Bitcoin, Bitcoiners And Citadels

The series continues. You can find part one here and part two here.

Foreword

The third chapter in Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules For Life” is entitled, “Make Friends With People Who Want The Best For You.”

This instantly reminded me of the Bitcoin community and the fundamental values that true Bitcoiners have in common, despite many in the broader tech, finance, crypto and blockchain space labelling us as “toxic.”

Bitcoiners are the only crowd I have found whose primary interest is not “getting rich,” but “fixing the money so we can fix the world,” and when behaving in a manner that some might call “toxic,” are merely being intolerant toward skewing the core idea away from its core message and doing so from a place of deep insight and caring.

The following meme immediately comes to mind:

Bitcoiners truly want the best for others and the world, and are not willing to compromise on what it will take to get there.

In chapter three, Peterson takes us on a journey, reminding us that we should choose to spend our time with people who want things to be better for us, not worse. He reminds us that it’s a good thing to choose people who are good for you and who demand the most from you, but that it’s not easy because the tendency is to choose those who “accept” your faults, which may not be so good for you (a concept related to his prior rule).

Being vulnerable, naked apes, we tend to feed off of pity and unnecessary compassion instead of finding those individuals against whom it requires strength and daring to stand up.

Those who want the best for us are an ideal. They hold us to a higher standard. Their very presence can reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future, which in itself can be daunting, and hence why it’s a difficult task.

Once again, Peterson weaves some incredible principles together in this chapter and I’ve done my best to tease some of them out to help you understand another element of Bitcoin, i.e., the Bitcoiner and the tribes or metaphorical citadels they have built.

Friends

Friends matter when times are tough.

Peterson opens this chapter against the backdrop of a teenager’s lonely experience in the cold depths of Alberta, Canada. The entire community was cold, withdrawn, nihilistic and tuned out. Doing anything was seen as “uncool,” losers seemed to abound.

His friends spent more time high than sober, distracting themselves from reality. One of the quotes that made me laugh:

There’s a strong analogy to the hopelessness and nihilism in much of the world today. We’re surrounded by people who’ve either given up or are brainwashed by mainstream madness. People are constantly seeking some form of distraction or escape because they cannot handle being alone long enough to face themselves. They fear the specter of their own increasingly meaningless existence. If you ever wondered why depression is so prevalent, this is why.

It’s a dangerous time for humanity because this version of the human experience has ripple effects that not only reinforce the nihilism, but breed people who don’t believe they deserve better. As a result, they repeat the behavior that got them there in the first place and sink further into the depths of victimhood.

Freud termed this psychological phenomenon “repetition compulsion.”

In order to rise above this, or break the pattern, one must face the “trouble” of better. People create their worlds not only with the tools they have at hand, but in the way they use those tools. Faulty tools can certainly produce faulty results, but mindless use of even functional tools can also produce disastrous results.

Progress not only requires us to use new tools, but to use them in sound ways to build new worlds. Unfortunately, few seem to want to face this reality and, as Peterson says:

Community

Peterson reminds us to find friends, a peer group and a community that not only want the best for us, but are aiming up. That’s what you find in Bitcoin, at almost every level.

The anarchic behavior can at times seem brutal or outlandish, but we are ultimately here to keep each other honest, to strengthen each other’s resolve and to sharpen each other’s wits.

I’ve not come into contact with another group of individuals so diverse in background, experience, race, age, gender, nationality, taste or [insert variable], yet so willing to simultaneously welcome new people in who are on a common path, and call out (in earnest) those who attempt to stray from the path, whether consciously or unconsciously.

This makes for an incredible “community”, unlike anything you will have ever come across.

Bitcoiners are realistic optimists.

We’re pessimistic about the short term because we’re honest enough to both acknowledge the problems we’re facing, and call them out.

But, we’re also optimistic about the long term because we appreciate the nuance of what has worked in functional, free societies, and we know we have the ultimate tool in Bitcoin, whose very existence corrects behavior and time preference at the level of the individual. This is in stark contrast to the defeatist attitudes of the mindless nihilists, the salty socialists and the “larperterians” who’ve all but given up.

We know there are challenges ahead. In fact, we know how to define the challenges better than most, and while we may not have an exact plan on how we get to the other side of every one of these grand challenges, we know that there is something we can do:

1. We fix the upstream issue, i.e., how human action, natural resources, time and energy are measured (the money)
2. We build tools to ensure everyone can participate and so that the most powerful tool (money) is unable to be commandeered ever again, and
3. We have a devotion to the pursuit of truth from first principles, across the dimensions that matter, to carry us along

Being a realistic optimist is a fine line. It requires a true depth of character, an ability to grasp nuance like few others can, and a strong core group of people who will not waver.

It’s very easy to stray from this path because we’re surrounded on all sides by:

• Nihilists and people in the legacy world who’ve given up or don’t believe things can get better
• Ignorant sheeple (the masses) who are willing to submit to the status quo and turn a blind eye to a constantly diminishing quality of life and simultaneous increase in centralized tyranny around the world
• Scammers who want to use narratives such as “decentralization” or buzzwords like “blockchain” to confuse people and swindle them out of their money
• Naive optimists who genuinely don’t understand what’s going on in the world, so they put lipstick on a pig and believe they’ve made it beautiful. Modern Silicon Valley entrepreneurs building the next pointless finance or social app represent this archetype. They’re so caught up in “innovation” that they have no idea what they’re building is not just a house of cards, but is rotten to the core.
• Deranged power brokers who understand “the game” and know which levers to pull. They are intimately aware of the structural inadequacies and therefore know where the points of maximum leverage are located. Instead of doing something to make it better, they use these insights and their intellect to game the system and take advantage of others.
• Bitter, salty, intelligent people who have been right about the state of corruption but have chosen not to participate in either the scams or “the game.” They’re disillusioned from having watched the madness and hysteria continue for decades despite the gaping holes they’ve often eloquently and rationally pointed out. They’ve seen prior attempts fail so they unfortunately no longer believe there is hope and should someone come along with something like Bitcoin, their only response is to ridicule it because they either resent not having come up with it themselves, or lack the humility to appreciate that this may be a “zero to one” moment.

Many of these in the last category are part of the “AnCap,” “prepper” or “libertarian” camps who have for many years been extremely accurate in their assessment of what’s wrong with the world, the state, central banking, the financial and economic system, politics and more, but were unable to present a viable, functional alternative.

Therein lies the big difference between them and Bitcoiners. Many would prefer to complain or make jokes rather than do something about it. In the absence of a viable solution, they devolve into perpetual victims, constant complainers and literally become part of the problem because their identity requires something stupid outside of themselves to ridicule in order to feel adequate.

They do not even want to hear or know of a solution, because if things actually changed, who would they have to complain about?

This is why Bitcoiners are such a powerful, optimistic force.

As an independent thinker, it’s a genuine breath of fresh air to come across people who can both accept and articulate what’s wrong with the world, but simultaneously have hope for a better future and act in accordance with that worldview.

The Lonely Contrarian

There are many days I feel like “maybe I’m the crazy one.” To think we can overturn the corrupt behemoth that is the legacy financial system, and to stand strong in the face of a world gone categorically mad can be an incredibly lonely feeling.

But this is where heroes are made. A contrarian is by definition a minority and resides where few others have the insight or courage to.

The archetype of this generation’s Bitcoiner is the contrarian. The blood of the warrior flows through his or her veins. They’re individuals who are willing to be lonely, who are willing to be ridiculed, laughed at and disparaged, but still remain strong, steady and convicted.

This is what is required to transform the world from the bottom up.

Future generations will use Bitcoin because it’s the obvious thing to use, much as they may use a cell phone or the internet today. In fact, the more time that passes, the more that using Bitcoin will be like breathing air.

Future “Bitcoiners” will be fighting other battles, contending with other beasts and striving to accomplish different feats. It’s our job to make sure humanity survives beyond the event horizon ahead. But I digress…

Bitcoiners today are simultaneously the soundest contrarians and the group of people who want the best for you. Find them. Be around them. It will not only strengthen our cause, but will make the journey less lonely.

We contrarians are the Bitcoin Mafia, h/t AMERICAN HODL.

Much like the early team at PayPal, this era of Bitcoiners will rebuild the world. We are a unique set of individuals all striving to grow, who are responsible for their own actions, wealth and decisions, and will long-term change the very course of history.

Despite the challenges that lie ahead, you should be deeply grateful to be a part of it.

Bitcoiners Vs. Shitcoiners

Bitcoiners are the community that wants the best for you, while primarily and fundamentally focused on becoming the best version of themselves.

There exists a form of altruistic selfishness because they are striving to grow as individuals and to become better at their own expense. Not yours.

Many have attempted to frame Bitcoin as a method in which early adopters encourage new adopters to buy it so that they can get rich, kind of like a Ponzi scheme. This is incorrect for a number or reasons, mainly:

1. Any purchase a new person makes has an inconsequential direct impact on the net worth of a Bitcoiner, although the impact for the new entrant is monumental, i.e., sovereign ownership over the product of your labor, protected by a global, distributed, proof-of-work network.

Any momentum created by a broader base of people buying and holding bitcoin drives up its purchasing power, resulting in a negative impact for a Bitcoiner who will never go back to fiat, and who measures his or her wealth in terms of the number of “sats” they hold. It requires more hours of work each year for me to accumulate a single bitcoin, and my bet is that by the time this decade is out, there is little I can do for the rest of my life to earn an entire bitcoin again. Few understand this.

Bitcoiners have nothing to sell you, but your own freedom and sovereignty. 

When we do so, we actually increase the cost of our own transition because those of us who understand Bitcoin are not measuring our wealth in dollar terms, but in sats. A higher relative bitcoin price means we can acquire less real wealth.

Contrast this with shitcoiners who create “uLtRaSoUnD money” out of thin air, change the rules at a whim, enrich themselves via “pre-mines” and sell you a new narrative every few months so that you keep buying it.

Shitcoiners, much like the existing bankrupt monetary system, seek to enrich themselves at the expense of others. When some group of nerds, backed by Silicon Valley VCs, issues its own currency under the banner of “decentralization” or “the good of everyone,” they are enriching themselves at your expense. You are funding their lifestyle, and they thank you for it.

Frauds like Charles Hoskinson, Vitalik Buterin or Dan Larimer are all cut from the same cloth. They all dislike each other because their respective Ponzi schemes are in direct competition with each other, and as such, they’re at constant war. The following passage from a recent book about Ethereum comes to mind:

Blockchainers selling overpriced enterprise database solutions and Silicon Valley venture capital firms like A16Z pumping and dumping the new shiny craptocurrency are no different.

They don’t want the best for you. They just want the best for themselves at your expense, which is to be expected in a world where incentives are skewed, capital allocation is broken, pricing signals are false and morality has been thrown out the window.

The following meme (h/t Gigi) is the perfect example of how these people think and behave, in stark contrast to the image of Bitcoiners earlier in the piece:

Bitcoin Toxicity

A common term thrown around by shitcoiners is “toxicity.” It’s become a futile attempt by those who do not understand the basic premise of the golden or silver rules to slander anyone calling out their scams, mistakes or fraudulent behavior.

The funniest part is that Bitcoiners have actually taken on the term as a badge of honor and in classic cobra effect style, doubled down on the behavior.

Let’s explore a few of the tenets of toxicity:

The Golden Rule

The golden rule is “do unto others as you’d like them to do unto you.” This is one of the most commonly misunderstood ideas, because it has nothing to do with being “nice,” and everything to do with having the courage to say and do what’s right.

What you really want done unto you is the right thing, the thing that keeps you honest, that demands the best of you and that corrects your erroneous behavior so that you can evolve and develop into the best version of yourself.

80% of the time, the above requires truth, and 80% of that time, the truth will hurt.

Bitcoiners believe this, viscerally.

The Silver Rule

I quote Nassim Taleb way too much, but oh, well. I’m sure his ghost writer is happy.

The silver rule states that one should not do unto others as you would not want done unto you. It’s a slight variance on the golden rule, and in the context of complex systems (like human societies), a more robust rule.

You may enjoy weird shit like being spanked, so while the golden rule would then tell you to go spank others, doing so might not be such a good idea.

The silver rule suggests that what you don’t like or don’t want to happen to you is something you should not do to another. It’s very basic, but it passes the basic “good person” test. I don’t want to have my things stolen, or be micromanaged like I’m some lemming, or be scammed, promised the world and not have anything delivered, lied to, etc. So, in that sense, I should not do those things to others.

Bitcoiners get this, and while some may once again point to “toxicity” as something they wouldn’t want to happen to them, well… I would counter with the following tweet from a Bitcoiner I deeply respect:

The difference is striking. Please call us out if we ever attempt to betray you.

You’ll also note Bitcoiner behavior is consistent across both the golden and silver rules. It takes a rare kind of character to embody these traits.

This is why people like @dergigi and @GiacomoZucco are some of my favorite humans, and once again reinforces why so-called “toxicity” by an intolerant minority is so fundamental to Bitcoin.

It’s not just an immune response, but is the rock of truth against which the waves of lies break. That which is termed “toxic” is done so by those who are threatened by the light of its truth. They would prefer to build committees of censorship instead of having the humility to adjust their behavior or the courage to rise to the occasion and own their mistake.

Bitcoiners are as toxic to frauds, phonies and charlatans as Bitcoin is to the existing fraud of the world we live in. And we use speech to make it known, like a swarm of cyber hornets.

This idea is eloquently encapsulated in one of my favorite short clips from Peterson:

The Virtuous Monster

There is nothing virtuous about suffering in silence, nor is virtue found in conforming to a lie just to be polite. Do not confuse kindness with sincerity, or abrasion with wickedness.

The best thieves will convince you that they’re your friend and often your truest friends are those who will violently confront you when you are transgressing your own morals, virtues or standards.

This is why I would take an “honest asshole” over a “polite liar” any day of the week, month or year.

Modernity has castrated men and battered women to the point where they can no longer stand up for themselves. They have been taught to live a life of quiet compromise and servitude. Daddy Government and Mumma Medicine will take care of you and numb you into oblivion.

If you want to know where this leads, there’s no longer a need to even study history. Just open your eyes and look around. The world in which we live is fundamentally compromised because people have forgotten to stand up straight with their shoulders back.

Note that in engineering terms (and the accurate linguistic definition) of the word “compromised” is that which is broken, non functional and needs to be fixed.

This is why the cultivation of the “monster” inside of us all has always been, and perhaps also never been, more important than it is now. To paraphrase Peterson:

This is why, as Peterson would say, that the capacity to be a monster, but a conscious one, is so critical.

As was explored in the prior chapter, the capacity for malevolence is ingrained in all of us as a result of the knowledge of our own vulnerability. This is something we cannot remove, but something we can stand up to by becoming stronger, wiser and more resilient versions of ourselves.

And once again, this is part of what an honest peer group brings to the table.

“Iron sharpens iron” and pressure is the prerequisite for growth, whether in physical, spiritual, mental or emotional dimensions.

The monster inside you must be cultivated, but needs to be conscious. A conscious monster confronts the dragon (the tyrant) and the snake (the charlatan), while protecting the truth, the tribe and the innocent.

This is what it means to be a virtuous monster and is the archetype of the so-called “toxic Bitcoiner.”

Without them, the world around you becomes either a tyranny or a fraud. Or, in the case of our timeline, a blend of both. In the absence of honest assholes, the world devolves into a mass of polite liars.

Echo Chambers

Echo chambers have been characterized as bad or, at best, undesirable because they are a supposed “barrier” to learning something new. In some cases this is true, especially in the madness of crowds via the blind repetition of some platitude or falsehood.

But… do not mistake an echo chamber for a point of objective truth that has been converged upon by individuals from different places across different times. There are timeless principles and a-priori truths that have guided humanity from the beginning of time and the individuals that history remembers are those who guarded them with their very lives.

This form of echo chamber is one in which signal is amplified. Search for these. In them lies deep fulfillment.

Bitcoiners Are The Remnant

I recently read “Isaiah’s Job” by Albert Jay Nock, and while I was going to write an entire section about it in this article, it took on a life of its own and is now published as it’s own piece here:

“Bitcoiners Are The Remnant, The Masses Don't Matter”

Suffice it to say that Bitcoiners are the Remnant, and the Remnant are those who will and always have changed the world.

They are those who want the best for you because they are the same who demand the best from you.

They are your true friends. Your community. Your tribe.

In order to be among them, you must be the best and most honest version of yourself. There is no greater aspiration in life.

Nock’s piece reminds us that diluting your message and your mission to “appeal to the masses” is the greatest fraud a “prophet of the Remnant” can commit. It’s the pathway to emptiness, regret and meaninglessness. It’s a surefire way to dissuade those who matter from the cause, and attract the flakes.

So, while Bitcoin is for everyone, and Bitcoiners can come from any and all walks of life, the purity of the message and the incorruptibility that is Bitcoin does not change.

This is why many have likened Bitcoin to an objective truth. You cannot dilute the truth because it becomes a lie, and when it becomes a lie, you can only fool the masses; not the Remnant.

True Bitcoiners stand at the gates. They are the cyber hornets, as Michael Saylor would so aptly describe them. They are unlike the ephemeral, opportunistic shitcoiners that characterize the world of crapto.

Do Not Cast Pearls Before Swine

A well known but little practiced idea, once again derived from the Bible, is to not cast pearls before swine.

This is reminiscent of the message of the Remnant and the masses.

One must respect the scarce resources they have on this earth, whether they come in the form of time, energy or other scarce resources. One must allocate them accordingly, such that they are not squandered or wasted.

While waste is inevitable, its elimination is actually the definition of progress. The less we waste, the more effective and efficient we become, the more we honor ourselves, our lives and those around us.

We live in a world with real, physical constraints. You cannot help everyone, you cannot change anyone, the teacher appears only when the student is ready and swine will never respect pearls.

You and I are action-oriented beings, who expend our finite time and energy toward outcomes that we deem valuable. Maximize that by finding those whom you can impact deeply. Give them the pearls. They will not only appreciate them, but they will pay it forward.

Quality over quantity. This is the rule of the wise.

Never be afraid to be selective or exclusive. You do an injustice to yourself, your tribe and those who matter most by being totally inclusive, spreading yourself thin and diluting your message for a mass of people who won’t care anyway.

Focus on those who do care, the Bitcoiners. And if you want to know what it means to be a Bitcoiner, I wrote what might be my shortest piece a number of years back here:

“What It Takes To Be A Bitcoiner”

With this in mind, we enter the final section of this chapter…

The Citadels

This is a meme popularized in the Bitcoin world, but which has its roots in every great narrative where an individual or group have found sovereignty in their escape from tyranny or the collapse of the old.

From Noah’s Ark to the Romans to American independence to Galt’s Gulch or the internet (cyber space), the idea of the citadel has existed since the dawn of history and now lives on through Bitcoin.

It’s gained momentum in the hearts and minds of Bitcoiners because Bitcoin is fundamentally a parallel system that neither needs nor recognizes the old. It operates on a new standard that is both subjectively enforced and objectively measurable.

It is a citadel on multiple dimensions: a communications citadel, a monetary fortress, a time and energy super conductor, a web of inter-subjective value, a human action transmission network, a work and labor storage device, a high-fidelity representation of natural resources, a timechain and a map of reality.

Furthermore, because money is the technology of social cooperation and the transmission medium for time, energy and natural resources, it’s movement into the realm of the incorruptible and untouchable physical law (alongside the speed of light and the second law of thermodynamics), means that it forms the basis for citadels on higher dimensions:

• Food
• Energy
• Shelter
• Transport
• Education

None of the above can be built independent of the old without first securing the money. And if by chance and sheer will they are, they cannot be sustained.

The base of the pyramid of sovereignty is money. We fix that, we can fix anything. There is no greater task that lies before us. The citadels must and will prevail.

To better understand the citadel meme, let’s explore some concepts:

Localism And Tribalism

Tribalism is today used as a pejorative term to frame people who think and behave a certain way as bigots, close minded, group-thinkers and echo chamber maximalists.

As with most modern definitions, this is totally moronic.

The tribe is a critical component of a community and if the family is the nucleus, tribes are like the “cells” in a society. They are a fundamental building block whose integrity determines the strength and fitness of the broader species.

We start with the individual, we grow into a family, we form a tribe, we develop a community and communities come together to build a citadel. These citadels then form “human society,” i.e., a diverse network of jurisdictions all with their own flavors, styles, norms and cultures.

These are the layers:

Tribes and perhaps communities are about as far as common values can scale and general governance can function. Beyond that, it starts to break down because of the diverse nature of life.

Society simply cannot function at the scale of the modern nation state, and especially not at the scale that the moronic globalist believe. The idea that some global, monolithic super structure can effectively command and control all decision making is abhorrent, unless the constituents, i.e., the very citizenry it’s made up of, are all of the same character, values and belief systems.

This is impossible for large swathes of people, unless it is enforced by some decree. But even then, individuality emerges like a rose in a concrete world, or a ray of light in a dark room. We are inherently different, and that’s what makes humanity beautiful.

Groups of people with common beliefs and shared values have been coming together since the dawn of time. At the local level, they may be quite similar and tribal. This is fine. Humans naturally do that. But on a grander scale, to be a functional species we require diversity. We require tribal, cohesive and homogenous “cells” that are similar within, but different to their counterparts, who perform different functions in order to exist.

You see it in all of life. From the quantum universe, to the galaxies that make up the big universe (whatever that is).

Life needs diversity.

Life exists at the nexus of chaos and order. Not in the realm of one without the other. Diversity by its very nature is a form of chaos between the order.

This diversity enables experimentation and discovery, it enables growth. This is what life does. It’s in constant flux, growing and dying, each ebb and flow giving rise to the other in the continuous cycle of life.

Everything we cherish, from art to civilization, spawned from our ability to experiment and to try. It’s only in this way that a discovery can be made. That’s why I believe in tribalism.

It’s healthy. It’s essential. We must protect it.

The individual comes first, but they are nothing without their tribe. There’s no reason why people cannot mingle and experience different tribes and cultures, but those distinct, homogenous core tribes need to exist for us to be able to do that!

Bitcoin and the Bitcoiners that help make it possible are a microcosm of this concept. You see it everywhere despite the claims by shitcoiners and no coiners that we are “toxic.”

Bitcoiners from all walks of life are passionately trying to help others navigate the tools, the information and the nuance free of charge, helping newbies avoid shitcoins, calling out scammers and copping flack for doing so.

Economic Consequences

The specter of economic reality will completely transform how sovereignty functions and force it to either adapt into a customer < > service provider relationship (away from subject < > overlord) with those whom it provides governance services, or dissolve into bankruptcy.

I believe it will drive sovereigns to be smaller, nimbler and more local because it’s the only way to remain economically functional and competitive.

We’ve seen that operating or governing across a large swathe of a population with divergent views, norms, ideals and values is just not viable. People want different things and you can’t just blanket impose arbitrary rules on everyone.

The only reason why large scale nation states exist today is that they are able to fraudulently fund themselves via three mechanisms:

• Enforced taxation
• Monetary inflation
• Borrowing from the future

On a Bitcoin standard, you cannot do the above and thus you cannot grow into a leviathan by perpetuating an economic fraud. You cannot privatize gains whilst socializing losses because none of the mechanisms above are possible.

Moral hazard, which is currently built into the system, is no longer systemically possible. It’s only locally possible and the consequence is collapse.

The result is a natural ceiling in size for either governments or corporations. The larger you get, the slower you become, the harder it is to adapt and the more susceptible you are to being beaten by smaller, nimbler and more hungry competitors. This is how things naturally balance. On a fixed, energy-money standard, you cannot bail out the stupid (or corrupt), and you cannot eliminate competition by being close to the ultimate monopoly.

Royalism

“Royalism” is a term coined by Mencius Moldbug and discussed in his series of essays about the “patchwork” model of the world. Some of you may be familiar with his work, but I assume many are not.

In short, he discusses a future in which the world is made up of a patchwork of city states, all run like corporations, by a CEO with absolute power and accountability.

This city-state CEO is much like a monarch, but operates their domain like a business whose motive is profit. Hence the term “royalism.”

It is so extremely in line with what Bitcoiners have intuited over the past few years that I can only imagine there’s been some influence from his work. The initial draft was written before Bitcoin, but notes made afterward that Bitcoin as a monetary standard might help make a future like this possible.

I would argue that, without Bitcoin, a future such as this one is impossible until after the complete collapse of a globalist super structure which has way too much momentum and too many resources.

Bitcoin may be what makes a royalism-inspired patchwork of citadels possible via a more smooth and functional transition in which the good of what society has built in the prior five centuries does not go to complete waste. I won’t do the concept justice in a few paragraphs, so I suggest you have a read:

"Patchwork: A Political System For The 21st Century”

He is brutal in his analysis of the status quo, and both funny and extremely intelligent. I would also suggest reviewing the fabulous book by Titus Gebel, “Free Private Cities”:

“Free Private Cities”

The idea that Ayn Rand described so eloquently and inspirationally in “Atlas Shrugged” is being memed into reality and the centerpiece of it all is Bitcoin.

In Closing

It’s okay to surround yourself with people who are helping you be better and to shy away from people who are willing to drag you down. You are not obligated to associate with people who are trying to damage the structure of your being.

Move away from people like that.

A bitcoiner is a unique archetype who represents the true zeitgeist of the modern world. He or she is the counterbalance to the madness of crowds and the destruction by parasites. They are the rational optimist who can envision a better world because they’ve understood the flaws with the current one.

They are the Remnant and oftentimes the lonely contrarian, who I am here to remind are not alone. Like God told Isaiah, there are two things I can guarantee you:

1. The Remnant exists
2. Its members will find you

Your responsibility as a Bitcoiner and as a member of the Remnant is to strive toward being the best version of yourself and to do your part in raising the standard with others. Your example and your presence alone will do that. To paraphrase Peterson:

“Like you have an ethical responsibility to take care of yourself, you have an ethical responsibility to surround yourself with people who have the courage, faith and wisdom to wish you well when you’ve done something good, and to stop you when you’re doing something destructive.”

That quote summarizes not only what it means to be a good friend, but what it means to be a so-called “Toxic Bitcoin Maximalist.”

A Collective Protest By The Individual

Bitcoin is a peaceful but functional protest against that which consciously or unconsciously chooses to oppress. And this protest is a vital one.

A brotherhood and sisterhood along common values is what’s missing in the world today.

We are different, and that’s a beautiful thing. We are diverse in our values, needs and desires.

When free to choose, we naturally form groups along commonalities. And yes, while these groups are naturally more homogeneous internally, the patchwork they form is more heterogeneous because they’re smaller

For too long we’ve been forced to assimilate and “integrate” as if we’re cattle without an identity, without a culture and without personal preferences.

If children can form friendships at school of their own volition, why in the hell are adults forced to conform and accept each other as some global, homogeneous blob. It just breeds resentment for one another. I have no desire to hang around some people, and nobody else has the right to force us to get along.

I want to pick my friends carefully because who I spend time with is who I become. Bitcoin is my protest and it voluntarily aligns me with others who want the same thing. This is our virtual citadel today, and is the precursor to our physical one tomorrow. I hope to meet you there one day, at a lecture being given by Peterson himself.

Thank you for reading.

This is a guest post by Aleks Svetski, CEO of www.amber.app. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.