This article appears in Bitcoin Magazine. “The question of registration.” Click here to get your annual subscription to Bitcoin Magazine.
Scrolling through my timeline, I noticed a guy who said he gave him an orange pill a while ago. At that time he was into drugs and gambling. He heard me preach about Bitcoin and got into it with almost religious fervor.
Then, under the influence of microdoses of Orange-Pill Truth, some natural sunshine, a bitter reality, and the sweet high of Orange Enlightenment, his life took a turn. He overcame his addiction to drugs and gambling and became a Bitcoin maximalist.
This makes a lot of sense and speaks to Bitcoin's more important role in society than simply being perfect money.
Here's the guy's tweet – I highlighted the relevant parts and of course, follow along:
Undisclosed B
@BitcoinUndisc
“Who or what gave me an orange pill? It was a combination of gambling, @maxkeiser and drugs. Let me explain.
First came the game. He used to be a professional online poker player. The US government took that away from me in 2011 by banning it. Shortly after, on the 2+2 poker forum, there was talk of a new uncensored currency that could circumvent the US gambling ban.
Enter @MaxKeiser around 2013. I was on a podcast called London Reel when Bitcoin was only $100 and saw it.
Max bolted out of the damn park. He made the case for Bitcoin most eloquently.
Silk Road incorporated a critical mass of Bitcoiners.
The same goes for all new technologies: drugs, gambling and pornography are gateways to the future. The videotape, for example, owed its initial success to porn. Similarly, the early adoption of computers in the home. I remember in France, when I lived there in the early '90s, they had Minitel, the world's first major online portal before the United States took it over with the World Wide Web.
Minitel was launched in 1980. So what happened? Why didn't France kill him with this thing? Another French idea that withered because its capital markets are rotten cheese; They have no NASDAQ equivalent.
However, Minitel got its initial boost from the sex trade. I remember stickers posted on telephone booths with Minitel numbers of sex workers. The prostitutes of Saint-Denis and Pigalle Street were initially nervous about the sudden influx of amateur competition, but quickly adopted the new technology.
Heck, even the Bible has a risqué story about a naked Adam being gaslit by a naked Eve with an apple.
FLASH CUT: Steve Jobs and his Apple smartphone and the rise of the mobile Internet.
FLASH CUT: Pornhub devours a huge percentage of Internet traffic.
Now we have the seemingly unstoppable rise of AI and deepfake porn that requires a LOT of energy.
This is why Bitcoin's hashrate is so high: it is fighting AI and porn in the global fight for energy.
Look, the top three vices (gambling, drugs, and porn) are guaranteed money makers and all have huge market capitalizations on the world's stock markets as publicly traded companies. New apps that mix and match faces with naked bodies will generate big profits. Do you still fantasize about your kindergarten teacher? Well, now with AI, you can find some old grade school yearbook photos and start a steamy, simulated date on your tricycle and a $0.05 carton of chocolate milk.
I think AI is the Devil Dog, RingDings, Twinkies, and Yodels of childhood intimacy fantasies. It will eradicate the plague of INCELS. Maybe it will even stop all those mass shootings committed by frustrated incels, or so these morons think.
In the other corner we have Bitcoin, the hero.
It's a battle between AI and Bitcoin for energy dominance. This is why the Bitcoin hashrate is so high. We must win the energy race with AI and fappers.
I have faith that we will win. We see our best version of ourselves reflected in Bitcoin and it inspires us to be better people. This is what Satoshi wants.
Unless you are born irreparably bad, in which case observing the Bitcoin protocol brings out your worst traits. Like the witch in Snow White who looked in the mirror and asked who was the fairest of them all, and the mirror replied, “You're not.”
The witch goes crazy and tries to kill the hottie in the tight skirt who wanders through the forest. This backfires and her karma kicks his ass.
This is what Bitcoin does: kick the butt of the karmically misaligned.
The spirit of Bitcoin. The spirit of Karma.
Bitcoin looks at us from a perfect and divine angle. It is not a reflected image, but something deeper, more cutting. Like a surgeon's scalpel in the soul.
A few years ago I was wandering through a museum in Mexico City with Stacy. There was an exhibition going on in the lobby of the central bank and I came across an installation that I would say was the most impressive and spectacular piece of art I had ever seen in a museum. For me, at least: I had a personal revelation.
What I saw were figures placed on steps leading below ground level.
In front of the figures there was a mirror. The figures started on the top step, facing one direction, and when they went down (or were knocked down) they metamorphosed into things. Sometimes crazy things.
An ordinary figure on the top step could transform into a pineapple. One could wear a bow tie with an anteater on it.
What was happening? My interpretation is that during life, and then after death, we (the figures on the steps) come closer to being and seeing who we really are. Who we have really been all this time. The act of becoming endless. Each of our 60,000 daily decisions together continues into our postnatal existence.
The journey of life begins and we are strangers to ourselves. Life goes on. We begin to know ourselves. This can be painful, which is why we adopt people to hide who we are. But people are like a layer of paint that fades. We put on different masks. We get rid of affectations. We face life bravely just as we are. But it's still painful. We call it wisdom.
Then death. And the journey of the self continues. We are in a continuum. The illusion of life and death fades. The artifice of time is discarded in favor of BEING THERE. We see the circular nature of things, the fractalization of everything.
William Blake gets it:
“See a world in a grain of sand
And a sky in a wild flower,
Infinity bra in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
While TS Eliot is a bit of a fool:
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
Bitcoin is like that. It accelerates the process of self-awareness to the point of the Bitcoin Singularity individually. The collective social epiphany comes immediately after.
You can be like William Blake and be relentlessly optimistic, as Stacy Herbert says. Or you can be soaking wet, like a Brit, handing out alms in a pub in Nowheresville and cursing Man United all day. By the way, the British will never get Bitcoin.
For Sam Bankman-Fried, Bitcoin accelerates his life of scruffy and not so “nasty” sexual sleaze and financial crimes, and an entire career of theft and self-degradation occurs in just a few years.
In the case of someone who is morally aligned with the cosmos, Bitcoin can give them the feeling of instant nirvana. Michael Saylor is someone who was searching his entire long career for Bitcoin to come along to fulfill his dreams of designing a better future, and then it happened.
The boy on my timeline, who I put an orange pill in, is walking down those steps in front of the mirror and becoming his true self. A process that continues after life.
Taking orange pills has never been more important now that the world is on fire.
We call it GIABO – Global Insurrection Against Bank Occupation.
It started during Occupy Wall Street and now in Argentina we have Javier Milei, Bitcoin supporter, Hayek follower and lover of the Austrian school of economics. This is the political response we need against central bankers, and GIABO is gaining strength. I saw a vigil at the Argentine central bank during Milei's inauguration. He is sacrificing it.
We are on the threshold of a Renaissance 2.0.
This will come with Bitcoin.
Look in the mirror and you'll see what I mean.
This article appears in Bitcoin Magazine. “The question of registration.” Click here to get your annual subscription to Bitcoin Magazine.
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