“You don’t actually hold your wealth”

For as long as time we have been trusting centralization to transact, to trade. We depend on banks and institutions to custody our funds, insure our accounts, and allow us to transact with each other. Then all of a sudden bitcoin comes out and people are cheering “decentralization”. But it turns out, nobody cares about decentralization. And it’s because nobody understands it.

It’s never bothered us before. But for as long as civilization has existed we have been forced to trust these centralized powers to transact, trade, and to hold our wealth. And now we have cascaded into a world where we not only trust but utterly rely on centralization to operate. And as a result they have abused that power and now you have situations in Canada where they seize your funds first, and ask questions later. Guilty until proven innocent. Utterly ridiculous this concept of trust when the powers that be constantly abuse that trust and keep us dependent on them. It’s a system that is designed to keep us poor, not enrich us to be successful.

So then there’s bitcoin. Introduced 46 days after the bank bailout and ultimate recession. Coincidence? Here, a solution is introduced. A means of transacting outside the realm of trust. Since it uses cryptography to solve each transaction we now have a protocol that can be verified instead of trusted. Trust math, trust what you can quantify and prove. Although this isn’t all too impressive to the world today, it will soon be acknowledged as the greatest innovation humankind has created in the past century. Because now we can rule out some really nasty bugs in the centralized world: manipulation, corruption, censorship, and confiscation. Because now nations who never had the luxury of a trusted bank, or even a means to hold true value in their wealth and property, can now join the big league. This can bring stability to nations. Especially those who have been subject to hyperinflation, government corruption, or even confiscation. Funny this concept of confiscation, because this is precisely what I have been meaning to get to…

If you hold any money in a bank or even hold bitcoin on an exchange, that’s not your bitcoin. That’s YOU holding a note that SAYS you own bitcoin. There’s a difference. When people tell me they bought some bitcoin on robinhood I can’t help but smh. Try sending that bitcoin off the exchange. Purchasing bitcoin on Cash App is a different story. You can send that btc off the exchange, like say to a cold storage wallet. And here’s where we get to the good part.

What’s the best way to hold value in your hand, maybe a gold bar in a safe. But the truth is even that gold bar can be seized or stolen from your house. But bitcoin in a cold storage device, you can’t touch it. It’s the safest safe in the world. Stored in somewhat of a digital cloud, backed with a seed phrase of 24 words, even if you lose the device you can just buy a new one and enter your 24 words to obtain the asset. This is the future of banking, the future of self custody. A way for people to finally be able have true monetary sovereignty. True possession of wealth. You see we in the States take for granted what most in the world has never been able to have. Do you know what the percentage of Asia, Africa, or Latin America is banked? There’s a reason for that.

“When we have control of our wealth, we have control of our freedom”