.
*> Bitcoin makes this whole game of monetary inflation and hidden theft much harder to play. In fact, it’s impossible to issue new bitcoin, so if you adopt it, you’re on that standard, and if you do not, in time the money you are using will trend to worthless against Bitcoin. We either choose to adapt to its reality or pay the price of not doing so.We need to understand and respect the stage of the cycle we are in, recognize it, and adapt.
Bitcoin makes this whole game of monetary inflation and hidden theft much harder to play. In fact, it’s impossible to issue new bitcoin, so if you adopt it, you’re on that standard, and if you do not, in time the money you are using will trend to worthless against Bitcoin. We either choose to adapt to its reality or pay the price of not doing so.
For the first time we have a culture of savers, known as hodlers” (…) “Bitcoin made savings great again (…) Saving is the cornerstone for a functional, stable, and sovereign life and civilization.
Humankind will forever remember October 31, 2008, as the turning point in its timeline. Since that moment, we have gained access to a set of rules devoid of rulers, enabling us to retain and store all the fruits of our labor in a parallel energy based hard money system. This allows us to enjoy the benefits of natural deflation, which artificial inflation had been stealing from us for decades.
Satoshi fixed the money, the foundation of our society, the backbone of commerce, and the most significant language of humanity, enabling global communication and value exchange without any barriers. He also provided us with a tool to break free from financial slavery.
For the first time in history, we can safeguard our private property in a pure metaphysical manner, shielding it from physical threats and violent theft. This completely changes the dynamic of power and incentives.
If you have any interest in the importance of family, children, or legacy, then saving independent, incorruptible money (i.e., Bitcoin) must be the central part of your economic focus. Wake up and stop supporting the enemy. Stop feeding the parasite. Have some self-respect and store your wealth in Bitcoin.
Governance war
Globalism vs National Sovereignty
Globalism contradicts national sovereignty by allowing a supranational entity to make decisions for the “greater good of the earth.” This may seem absurd, but it’s precisely what they’re attempting to achieve.
Globalism (hidden communism / collectivism) is a failure. Every nation and culture has its unique ways; we are not equal, it is impossible to lump them all together and attempt to control them at the same time under the same ways. This is what institutions like the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF want. Instead, they should not do it because they lack authority and nobody asked them to, and because it’s practically impossible.
Lying is a sign of weakness, dishonor, and shame; common aspects of nowadays democratic systems and fiat institutions that act like magnets for dishonest people and parasites.
Feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression.” (…) “This gross misunderstanding of feudalism is somewhat expected considering what happened during the French Revolution.” (…) “It was only after the fall of feudalism that we opened the door to true despotism and large-scale democracy worldwide. Democracy and mob rule lead to the fall of nations, peoples, and empires. Money printing comes after and helps it along.
The only thing they can do, and they have been doing, is destabilizing the nations, incentivizing mass migrations, and creating economic chaos just to justify their interference (going a)and “help.” All of this is aimed at creating justifications for increasing the deficit and printing more money for their own agendas.
They envision a society of mindless automatons, or NPCs, controlled by algorithms, akin to numbers in a computer. They have already been enslaving the nations and succeeded in many aspects. This was only made possible by their ability to control the nations through their access to credit and their conditions.
The parasites and hyenas have become overly confident and arrogant, thinking they can nip at our heels, torment our families, and tear down everything beautiful around us, as if we won’t notice. They have confused tolerance and slumber for weakness.
But Bitcoin can change this dynamic forever. If nations want to protect their sovereignty, they have to grow their hashrate capacity and bitcoin reserves. Additionally, it is crucial for their citizens to increase their production, savings, and investments in bitcoin. The first step to killing a parasite is to stop feeding it, so we need to stop using their system whenever possible and adopt alternative and parallel options. Prioritizing local producers and consumer-focused products over solely profit-seeking businesses is crucial.
Good governance comes from good leadership. By inspiring people and pulling them along, you create more leaders who each have more autonomy. Ruling by fear and punishment is ineffective in the long run (…)
*> Now we are coming awake and getting angry—which is precisely what the bureaucratic class is most afraid of.
Be The Change (BTC)
You want to see in the world
It is time to stand up for what’s right. We are at war—a war against our freedom. 1776 or 1984 is our choice, and we vote with our behavior; whether conscious or unconscious, we are participating in the outcome.
*Bitcoin comes with a duty and loyalty to your future self, your family, your community or tribe, and, for a select few, a duty to the world (…) This is the ultimate lowering of one’s time preference and perhaps the most fundamental utility of a sound money like Bitcoin (…) To be a bitcoiner comes with the duty to be an honorable person, because having freedom comes with the responsibility to do something with it.*
Courage is not the absence of fear but the quality of mind and spirit that enables one to meet danger in spite of it. It’s faith in action—the virtue to face danger or death in order to defend what’s right. Courage is doing what’s right, despite the consequences.
Fear is the number one enemy, killer of initiative, abundance, and a fulfilling life. The Bible writes “Fear not” 365 times. The number one fear is the fear of death. Once you conquer this fear, you’ll overcome most others, and nothing can stop you.
A phrase I love is: Let your fear of regret be stronger than your fear of failure. So embrace courage and live the life you want to.
We need to get stronger, more conscious, wiser, and more powerful. Elevate ourselves and surround ourselves with like-valued individuals.
Build an alliance of men to protect your women, your families, and your tribe. Use this alliance to strengthen each other and hold each other accountable. Develop rites of passage together.
*> The pace of change is faster than it has ever been.
We have the power, and we need to demonstrate this, leading by example and inspiring others to take action.
We are the only legitimate teachers and role models for our children, and they are likewise the only legitimate role models for their—not the government, Hollywood, Netflix, social media, their ‘peers, and certainly not some disembodied virtue-signaling global organization that thinks it knows best.
We are empowered to shape history. Following these virtues, seeking truth and taking action is the way. With tools like Bitcoin and Nostr, freeing money and data sharing from centralized control, we can break the chains forever, to build a more just and free world.
Build family, create deep relations with like-valued people, and leave a legacy for the coming ones. (…) Find a mission, a family, a tribe, or virtues worth dying for.
This is our time. A new energy is rising.
I want to thank you, Aleksandar Svetski, for this masterpiece and encourage you to continue sharing your wisdom with others.
Bitcoin and Nostr, or slavery!