Paw Prints to the Timechain:

 

 

 

 

Introduction: Who is BitcoinPup?


I am the kind of person who finds receiving gifts stressful. 

 

Call me a narcissist. 

 

To me, gift giving is a moment where a person's impression of me is laid bare. A gift says so much; who the giver thinks I am, and what values they believe I hold. Receiving a gift is a moment of glaring clarity, a moment that displays the distance between who I am, and how I am perceived.

 

As may logically follow, I have always found introductions difficult as well. How does one introduce themselves, summarize a lifetime's journey, and possibly attempt to present a concise picture of who they are, absent context.

 

Perhaps this is why I present as a dog on the internet. A simplified and caricaturized persona that attempts to disarm, while offering a touch of the friendly non-toxic communication style I choose to use.

 

I am now 3 paragraphs into this introduction and have seemingly failed to do much beyond make my therapist upset that I never open up this much during our sessions...

 

So who am I? 

 

I am a Bitcoiner. I am a recovered nihilist who has seen the light and leapt into it. I am the kind of autist who has his brain broken reading "How to Take Smart Notes", and must spend the next several months completely reassessing his relationship with the information he encounters in the world. I am a person who is unsatisfied if I end a day and do not feel like I have improved as a member of the Human race, an obsessively curious individual who cannot leave stones unturned...

 

 

 

Introduction (the short one): What is This?


After a decade of exposure to Bitcoin, I feel like it is time to write my story before I forget more details of it. What follows is the story of my wayward, misadventurous journey to discovering absolute scarcity.

 

 

 

First Contact: How Doge Memes Led me to Bitcoin


"This is fine.", Grumpy Cat, "Wrecking Ball", Vine, "The Dress", Snapchat Stories, "What Does the Fox Say?"... The year was 2013, and these were among my first glimpses of internet culture upon purchasing my first smartphone. 

 

It was a year that may have sealed the fate of my—"squirrel!"—ADHD,  and cemented me in a mental state of "frenetically fractured multi-tasking" that would only be broken as COVID-19 wrested my mental faculties from me for a 7-10 day period a decade later.

 

 

Shortly following my thorough baptism in internet culture I discovered Doge. "Such wow." I was hooked. I'd always been a dog person, primarily drawn to Spitz type dogs such as the Samoyed, Siberian Husky, Akita, and Shiba Inu. 

 

As a child, I collected so many books on different dog breeds that the piles stretched to my bedroom ceiling. My walls were adorned with seemingly abstract geometric lines I'd measured out with a protractor illustrating the optimal angles and forms the breeds should have, as found in their breed standards. Thus, I may have been predisposed to a mild over-infatuation with these dogs of internet meme fame.

 

It wasn't even 6 months after I'd discovered Doge as a meme, that I began to see posts about Dogecoin, a sort of joke e-currency based the meme. I knew I had to acquire some, but how? Doing a bit of research I discovered that I would have to acquire something called bitcoin to then trade for this joke e-currency I wanted.

 

So that's exactly what I did. I made an account with Circle and purchased $250 of bitcoin (~32,000,000 sats). I installed Electrum Wallet, had the bitcoin sent there, then traded it all for Dogecoin on an exchange.

 

 

 

A Job in the Field:
 

In 2016 I was working for a smoke shop. Our stoned-out corporate decided that the best use of my time was to have me walk through town in a "rasta banana" costume, holding a sign advertising the business. So, that is exactly what I did. Well, not exactly... I may have often just taken the costume off and sat in a coffee shop for the afternoon...

 

 

One day, while walking along the sidewalk in the bloodshot-eyed banana costume, I passed a man having a cigarette. He pulled me aside and said, "You seem crazy, and I have a crazy job for you.".

 

So what is a crazy job you ask? In this case, crazy involved more marijuana. You see, the medical marijuana industry had just taken off, but due to certain legal grey-areas, had a bit of a tenuous relationship with banks at the time. This required that all dispensaries operate as cash-only businesses, and at this time, banks were unwilling to accept their deposits.

 

This stranger, and some friends of his, had a novel approach to providing a solution to this, an approach more unorthodox, but more legal than may immediately have come to mind. The solution? Offer to take surplus cash from dispensaries, promising to return the cash plus interest after a set time period. Where exactly would this return on investment come from? Crypto mining.

 

We would take the dispensaries excess cash and use it to purchase mining hardware, then sell the mined coins and use the proceeds pay back the dispensaries plus interest, while keeping the hardware ourselves. The best part? There was a surplus of unused office space in our town where rent included electricity...

 

So it began, days spent knocking on dispensary doors and pitching our little scheme, nights spent designing GPU server racks and cooling systems. I contributed what skills I had to the effort, and was rewarded for my efforts in newly mined Ethereum.

 

Things that seem too good to be true, usually aren't, and those that are tend not to last very long; so it was with our little business. Following a falling out between two of the founders, the business was parted out and everyone went their separate ways.

 

 

 

Misadventures in the Crypto Casino:


My experience had left me with two things: A little stack of Ethereum tokens, and a newfound interest in crypto trading. Thus began a rather sleepless chapter of my life, described in my article "Maslow's Apex" as, "Countless hours spent anxiously monitoring fluctuating charts, as red and green candles bobbed up and down mocking me for my inability to find order in the chaos.". 

 

 

I did my best to compound the money I had by trading it on exchanges, but never really made any headway. Entering only to be greeted by a plunge down, exiting only to see the value immediately skyrocket. After 6 months of this, I threw in the towel. I sold all my holdings and paid some medical bills.

 

 

 

The Fall and Rise of Bitcoin:


It was December 2017 and I was at a Christmas party scrolling on my phone when I saw an article stating that a single bitcoin was now worth $16,000. I felt sick to my stomach. I had $200 in my bank account and considered for a moment whether I should put it into bitcoin. After a few minutes of frenetic inebriated contemplation, I decided against it.

 

Within two months, the price of bitcoin had contracted by half. I proudly pat myself on the back feeling vindicated. I knew it was too good to be true. Bitcoin was dead.

 

Scrolling through the news as per usual in January 2021, the headline: $40,000 Bitcoin... I recoiled in shock the way one might if they were confronted by a dead relative. "But... you died?..." Consider that you were confronted by a dead relative. Logically, your first question might be how on earth they were standing in front of you at that moment. That was precisely the question I had for Bitcoin.

 

 

 

 

Leaping into the Unknown:


So the journey began, a FOMO-fueled chase reminiscent of a quest to regain lost love... or at least lost time. I still didn't know what Bitcoin was, and knew fuck-all about why or how it was. To me, it was just an ephemeral "magic internet money", now offering more dollars to those who held it.  Still, I knew a rabbit-hole when I saw one, and plunged in without so much as a look back. 

 

 

A glimpse back would have revealed the old me, still standing at the edge, peering in. There are leaps we take in life that represent zero-to-one changes—moments that redefine both who we are and the paths our lives will take. Points where the decisions we make lock us into new realities, where everything is suddenly different. This was one of those moments—a fork in the road where I had chosen another path oblivious to the seismic shifts that were about to reshape my view of nearly everything in life.

 

Initially, I had the sense that I was terribly late to Bitcoin. That somehow the last years of my life had been squandered in a way. Yet, as I continued to learn, I came to realize that those "squandered" years had, in fact, slowly molded me into the kind of person who could accept Bitcoin. It was the struggle and awakening to the realities of the world that had primed me to eventually recognize the solution.

 

 

 

My Bitcoin Sherpas:


Around March 2021, I discovered the Bitcoin podcast space. From Guy Swann's podcast "Bitcoin Audible", (a veritable treasure-trove of knowledge where he reads various articles from numerous sources and provides his commentary on them), to Peter McCormack's "What Bitcoin Did" (what's an xpub?), I found a huge variety of content creators providing access to an even wider variety of deeply educational content.

 

 

I began to collect and read incredible books on Bitcoin, the history of money, global macroeconomics, and the myriad tangential branches these topics touch. From Saifedean Ammous's "The Bitcoin Standard" and Lyn Alden's "Broken Money", to Jason Maier's "A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin" and Seb Bunney's "The Hidden Cost of Money", each book gave me new insights into the fundamental realities of how the world works and how we got to this point.

 

 

 

The Orange Pill:


For those unfamiliar, the "Orange Pill" is the metaphorical moment where one fully accepts Bitcoin as more than just a speculative asset and it becomes a fundamental part of one's worldview. By August 2021, my perception of money, value, and the financial system had fundamentally shifted. Bitcoin became not just an asset, but a philosophy. It represented the hope for a decentralized and transparent future, one where the control of money wasn't dictated by centralized entities. A brighter, orange future.

 

I no longer viewed Bitcoin as a way to make a quick buck, but rather as a lifeline in a chaotic world. Once the orange pill is swallowed, there's no going back. It's a realization that changes how you see everything—the role of governments, the history of money, right down to the ways humans interact with each other on a global scale.

 

 

 

#OnZero:

 

The "Zero" here refers to how many fiat dollars I hold. In 2022, I took the plunge and went #OnZero, converting the full total of my savings, income into Bitcoin. In my mind, bitcoin was no longer about riding the waves of market volatility or making short-term gains, it was about securing a future rooted in something I truly believed in.

 

 

Bitcoin isn't just another investment, it has become the only investment I believe in. Living "On Zero" isn’t just a financial strategy, it’s a commitment to the idea that Bitcoin is already fundamentally reshaping the landscape of global finance, for the better.

 

The future is uncertain, but the conviction I've developed studying Bitcoin has given me the hope to meet it head-on.

 

 

 

Conclusion: The Journey Continues

 

Looking back on my Bitcoin journey, from Doge memes to going #OnZero, it’s clear that what started as a casual curiosity has transformed into a deep, life-altering conviction. Bitcoin has become more than just a financial tool—it’s a lens through which I now view the world. Along the way, I’ve stumbled, learned, and grown, realizing that it’s not just about the asset itself, but the mindset and principles that come with it.

 

 

This journey hasn’t just been about investing; it’s been about unlearning old beliefs and adopting new ones. It’s about taking control of your future and stepping into a system that promises fairness and transparency in a world full of uncertainty.

 

My story isn’t over yet. Bitcoin is still evolving, and so am I. The road ahead is uncertain, paved with both challenges and opportunities. But one thing is clear: there’s no going back. I’m no longer just a passenger—I’m part of a revolution. With each step down this wild, winding Orange Brick Road, I feel more prepared to face whatever the future holds, armed with the lessons I’ve learned and the conviction that I’m on the right path. There’s no telling where this journey will end, but I’m ready to embrace it fully, eyes wide open.

 

 

 

Digging Deeper:

 

Hey there, I hope you enjoyed this read! If you did, and would like to read more of my barks, follow the links below!

 

External Resources:

 

 

...Woof!