Luke de Wolf

These days I'm feeling the weight of a lot of conflicting priorities. My Bitcoin work is fulfilling, but not profitable enough to avoid needing other income or drawing down from my stack. My fiat job is relatively boring, somewhat useful to society, and pays the bills, in exchange for my time. I could quit, but then I'd have to spend my Bitcoin. I'd have more time for the Bitcoin stuff, though. My family life is fulfilling, and I want to spend as much time with my family as possible. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of the other two priorities, and I can't help but feeling that if I work hard now, I will have more time for my family and friends in the future. I know I could take the leap and quit the fiat world, but that feels somewhat selfish. Why stop doing something I'm good at that lets me keep stacking? Am I stealing from my future, my family's future, if I do that? I feel like this will all come to a breaking point quite soon. I might need to make some major changes. I don't know what that looks like. How do you balance competing priorities like this?

For a lot of reasons, August has been the month where I divide my Bitcoin journey into years. I moved to Finland 4 years ago, in August. I took the orange pill in the process of moving, with the idea first planted before the move, and fully solidifying into toxic maximalism in the year following. I started collaborating with Knut Svanholm in August 2022 by releasing our first podcast together, and shortly after I attended my first Bitcoin conference at Baltic Honeybadger. In August 2023, we made the decision to become independent and start a new channel for our show. This started us towards forming an independent publishing house, re-editing and republishing all of Knut's books, and setting up a web shop accepting Bitcoin. In 2024, we released Bitcoin: The Inverse of Clown World, a book I'm still incredibly proud of, and I hope more people get the chance to read it. And finally, in 2025, I was a part of the team that put on the BTC HEL conference in Helsinki, my adopted home. This was by far the biggest thing I've done in the Bitcoin space. I'll share some thoughts about that awesome event here soon. Coincidentally, I received my permanent residence permit to Finland just before the conference, solidifying my place in the country for the foreseeable future. For all its flaws, it's the best place I've ever lived, and it's my home now. Each year, I seem to do more, and the craziness intensifies, some years more than others. Some years, new adventures have just been starting. Others, like this one, a major project has come to fruition, and I get to take a short rest. This upcoming year is still not fully clear, but this time I think I'll finally take a bit of a pause to focus on my family life, and to make sure the projects I'm working on are at their best. Time is the only thing more scarce than Bitcoin. I'm happy with how I've spent my time up til now. I have great things to spend my time on in the coming months and years. I'm grateful to everyone who's helped me on my Bitcoin (and Nostr!) journey. I look forward to collaborating on our shared goal of advancing Bitcoin. I'll be balancing that goal more with my family life this year, but I'm still fully committed, and excited for all the great things coming up. Onward!

I opened both my Nostr and Twitter feeds this morning. Twitter, it's all the same drama, snarky replies, people at each others' throats. Much better here.

GM nostr, I'm slowly pulling myself out of my shell after BTC HEL. I'm going to try to be a bit more active here again.

GM Nostr! I haven't been super active lately, I haven't really been on any social media at all actually. Real life has been pretty insane, I haven't really been on my regular schedule. Hopefully back to somewhat normal for a while!

I just tried Alby Hub from my home node. Good work nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm! I can zap from my desktop again! Among other cool things. I didn't need the hub as a new cloud node, since I already have my own. But getting this working with nostr:npub126ntw5mnermmj0znhjhgdk8lh2af72sm8qfzq48umdlnhaj9kuns3le9ll was exactly what I needed. Well done!