The concept of "Softwar" is increasingly of mind and increasingly a pending reality as #Bitcoin moves into the nation-state adoption phase.
Zac Townsend wrote a recent article (titled "Why A US Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Is Critical To Fending Off China") where he identified why a US Bitcoin Strategic Reserve was critical to fending off geopolitical allies. I agreed with his words.
My favorite quote is how the essay starts:
"Finance is increasingly a weapon of war"
The quote immediately makes you realize that warfare today isn't necessarily the war you see in movies or TV. There are agendas and avenues that are constantly targeted and infiltrated--many via a device as small as a smartphone.
In using finance as a weapon of war, the method that has the potential to do the most good is to win the war to stack more Bitcoin than any other adversary.
As game theory plays out, more focus and energy is spent competing in cyberspace than any physical battleground.
As game theory plays out and nation-state and world economy adoption continue to occur, projecting one's (or a country's) power to add more Bitcoin will be the only "war" or "fight" that is really worth fighting.
Gone are the days where sanctions and promoting the dollar are "good enough" activities. We must project our financial power in cyberspace. Embracing Bitcoin as a Reserve Asset is the first step in projecting this power.
Bitcoin is the New S&P 500:
The S&P 500 has been the standard for “the market” for decades. Where the S&P goes, the market as a whole largely follows. For this reason, the S&P 500 which indexes the 500 largest stocks in the country is seen as the benchmark for performance when looking at investments.
If you are an individual picking stocks, you aim to beat the market—the S&P 500. It is that simple.
If you are a hedge fund managing investor funds, your basis for performance is if you can beat the market—once again, the S&P 500. It is that simple.
With 2024 coming to a close, Bloomberg’s Nishant Kumar compiled a list of hedge funds and how they performed in the year.
While this list is not exhaustive, it paints a decent picture of the overall performance of the various hedge funds around the world. It also displays the true difficulty of beating the market. The S&P 500 returned 23.3% over the last year. By this metric, only 4 hedge funds in the above image beat “the market.” Warren Buffet, widely considered the greatest investor of all time, and Berkshire Hathaway outperformed the market by returning 25.5% or 2.2% better than the S&P 500. If hedge fund managers, seen as extreme professionals, struggle to beat the market, one can logically assume that the individual who has a career not based on stock trading will struggle to beat the market. By this logic, the safest thing for any individual to do would be to not worry about hedging their investments and instead, purchase shares in S&P 500 ETFs that track the performance of the market.
But the reality is that the returns of the market cannot be taken at face value. The alternative to investing (in anything) is holding cash that is being devalued at the hands of inflation. Holding $5 cash today would provide me with less purchasing power in a year. That is an undeniable fact because of the inflationary characteristics of fiat currencies. So people choose to invest in places with the hope of maintaining purchasing power for the future. The S&P 500, or the “market,” is one such place.
Interestingly, gold, a precious metal and not a company with any earnings, outperformed the S&P 500 over the last year. People have used gold as an inflation hedge, a savior from currency debasement, and as security during economic chaos for thousands of years. If gold, a hard asset for thousands of years, is outperforming the collection of the 500 largest companies in the United States it makes you wonder about the true validity of what a 23.3% return from the market really means. Can you take that percent at face value or is there a certain percentage of that return that is directly attributable to currency debasement?
While we will never get the exact answer, I believe more of the market’s return can be attributed to currency debasement than we would like to admit. I believe that people are flooding the equity markets with their capital in an effort to trade in their devaluing currency for something they believe will beat inflation. This conversation has not even dove into the fact that the Magnificent 7 companies contributed close to 14% of the total 23.3% for the S&P 500.
With this thinking, if the name of the game is to beat currency devaluation and maintain your purchasing power into the future, there is no better place to park your capital than Bitcoin. In an ever-increasingly digital world, Bitcoin takes the shortcomings of gold and capitalizes on all of them.
-Bitcoin has a strict, capped scarcity, gold does not.
-Bitcoin is easily transferable (cheaply and quickly) and extremely divisible. Gold is neither.
-Don’t believe me? Try transporting even one kilogram of gold across the Atlantic.
Better yet, Bitcoin produced about a 120% return in 2024. It absolutely blew the market out of the water. This isn’t an anomaly either, Bitcoin has routinely been one of if not the, best-performing asset of the year for many of the last 15 years. Over the last decade, Bitcoin has grown at an 80% compound annual growth rate. Over the last 5 years, it has returned a compounded rate of 67% annually. These are returns a hedge fund manager would kill to have.
I have previously discussed how Bitcoin is older than the stock market. I now believe it should be the basic metric for what “beating the market” is viewed as. For this reason, Bitcoin is the new S&P 500. You either beat Bitcoin, or you lose.
In the future, the best-performing portfolios won’t necessarily be run by stock traders, hedge fund managers, or traditional finance executives, rather they will be held by the normal person who buys and holds Bitcoin. An action so simple, anyone can do it. An action so simple, people will refuse to do it because of it being boring. An action so boring, people would rather chase the new flashy item and lose than be bored and win. Yet, if you accept the simplicity and boredom, you can have a portfolio that could outperform every hedge fund on Wall Street!
Beating the market is very difficult. Scroll up to the image above and see how many hedge funds in the chart beat the S&P 500. I will remind you again that Warren Buffet only beat the market by a little more than 2%. But after shifting the “market” to be Bitcoin, all of the hedge funds and Warren Buffet got crushed.
Stop overthinking it and realize that Bitcoin is the new “market” and that this market is much harder to beat than the S&P 500.
If you can’t beat Bitcoin (the market), then you should just buy Bitcoin.
Stack SATs.
The Genesis Block occurred 16 years ago last week, below is my full newsletter on how far we have come since then in the world of #Bitcoin.
January 3rd is a special day in the world of Bitcoin. 16 years ago, on January 3rd, 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto mined ‘Block Zero,’ known today as the Genesis Block for the Bitcoin network. The Genesis Block was mined just 64 days after Satoshi introduced the Bitcoin white paper on October 31st, 2008.
When the Genesis Block was mined, it produced the first Bitcoin subsidy, which was deemed immovable and unable to be spent. The 50 Bitcoin mined in this first block have never been moved; the code of the Bitcoin network remains law.
Satoshi Nakamoto was not afraid of leaving behind “coincidences” or their thoughts. Remember the significance of the date chosen for their birthday? Every little note or coincidence left behind seems to be heavily calculated and correlated to the illness and debauchery of fiat currency. The Genesis Block was no different. Satoshi included a message in the block: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” This hidden message in the Genesis Block is an excerpt from a London Times headline from January 3rd, 2009. Many speculate, myself included, that this was another way Satoshi specifically aimed to spark a rebellion against fiat currencies and the power of the central banks.
The idea for Bitcoin was conceived during the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, which occurred because of the nonexistent risk tolerance these centralized banks maintained and the massive bank bailouts that the government provided as their reward. Bitcoin aimed, and continues to provide, the common man with an escape from the failing fiat currencies that can be printed into circulation with the click of a button.
At the time of the Genesis Block, there was no price attached to Bitcoin. It was nothing more than an idea of a better future. It also took over five days after the Genesis Block was mined for block 1 to join the blockchain. It took four more days before the very first Bitcoin transaction occurred when 10 Bitcoin were transferred to the late Hal Finney. The legend of Hal Finney remains as he posted to Twitter two days after block 1 was mined that he was “Running bitcoin.”
16 years ago this was the state of Bitcoin. A seedling in a forest filled with predatory fiat currencies. A seedling that aimed to spark a movement to stand up against the clutches of fiat currencies and the destructive impacts of money printing. A seedling aiming to bring fairness and order to a system residing in a state of chaos where the “haves” always beat the “have nots.”
Today Bitcoin is more akin to the Redwood or Giant Sequoia trees reaching hundreds of feet in the air than any blossoming seedling fighting for survival. Today Bitcoin is in arms reach of $100,000 per coin and has a total market cap of around $2 trillion. Today Bitcoin is much less of an “idea” and much more of a certainty to be involved with an ever-increasing reach in all facets of our lives. Ideas always start somewhere. The good ideas persist and take over.
I believe it is an honor to have remembered what 2008 was like when there was no solution to the depths of fiat currencies. 16 years later I have supreme optimism and hope for the future as a result of the solution Satoshi gave us—Bitcoin. Based on the last 16 years, the next 16 years could continue to bring about transformational changes in how everyone stores their wealth and lives their lives.
Satoshi would be proud to see the growth Bitcoin has experienced since the Genesis Block occurred.
Satoshi would be proud to see how anti-fragile Bitcoin has become since the Genesis Block occurred.
Satoshi would be proud to see Bitcoin continuing to operate seamlessly since the Genesis Block occurred.
Satoshi would be proud to see the community of people around the world who recognize the problem Bitcoin aims to solve.
Bitcoin of course would not care about any of this because it only cares about producing the next block—a purpose it has executed flawlessly since that very first block was sparked. From the Genesis Block to now, Bitcoin has persisted and grown.
The future may be uncertain but with every passing block, Bitcoin becomes a little more certain.
Stack SATs.
During 2024 I had a goal of creating my own #Bitcoin content every week.
The creation of my newsletter, "The Arc" became my medium.
52 posts later, I am proud to say I achieved my goal.
I wrote:
-11 newsletters on Bitcoin education
-3 newsletters on the Halving
-9 newsletters on human psychology as it relates to Bitcoin
-7 newsletters on perspectives for the future
-6 newsletters rooted on history
-6 newsletters on price action
-9 newsletters on The Bitcoin Movement
The first 2 newsletters of 2025 are already queued up and ready to be shipped out. The year may have changed but the work has not.
There is still so much more to cover, so much more to share.
#Bitcoin mining has a handful of challenges for newcomers:
-It is the most competitive industry in the world
-The capital required to be competitive is high
-Tech you buy today may be obsolete in a year or 2
-You need cheap energy
@Rigly founded by
@Evan Baer is a solution for anyone.
Rigly is a marketplace for hashrate.
It solves the troubles newcomers to Bitcoin mining have such as: difficulty setting up their own rig and finding cheap energy.
It also solves the problem of people paying for hashrate at hosted facilities and then losing their capital in the event these facilities go offline (multiple instances throughout the years of this occurring).
People interested in purchasing hashrate can go to the marketplace on Rigly and buy without worry that they will get robbed because payment is stored in escrow on chain until the buyers receive all of their hashrate. Additionally, there is an auction house where perspective buyers can bid on hashrate where the market decides the price.
As large corporations continue to add to their hashrate, Bitcoin mining becomes less distributed and also less censorship resistance.
Rigly also helps address this issue because with more people contributing, distribution and censorship resistance both increase.
Bitcoin mining is arguably the most private way to participate in the Bitcoin network. When you win SATs, you can sweep this fresh Bitcoin (with no prior transactions), directly into a hardware wallet.
No ties to any KYC exchange.
Rigly opens this privacy up to anyone.
Rigly helps make Bitcoin mining for anyone, again.
The decision to support #Bitcoin isn't a political one, it's just the right one.
"Fix the money, and you fix the world."
With election day tomorrow, it's important to remember that #Bitcoin doesn't care if you are Republican or Democrat.
All the Bitcoin network cares about is instilling the next block in cyberspace's time-chain roughly every 10 minutes.
There is no BTC marketing team, no CEO, and no hidden agenda.
Tick-tock next block.
In the short-term, depending on the results of the US Presidential election, the markets will show some variability depending on who wins.
In the long-run, these will be minor blips for where #Bitcoin is going.
If Vice President Harris wins, I expect a short-term downturn in the price of BTC. If Former President Trump wins, we could rocket to all-time highs.
These expectations come from the Republican party aligning itself, from a stated perspective, as more BTC-friendly.
This isn't to say the Harris administration hasn't recently tried to appeal to the Bitcoin crowd-they have.
Unless something like a #Bitcoin strategic stockpile/reserve or other actively pro-Bitcoin legislation occurs, the words both parties have said will be just words.
People may need action or expected outcomes to drive the markets upward, but Bitcoin does not care because Bitcoin isn't political.
Bitcoin is Bitcoin, not a political argument.
