Crossroads

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The Price of Freedom

Edit: In hindsight I think I’ve posted to the wrong stacker category. Please excuse the rookie mistake! 

I’ve done some work on Substack - and thoroughly enjoying the experience of writing - or more specifically articulating my thoughts onto paper. Now with the age verification on Substack I’m expanding out and posting my shit on SN.

Please take a look at my latest piece on spirituality through Bitcoin.

If you’re not living in an authoritarian shithole just yet, please access the article through my Substack.

https://substack.com/@crossroads808552/note/p-181781532?r=6y5k0c&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Otherwise, see below for a bastardised version with inconsistent paragraph spacing (copied over using my phone) 


The Price of Freedom

Sometimes I don’t plan my articles. In fact, most of the time I get emotional over certain geopolitical or economic events and decide that I would like to articulate my thoughts into words. It’s difficult to express these thoughts in public, as the general feeling in society about the problems I want to talk about is still slightly leaning towards the “conspiratorial” nature, regardless of the sound logic and evidence provided.

Today is one of those days: an ad hoc piece on personal liberty.

I’ve talked at length about how our personal liberties are slowly being eroded away, through our monetary chains and state policies that are designed to never-endingly enrich the government and its lobbyists, through the theft of its citizens’ assets. It sounds like an extreme word to use, but taxes and policies, as explained in my article about Laissez-faire capitalism should be limited to funding basic critical services and allowing complete freedom to all citizens under the state’s watch. Anything else is theft, under the guise of false narratives.

In my last piece, I explained how inflation is the silent but destructive force behind most of society’s ills. Dilution of the shareholders (of the dollar) is happening at a varying percentage every year, which isn’t accurately portrayed to the public. CPI is the headline measure used to talk about inflation, but this indicator is deeply flawed. It measures a basket of goods, but the basket constantly changes to suppress the true level of inflation. If steak becomes too expensive, people don’t buy steak anymore, so the basket is replaced by chicken. Lower-quality industrial sludge becomes the measurement of inflation, not organic healthy food or the statistics that really matter, like housing prices.

Because we’re becoming diluted shareholders, our shares become worth less. We have the same number of shares, but now when we try to sell them, we get less. One way we “sell” our shares, for example, is to local merchants who sell goods or services. We exchanged more prior to the dilution: “I will sell my $10 for one 250g steak.” Now, however, I can only sell my $10 for a 200g steak.


Monetary Chains

We live in a free country, right? Western leaders always larp on about how we have the ability to express freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of physical location. This is generally true, but how are we truly free if we cannot enact some of these freedoms whenever we want to?
If we see a country heading in a direction that we aren’t happy with, we can leave that country and move somewhere more accepting of these freedoms. The main preventative measure of our ability to enact these freedoms, however, is the monetary chains that keep us enslaved.

If we’re unable to afford the capability to enact the freedoms we want due to the dilution of our money, we are enslaved to a system for a longer period of time - until we can afford it. Our wages don’t keep up with inflation, so the longer we spend trying to afford freedom, the harder it will become to achieve freedom.

The insidious erosion of inflation isn’t the only thing that is keeping us in monetary chains. Another inevitable master we must obey is the banking system. Legal tender laws enforce a certain currency, and the degradation of use of physical cash forces us to obey the banking system as the masters of our money.

An important thing to understand about the banking system is they own your money. You don’t own a cent if it’s being held by the bank. They can do with it whatever they want. Want to withdraw $10k cash? Not unless you give them a valid reason to approve the transaction. Want to move all your money to a new country? Not unless you give them significant cut first, through exchange rates. In fact, if you keep your money with them, they will invest it for you and give you a small percentage of the money they make from your gains. Want a loan? They’ll provide that loan for you (with money they don’t have (Fractional Reserve Banking)), and your interest payments will continue to enrich them Also: Eventually they’re going to take your money from you without your permission if the economic situation demands it (Cyprus 2013).

The centralised overlords of the banking system, and their poker buddies, the state, will continue to tax, police, monitor, and steal its citizens’ riches through various methods discussed, in order to maintain the corrupt system which chains the people for longer. This system cannot be allowed to fail, and the people beholden to this system cannot be allowed to escape, or the system will come crumbling down, destroying the power cycle that has taken centuries to develop.

Cutting the chains

Becoming an advocate for personal liberties eventually leads people to Bitcoin. More commonly though, through the hopes of a quick buck, Bitcoin eventually leads people to becoming advocates for personal liberty.

If you haven’t heard or read about Bitcoin, there are amazing sources all over the internet, so I won’t go into all its technical properties - rather, the spiritual mutation that one goes through when they eventually understand Bitcoin.

The niggle in our brains that is telling us something is wrong is our intuition. It’s something we all have, but something we don’t listen to until we feel obligated to through external factors. Listening to your intuition will eventually lead you down a path.
This path is a sort of spiritual enlightenment - not that of the expectation of future riches, but that of the feeling of liberation from the system I’ve described. Liberation from the system, and liberation from one’s own chain of thoughts that have been constructed by a captured educational system and decades of narratives fed through mainstream and social media.

Becoming a Bitcoiner is a journey that not only educates, but enlightens one to adopt a clearer framework of thinking. I, like many others, originally looked into Bitcoin with the hopes of getting rich quickly. Bitcoiners call this “number go up” technology, referring to its astronomical rise in value over a short period of time. Some people join Bitcoin then fall into the gambling den of shitcoins, which is literally every other cryptocurrency in existence.

Some people remain cretins of this gambling den, and others - the more intelligent or critically thinking mindsets - start exploring what Bitcoin really is, and the problems that it is trying to fix. It is once you fall down this rabbit hole and spend countless hours discovering the magnificence of this technology, that you eventually reach a point of understanding, tearing you apart from the system.



What is Bitcoin?

You likely understand already that Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency - a digital token that exists on a global network that is maintained by users running the Bitcoin software. These users are called “nodes”. A node is basically a person running the software on a computer from anywhere in the world. Nodes validate and relay transactions and blocks across the network.

Those transactions are grouped into a public ledger called “the blockchain”, where miners (very powerful computers) compete to include transactions into new blocks. Once miners verify a block using “proof of work” (astronomical amounts of computational power to solve a mathematical puzzle), that block is added to the chain - and the ledger moves forward. This computational power is comparable to the time and effort that goes into mining Gold. Both of these outcomes are assets created by something extremely valuable. Energy.

This is a very dumbed-down version of how the network works, but again, I want to avoid technicalities. My aim here is to discuss how this technology changes one’s perception of the world, but in order to understand this, a basic understanding of the network itself is necessary.
By now you should be aware of two aspects (of many) that enable corruption and poverty: inflation and centralisation.

Inflation - your money losing its value and becoming worth less and less over time.
Centralisation - relying on a central entity to ensure the economy thrives.

The problem with the latter is quite obvious. Inevitably it leads to corruption or mismanagement. The free market is not to be tampered with, and when a centralised entity attempts to do so, it leads to a variety of economic problems, many of which we are all witnessing today.

Bitcoin is the world’s first truly decentralised digital currency. Because nodes are run all over the world, there is no single point of failure. Miners are incentivised to compete with one another through true free-market dynamics, competing for a prize of Bitcoin for each block they solve through proof of work.

Due to its programmed properties, Bitcoin is also completely immune to money printing. A finite amount of 21,000,000 will exist, and issuance runs on a schedule that halves roughly every four years until the last portion of a bitcoin is mined around 2140 (a century-plus issuance schedule - roughly 130-odd years from launch).

Instantly, both of the main issues with fiat currency are solved.

Bitcoin can be sent to anyone, instantly, anywhere in the world - with fees that, are basically free - and without asking permission. A one-world currency that is immune to inflation-by-printing, run by a network of thousands (and growing) of individuals, and created through the most powerful computer network in the history of the human race.
Perfect money, right? It seems so, but this isn’t the reason that Bitcoiners become spiritually enlightened.

We start seeing things differently…


The Spiritual Enlightenment

Time Preference

One of the first changes you see within yourself is your ability to hold a low time preference. You stop thinking about tomorrow and start thinking about next week, next month, next year. Materialism is all but eradicated, and only the things that actually matter become important.

This is likely because once you understand the mathematics behind Bitcoin and the unavoidable supply-and-demand dynamics it creates, you realise its value has but one direction over time. People in 2011 couldn’t imagine how far Bitcoin has come today. People today can’t imagine how bitcoin will grow in the future. Once you truly believe that what you have today will be worth more tomorrow, it becomes a powerful tool that changes the way you think. Volatility and speculation aside, the rise [we believe] is inevitable. Whether you agree or not is beside the point. Once you believe, the spiritual change takes hold.

Freedom from Financial Control

Once you have the ability to save the outcome of your time and energy into a system that is immune from state involvement, you become more observant to the power they hold over the unconverted. The policies they introduce, the law changes they make to benefit themselves at the expense of others - these become clear as day.
And then you see the ugly truth: their power comes from our compliance. We fund it. We feed it. We accept it. We obey it because we have no choice.
Bitcoin is a way out of that compliance. It’s an exit through silent protest. Revolutions don’t often end without bloodshed, but this might just get us there.

Self Custody

Individual responsibility returns.

We are conditioned to rely on the state to look after us when things get tough. We rely on welfare when we lose our jobs. We rely on banks to “look after” our money. That reliance keeps us obedient. It keeps us quiet and tame. It keeps us from fighting back.

A big part of why people struggle to criticise government isn’t ignorance - its dependence. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. You don’t question the parent when you still need an allowance.

But when you take control of your own money - when you take responsibility for your wealth - you become something different. You become harder to manage. Harder to threaten. Harder to bribe. And in a spiritual sense, you become a person of weight. A person who is not waiting to be saved.

Calmer Mind

You’ll notice it when you’re doom-scrolling. The constant hate. The endless ideological warfare. The daily geopolitical dramas that provoke anger, and demand you pick a side so you can direct that anger somewhere.

Bitcoin changes that.

Once you develop an understanding that almost every major decision in the world -political or not - is turbocharged by money, you start to see the true engine beneath the madness. When money is corrupt, everything built on top of it becomes corrupt: incentives, institutions, media, even families. You stop assuming everyone is evil. You stop assuming everyone is stupid. You start seeing the system as the disease - and people as symptoms.

And when you finally discover an escape hatch in the form of sound money, you become calmer towards others. You still see the damage. You still feel the anger. But it becomes focused, controlled and useful.

Long-Term Optimism

Not the bullshit optimism you hear in from talking-heads. Not “everything will be fine.” Not “trust the experts.” Not “we’re all in this together”.

This is different.

This is the optimism that comes from being able to plan again. To work hard and keep the outcome. To save without watching your savings get silently looted year after year. To look at the future and see something other than shrinking possibilities.

Bitcoin gives you the ability to think long-term again. And that changes everything. When humans can plan, they build. When they can’t, they cope. They consume. They escape. They decay. It’s that decay we’re seeing in society right now. 

Health Spillover

This one surprises people.

When you care about the future, you start acting like you have one. You start respecting your body. You start respecting time. You stop treating yourself like something disposable.

Low time preference spills into everything: training, food, sleep, alcohol, relationships. You start choosing discipline over dopamine, because you can actually see where your life is going - and you want to arrive there strong. 

Laziness is an ancient survival mechanism. When you’re stuck in a mindset of “I’m not going anywhere”, you automatically become lazy. You wake up and the first thing you do is reach for your phone. You plan, but don’t follow through. You just don’t see the point. But if you have something to live for, something tangible and a future worth fighting for, that all changes.

Appreciating the Real

You start appreciating the finer things again - but not the fake “luxury” stuff.

You start valuing real relationships, real skills, real nature, real craftsmanship. Things that can’t be printed. Things that can’t be inflated away. Things that don’t require permission.

You begin to see how much of modern life is noise. Consumption, status and plastic meaning. And once you see it, it becomes hard to unsee. You look at these people not in disgust, but in pity - yet know that you’ve been there too, and there is a way out.

Finding Your Community

This is a big one.

You also find people who think like you - people who don’t just repeat talking points, but question the foundations. People who understand incentives. People who value truth, self-responsibility, and sovereignty.

This matters more than most people realise. Because the world gets less insane when you stop feeling alone in your clarity.


When you see these changes occur within you, you wonder how you were ever such a puppet in the system - how you ever accepted being managed, monitored, taxed, and softened into obedience.
Puppets to masters who want nothing more than to stay in power and leech off your time and energy.
And once you feel the benefits these changes have on your psyche, you develop an incessant need to educate others - to bring more people into the light. Not to win debates. Not to flex intelligence. But because you know what it feels like to be trapped, and you know what it feels like to finally breathe.

If you want personal liberty, you can’t just complain about the chains. You have to cut them.
Learn Bitcoin. Buy a small amount. Hold it. And when you’re ready - take custody. Take responsibility. Stop asking permission to live.
Because the system is not going to save you.

And it is not going to stop.

Not until you stop complying.