The weirdest part of buying lunch with bitcoin wasn't the payment. It was how fast people rushed to tell me I had just spent "$1,000 burger and fries." I went to Steak 'n Shake after they started accepting bitcoin nationwide. The actual experience was the least remarkable part. Tap wallet, scan, done. As seamless as using a card. That's the point. What interested me more was the reaction. A lot of bitcoiners still act like spending sats is uniquely reckless because those sats will be worth more later. But that misses the real tradeoff. The opportunity cost doesn't come from spending bitcoin instead of dollars. It comes from spending at all. Every dollar you burn on consumption is sats you didn't save. The medium changes. The economic reality doesn't. So no, the lesson isn't "never spend bitcoin." The lesson is to be intentional about what you spend, save aggressively, and recognize that medium-of-exchange adoption matters if we want bitcoin to grow from asset to money. I unpacked the Steak 'n Shake experience and the bigger idea here:

🍔 My $1,000 Burger and Fries

FIRE BTC #31 - Steak n' Shake now accepts bitcoin

Gold bugs think bitcoin’s lack of industrial use is a weakness. I think it’s the whole point. The more uses an asset has outside of money, the less cleanly it can function as money. Gold gets pulled around by jewelry demand, industrial demand, mining economics, storage costs, and physical settlement constraints. That makes it useful. It also makes it noisy. Money should be the opposite of noisy. It should be a clear signal. A measuring stick. A store of value that isn’t constantly being distorted by what’s happening in factories, supply chains, or consumer trends. Bitcoin doesn’t have that baggage. You can’t melt it into a necklace or coat a circuit board with it. It exists for one reason: to store and move value across time and space without permission. Gold was great money for a physical world. Bitcoin is better money for a digital one. I unpacked the full argument here:

🪙 Gloating Goldbugs

FIRE BTC #52 - Gold's best utility is not what you think it is

The U.S. has run a trade deficit for 50 straight years. Most people think that's a policy failure. It's actually a structural requirement of running the world's reserve currency. When every country needs dollars to settle trade and hold reserves, the only way to supply them globally is for America to import more than it exports. Economists call this the Triffin Dilemma. This creates a brutal paradox for anyone trying to "fix" the deficit through tariffs. If you actually balance trade, you choke off the global dollar supply — triggering credit crunches, collapsing currencies, and cascading defaults on dollar-denominated debt worldwide. The most likely response to that crisis? More money printing to flood the system with liquidity, exactly like the COVID response. The Triffin Dilemma has no clean exit within the current monetary system. You either run deficits forever or break the global financial plumbing trying to stop. Bitcoin sits outside this trap entirely, and every print-squeeze-print cycle makes that harder to ignore. I unpacked the full Triffin Dilemma and what it means for your bitcoin thesis in FIRE BTC →

🧨 Trump Be Triffin, Bro!

FIRE BTC Issue #25 - The Triffin Dilemma is being challenged

The FIRE movement has a savings problem hiding in plain sight. You can track every dollar, optimize your tax brackets, max out your 401(k) and Roth, and build a beautiful spreadsheet showing you'll hit financial independence at 42. But all that math rests on one big assumption: the dollars you're saving will hold their value, or that index funds will outrun inflation forever. I moderated a panel at Bitcoin 2025 with Jim Crider, Brian Harrington, and Morgen Rochard on this exact tension. Morgen put it bluntly: FIRE influencers spend their lives tracking every penny and don't even own the right money. A 25x savings goal denominated in a currency that loses purchasing power every year is a plan built on sand. We've confused investing with saving — pouring money into VTI and VTSAX because the money itself is broken, not because these are safe havens. Bitcoin fixes the foundation. It lets you actually save instead of constantly investing just to tread water. If you're already disciplined enough to pursue FIRE, adding bitcoin to your plan completes the picture. Six takeaways from our Bitcoin 2025 panel in FIRE BTC →

🔥 What the FIRE Movement Gets Wrong About Bitcoin

FIRE BTC #35 - Six takeaways from the Bitcoin 2025 FIRE + BTC panel

Every time bitcoin hits a new high, my phone lights up. Same question every time: "Am I too late?" I've been buying bitcoin since 2014. I've bought at $400, at $20,000, at $60,000, and at $100,000. My DCA runs every week regardless of price — same as Michael Saylor, who has bought at nearly every price level on the chart. The anxiety around buying usually comes from treating it like a trade instead of a savings strategy. When you're building a FIRE portfolio, you're accumulating an asset over years — same approach you'd use with stocks. An automated DCA removes the emotional guesswork. You buy the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Over a multi-year horizon, the entry price on any single purchase barely registers. For a larger sum, my approach is simple: deploy half immediately, spread the other half over 8 weeks. You won't love the timing, but you'll always prefer it to sitting on your hands. Getting off zero is the hardest step. Once you take it, the rest is just consistency.

🧱 How to Buy Bitcoin

FIRE BTC Issue #10 - My approach and what I tell my friends

When you start working, your paycheck is everything. It's how you pay bills, fund your life, and build your first savings. But here's the shift most people never make: that savings portfolio should become your primary wealth engine, not your job. Think of your investments as your real side gig. It starts small, but compounds relentlessly. Each dollar you invest becomes a worker that never sleeps, building wealth while you focus on other things. The people who reach financial freedom aren't the ones with the highest salaries. They're the ones who flipped the script — who built their balance sheet until it outpaced their labor. There's a moment when your assets create more new wealth in a year than your job ever could. That's when your job becomes the side hustle. Real wealth comes from ownership, not just labor. Your balance sheet is your ownership stake in the future. If you use bitcoin as your core savings vehicle, this transition can happen even more powerfully. Bitcoin's hard-capped supply makes it a uniquely strong foundational asset for a personal balance sheet.

💼 Making Your Job Your Side Gig

FIRE BTC #36 - Focus on building your personal balance sheet

If you can… 👶 raise a child 🚘 drive a car 📖 read this post …you can self-custody your bitcoin.

My dad paid $156 for tuition for a semester of college in 1971 🤯

New ATH last night, eh?

One thing I’ve found difficult with FIRE is learning how to spend the value I’ve saved. You delay gratification for so long, then feel uneasy and nervous about spending it down. Spending is a muscle that must be built, just like saving.

Have you stacked hard enough to feel comfortable when bitcoin makes a new all time high?

This is the most depressing thing I think I've seen on X. The state of personal finance education is absolutely rekt 🤦‍♂️

Bitcoin is having its Covid moment. The gain of function mutation in Core v30 that removes the default OP_RETURN relay policy size limit has resulted in an environment in bitcoin culture that closely mirrors the Covid era. The threat of the spam virus has turned normally level-headed, sane bitcoiners into hysterical hypochondriacs with a touch of authoritarianism. One side advocates for mask mandates and quarantines, while the other side hosts superspreader parties in brazen mockery. I’ve seen public shaming, baseless virtue signaling, shameless moral superiority, and even appeals to law enforcement to arrest offending opponents. Each side parrots the party line, taking cues from their respective authority figures, and using language they just learned a week ago as if they’ve been experts all along. I’ve spent countless hours sifting through the noise, doing my best to fairly consider each argument. My perspective is this: Filters are like wearing a mask when you walk through a restaurant, only to take it off when you sit down. Masks don’t stop the virus, but if it makes you feel better, then go for it. However, there’s a wave of mass hysteria spreading, where reason and thoughtfulness has been overcome by a fever of existential crisis. And as it was during Covid, this lockdown-style reaction is way worse than the disease you’re fighting. Bitcoin will be just fine. It is healthy, fit, strong, and has a great immune system. The best thing you can do is get some fresh air and some exercise. This is not an existential threat in any way, and we shouldn’t treat it that way.

Calling things by their proper name is the first step to fixing them. Well done 👏

Gold is reminding us that the majority of the world’s capital is still controlled by boomers.

3.25 BTC coming my way any day now

“Paying off my mortgage gives me peace of mind.” Sounds smart, right? It’s actually one of the most expensive emotional decisions you can make. Here’s why paying off your mortgage early makes you poorer (and less free). A 30-year fixed mortgage isn’t a ball and chain. It’s one of the best financial tools available: ✅ Fixed terms for decades ✅ Predictable payment ✅ Inflation eats away at its real cost Time and debasement work in your favor. Prepaying your mortgage locks up capital in bricks. That kills: ❌ Growth ❌ Flexibility ❌ Freedom And for what? A feeling. Let’s look at the math. Have $100K? Option 1: Pay mortgage at 5% “return” Option 2: S&P 500 (~10% historical) Option 3: Bitcoin (conservative 20%) After 10 years: 🏠 $163K 📈 $259K ₿ $619K “Peace of mind” could cost you $500K! And it gets worse: Broad money supply (M2) grew 7% annually over the last decade. Your “guaranteed” 5% return is actually a -2% real loss after inflation. “But it makes me feel safe.” Nope. You’re trading one risk for another: ✅ Less debt ❌ Less liquidity Need cash? You can’t peel off a piece of siding. You’ll refinance or sell...often at the worst time. Smart money = options. Keep the mortgage. Invest the difference. That gives you: ✅ Bigger portfolio that compounds ✅ Liquid reserves to cover mortgage if life happens More liquid assets = more security. FIRE + bitcoin is about freedom and optionality. You don’t get that by locking up cash for your feels. You get it by keeping your wealth working and outpacing debt. Poorer isn’t safer. This week’s FIRE BTC issue breaks down the full math and mindset shift: 👉 Why “peace of mind” is a costly illusion 👉 Why a mortgage is your friend 👉 How to build security without killing flexibility Read the full post + subscribe here:

🧘 Peace of Mind

FIRE BTC #40 - Why paying off your mortgage early makes you poorer

Quantum FUD will keep a lot of people poor

I just financed a $30 purchase on Amazon. $6/month over 5 months. ALWAYS TAKE 0% FINANCING! Follow me for more tips on building generational wealth.

I spent $1k on a burger and fries 🍔🍟 Read the full newsletter post below and don’t forget to subscribe for free!

🍔 My $1,000 Burger and Fries

FIRE BTC #31 - Steak n' Shake now accepts bitcoin