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Infinite Dollars, 21M BTC: How to Live on a Bitcoin Standard | BTC Sessions (Saving in Bitcoin Ep. 6)
00:57:09
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- [00:00]
A
Every person that sees bitcoin will likely first say, I missed the boat. People thought they missed the boat when bitcoin was a dollar. I saw bitcoin as double digit prices and I figured I missed the boat. Then I saw it over a hundred dollars and I figured I'd really missed the boat. And then I saw it one of the tops of the bubbles. It was like 1200 bucks. And I was like, holy crap. And then you start reading and then you start going, what is this? Like is, is this a Ponzi scheme or is there something here? I think the big realization that people need to come to is Bitcoin is completely finite. Only 21 million and dollars can inflate forever. So if you're looking at a dollar price of bitcoin, you're using the wrong measuring stick. Bitcoin is the measuring stick because it is constant. There's a certain number four forever and then there's a constantly inflating supply of dollars. So if you're trying to measure something static in something that grows forever, the static thing will always be worth more. There's going to be ups and downs, but over a long time period, it will always be worth more dollars because there's always more dollars.
- [01:20]
B
Welcome to Saving in Bitcoin, your financial freedom Blue, the Bitcoin podcast powered by Fold. The best place to buy, earn and save in Bitcoin. I'm your host Walker, and in this six episode limited series, I'm talking to some of the best minds in Bitcoin to walk you through the basics of why our money is broken, how Bitcoin fixes it, and how you can use Bitcoin as your personal financial freedom blueprint. Let's get started. Greetings and salutations. Today I'm joined by BTC Sessions, the world's most trusted Bitcoin only educator. Since 2016, he's taught tens of millions of people around the globe. He also leads local and international educational and community initiatives. His YouTube channel is a go to resource for anyone wanting to learn more, literally anything about bitcoin. And he has almost 400,000 subscribers there. He also practices what he preaches and lives on a bitcoin standard himself. So Sessions, welcome. Thanks for joining.
- [02:34]
A
Thanks for having me, man. And if I could borrow you for every time they announce me at a conference, I'd love you to read that bio.
- [02:42]
B
Happy to do it. As long as it's paid in bitcoin. Yeah, we can, we can work something out.
- [02:47]
A
So.
- [02:47]
B
So Sessions, I was. This is the last episode in this series and I was really excited to have you on for it because I think again, you are one of the foremost educators around bitcoin in the entire world. That's a pretty cool title to hold. Your videos are fantastic for anybody who wants to dive deeper into again, literally any topic, technical or otherwise. You have a video for it, I guarantee it. It's on your channel somewhere so people can check that out. I'll link it all in the show notes. But I want to start out just at a really basic level because somehow this question, even though bitcoin's been around for 16 years, still appears to be confusing to some folks, which is what even is bitcoin? Is this just a technology? Is it a speculative investment? Is it money? How do you think about it? How do you explain it?
- [03:33]
A
I mean it's, it's an escape, right? It's, it's an escape from feeling stuck. I think for a lot of people, once they understand what it can do for you, you know, you see, you see people every day. I, you know, I thought I had a good job, I thought I had a good wage and you know, now I can't put food on the table or for the younger generations like the Gen Z coming up. I'm never going to retire, I'm never going to own a home. And there's all these things that I was told I was going to get if I was smart and went to school and you know, got a whole bunch of student debt. I was told that I would be repaid in kind with a secure future. And that's largely not the case. So I mean for me and for many others it is an opt out of the broken system and the broken promises that we were brought up with. And it allows you to, it's an outright rejection of the crappy hand we've been dealt. And so yeah, it's a, it's a replacement of the money that we are supposed to use. And a lot of people say it's FU money, but using FU money allows you to say F your money to the existing system. So yeah, that's, that's what it is for me. It's an opt out and it's a, it's a silver lining to, you know, a storm that's been going on for a long time.
- [05:09]
B
I love that. I'm curious too. A lot of people maybe especially if you live in a so called developed or western nation, maybe you don't feel the pain of some of the things that are broken in the system today or maybe you do you actually do feel that something's broken, but you can't quite put your finger on what that is? What do you think is the most important thing people understand about what actually is broken? What's broken at the core of our system? Why do things feel wrong?
- [05:40]
A
Yeah, I mean, when you, when you step back and you think about how you value your time, maybe let's take this from the perspective of a blue collar worker. You go, you get a job, you agree and say, okay, for every hour that I'm going to spend working for this company, I'm going to get paid X amount of dollars. And at the time that you make that agreement, you actually, you have a decent understanding of what that means. You understand X amount of dollars is going to be able to afford me the following things. And you know, there may be some, some promises of your wages growing over time. And so you interpret that as my standard of living will get better because I'll have more dollars. And based on what I know I can understand, right, I can afford right now, with the current number of dollars I'm going to be earning, I think things will get better. But what happens in practice is people don't realize how money, you know, that, that money itself doesn't create value. And that money is merely just kind of a measuring stick for all the stuff that exists, all the goods and services that we could possibly buy with it. And so when you have a fixed amount of money and we're able to gradually make more stuff with less effort, in theory, you know, everything should be getting cheaper. But that's not the way that the system is working. They are creating more money, they're making more money faster than we can produce more stuff. Meaning that stuff is getting more expensive because there's more money than stuff. You know, you have, you have 10 apples and you have $10 and 10 people. You know, everybody can afford an apple, but if one guy goes and prints $90, all of a sudden that guy can afford nine apples and the remaining 10 people have to pool their funds just to afford one. And that's what we're seeing in real time a little bit slower, but that's what we're basically seeing. The people that have the exorbitant privilege of being able to create new currency are siphoning away the resources from everyone else. And there's this knee jerk reaction of, you know, if you're rich, you, you must be stealing from me. And that's not always the case, right? It's, it's the wrong problem to look at it's, you know, if, if I bought something, and this is another thing that, that comes up often. People, you know, their initial reaction is, I went to the grocery store, groceries were more expensive. You're the grocer that sold them to me. It's your fault they don't dig a little bit deeper. The, the people who do own the businesses are the ones that see the addition, the additional currency first. They see prices creeping up and they can actually adjust your price, their prices. But you as a blue collar, it's a lot harder to adjust your prices because it's an hourly wage. And so you, you're just put in this position where everything's getting more expensive and your only course of action is to go to your employer and effectively beg or argue or, or, or, you know, negotiate in order to maintain your standard of living. And that's a pretty crappy place to be in. So, I mean, I hope that kind of answers your question. But in the end, it's, you know, we're, we're creating a lot of additional money. And creating money doesn't create wealth. Creating stuff creates wealth.
- [09:37]
B
If you're stuck spending dollars, at least stop earning dirty fiat rewards. Use fold to earn bitcoin on everyday purchases and regular expenses. Groceries, bills, travel, home improvement. I literally just earned 2203sats buying a 100Amazon gift card on fold. You don't even need to use the fold card itself if you don't want to. You can connect your favorite credit card and double dip with bitcoin rewards on merchant offers. Or go all in. Make fold the center of your personal finances. Buy, earn, save, and even get paid in bitcoin with fold. Head to the link in the show notes to get started with the ultimate savings toolkit. Or go directly to use.foldapp.com r Walker and get yourself $10 in Bitcoin when you sign up. No, it definitely answers the question. And I think that you made the point very well that people look for something to blame or someone to blame, but they are looking at the symptoms of the problem and blaming the people associated with those symptoms versus looking at the root cause of the disease, which is that they are printing money out of thin air. Then they will continue to do so. They will that. If there is one thing that is certain in this life, it is that central banks will continue to print money. And the sooner people realize that, the better. But the problem is you can realize that, okay, but if you don't see a solution, you might be a little bit nihilistic. You might be a little bit depressed because you say, well then I'm just running on this hamster wheel forever until I keel over. So you're somebody who, you actually live on a bitcoin standard. First of all, can you talk about what does that actually mean, to live on a bitcoin standard and then we can kind of go from there.
- [11:25]
A
Yeah, yeah. So Effectively, as of 2020, I decided that I would like to earn as much bitcoin as possible. Not, not earn dollars and then purchase bitcoin, but get paid directly in bitcoin and then use that to survive through whatever means necessary. However, I had to string it together. And so, yeah, I've been doing that now for five years. I, I'd say about 90 to 95% of my income is bitcoin paid directly into my own self custody that I control. Nobody has control of it. I get paid, it's now mine. And how do I string together, how do I live on it? Because a lot of people are going to be hearing that going well. Yeah, but how do you, how do you buy anything? What do you do then? And it's a mix of things. You know, obviously there are hoops to jump through. Not every merchant is going to be accepting bitcoin directly. So there's a few things. There's, there's a couple companies in Canada that we're very lucky to have. So those would be Bull, Bitcoin and bitcoin. Well, and both of those companies enable me to be able to pay pretty much any Canadian bill directly with bitcoin. And so they, they deal with the end, you know, the end fiat payment, but more or less it's like login. I would like to pay this bill from this company. This is my account number and I want to put this many dollars towards that bill. And they say, great, here's a bitcoin QR code and here's how much to send. I send it and they sort the rest. So that's like a godsend. And so that helps a lot. Now when it comes to things like groceries and you know, gas and shopping online, Amazon and you know, going to Walmart or whatever I need to grab, you know, a lot of the gift card services are excellent. So bit refill I use often. There's another great service in Canada called coin cards. There's also the bitcoin company. So there's a number of different ways that you can obtain gift cards and, and place things together. It helps with travel too. So I do a lot of that. But I'd say the third final and most important piece of the puzzle is actually trying to be fully resilient and create bitcoin circular economies and, and create those relationships. And the reason I say that's the most important is because, you know, in the first two examples, I'm, I'm still reliant on a service in order to, to, you know, bridge that gap for me. And there's a possibility that, you know, in a nightmare scenario, you know, bitcoin's illegal, we're going to shut down all these services that, that help bitcoiners use their bitcoin. But in a scenario where I actually know the people where I'm getting my goods and services from and we're a local circular economy, we, we have real relationships with each other, it's really difficult to stamp that out. If I know the guy I'm getting my eggs from and I want to pay him in sats, good luck stopping that. And so we've done that here in Calgary. We've begun creating something called the SAD market and we've been running it for, I think, a couple years now. And we just do it, you know, a couple times a year, but then we keep in contact throughout the year and, and try to frequent each other as much as possible. So I'm able to get beef and chicken and eggs. I've got a personal trainer, I've got a dentist, I've got a, a roofer and somebody who does flooring and like, like radio. Real tangible things that are incredibly useful day to day. Not just like bitcoin merch and hats and stuff, which is also there, but real stuff that helps me survive. And so I think that's one of the most exciting things in the bitcoin ecosystem that's coming to fruition in many places right now.
- [15:27]
B
I think that's awesome and that that community aspect of it is really powerful. And that may be something that takes a little while for people to build up. But then as you mentioned, in the meantime there are these other services and I would be remiss if I didn't mention for us folks, you have access to fold and they are a sponsor of this series, but it's a similar thing. And these companies are great where you can pay bills and you can even earn rewards. You can pay off your mortgage, your credit card, other bills, get Amazon gift cards, you can do all of these things and live on this bitcoin standard. But as you said, it's not, it's not as easy right now, but a lot of these companies are making it easier and easier and easier for you to do that. Like, it's certainly, if you would have tried doing this, you know, 10 years ago, it would have been a much different story. But there are all these companies today, you know, like fold, like bit refill, like bull, Bitcoin and bitcoin, well, that provide these incredible services. And I'm very grateful we have them because they allow you to really, you know, take this next step and try to actually live on a bitcoin standard. The other thing that I think is interesting is people may say, oh, well, okay, that's all well and good, but I'm too late to bitcoin. I missed the boat because Bitcoin's over $100,000. And that's all nice for you guys who bought it a couple years ago, but for me, how can I possibly catch up? How can I be still early? What do you say to those people who think I'm just too late? I've missed boat? What's the point of even trying?
- [17:02]
A
First thing I would say is I said that so to myself through three orders of magnitude first before I got into bitcoin. So. So every person that sees bitcoin will likely first say, I missed the boat. People thought they missed the boat when bitcoin was a dollar. I saw bitcoin as double digit prices and I figured it was I missed the boat. Then I saw it over $100 and I figured I'd really miss the boat. And then I saw it and like one of the, one of the tops of the bubbles, it was like 1200 bucks. And I was like, holy crap. And then you start reading and then you start going, what is this? Like, is this a Ponzi scheme or is there something here? And as you actually dig in and you start asking, there's got to be a way, there's got to be something that's going to break or that is just straight out, straight up illegitimate. And you dive in and you start asking questions, how does this work? How is this possible? What could break it? And you begin to realize how resilient bitcoin is. And then you begin to realize how corrupt the existing monetary system is. And I think the big realization that people need to come to is bitcoin is completely finite. Only 21 million and dollars can inflate forever. So if you're looking at a dollar price of bitcoin, you're. You're using the wrong measuring stick. Bitcoin is the measuring stick because it is constant. There's a certain number forever, and then there's a constantly inflating supply of dollars. So if you're trying to measure something static in something that grows forever ever, the static thing will always be worth more. You know, there's going to be ups and downs, but over a long time period, it will always be worth more dollars because there's always more dollars. You know, if, if you think back to the financial crisis of 08, the bailouts back then that everybody was losing their minds over were hundreds of billions of dollars. If I see some sort of money printing shenanigans today, and it doesn't start with a T, I'm not even phased, let alone if it's, you know what I'm waiting on. What I think would truly kind of be initially shocking to me is going to be the first time that they announce a trillion. A multitrillion bailout or printing or deficit or something like that. That is at least over 10 trillion. That will raise my eyebrows slightly. That's where we've come from hundreds of billions to multiple trillions and people don't even blink an eye.
- [20:05]
B
I think that that's really. It's hard for us to wrap our minds around these massive numbers, right? And the numbers always seem massive at the time. Then in retrospect, when it comes to fiat, as you said, the numbers don't seem quite so big because the number, you know, you went from billions, millions to billions to trillions. But that's just. That speaks to how destructive this system is. It doesn't. The measuring stick is the perfect analogy because how can you possibly measure your time and your energy and your hard work? You wake up every day and you go to work and you try to create value. How can you measure that with a measuring stick? That's constantly changing and it's really just expanding. It's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's valuing your time less and less and less, your energy, your work less and less and less. And so I think that that's a really important thing for people to realize that you haven't missed the boat. There's a thousand. At the time of this recording, in 2025, there's $1,000 trillion of global assets.
- [21:03]
A
Right?
- [21:04]
B
Bitcoin is 2 trillion. 0.2% is what Bitcoin currently clocks in at. It's not even a quarter of 1% of the total global assets as of 2025. That's crazy. We're insanely early. And the great thing is too, that there are still places sure, in the old days, you had the bitcoin faucets. And for people that don't know, you could go to the website, basically click a button, and it would give you free bitcoin. I think at the time it was something insane. Like, what was it, like 5 bitcoin or something?
- [21:37]
A
Probably you could click a button, which.
- [21:40]
B
Is wild in today's dollar value. You were getting over half a million dollars just, just for free from somebody who had set up this site to give people bitcoin. But these things still exist today. Like you. You can spin the wheel, unfold, and get a few sats every single day. And in. In, you know, in 10, 15 years, what is a one satoshi going to be worth? I think people really need to change, change their mindset, change their frame of reference to realize that we are so incredibly early. And the longer that you think you've missed the boat, the less early you are. You'll still be early, but you'll be a little bit less early. And so I think it's good for people to hear that, look, you watched it go three orders of magnitude before you picked it up. Because I think people don't want to admit that, hey, if I could have bought it when I first heard about it, but I didn't. Do you think there's a lot of that just kind of like sunk cost fallacy there?
- [22:33]
A
Yeah, yeah, of course. Everybody always thinks. You know, actually for the first time, I've started hearing, you know, a bit of. I guess it speaks to the nihilism of, of the coming generation. But, you know, everybody's in such a. I'm never going to again own a home or retire or anything like that. They're in that mindset. And so the, the only possible way out that people can think now is gambling. You know, if. If I gamble, if I buy a meme stock, if I gamble on some sort of like meme coin or something, or if I hit the lottery, then. Then I'll. I'll be set. And then I can just, you know, that's that, then I'm good, but otherwise I'm just gonna doom spend. And for the first time I'm hearing that bitcoin from some of these people, in their perspective, is not risky enough because they've been so conditioned to think that if you just work hard, spend less than you earn and save that you can actually make it. But that's. That's what bitcoin is, is reattaining for the average person. That used to be all you needed to do Just be good at something, save, and then you're good. But, you know, the fiat world has changed that dynamic. You can't just have a skill and save the exact same money that you earn. You had to become a professional speculator. And now today, that's not even, that's still not good enough. And, and, and so I think right now, when people are looking at Bitcoin and they're like, there's, there's no way. It's, it's still not even for me. Everybody already made it. No, that's, that's not true at all. And you really need your, to shift your mindset into the opposite of what you've learned growing up. And it's a return to just providing value to society and simply being able to save the money that you earn. And that's an incredible thing. It takes such a burden off one's shoulders. You can start now. And furthermore, the people that think they're too late right now, think about the people that are not born currently. They're gonna, they're gonna be born and they're gonna be like, can you imagine being born when Bitcoin was still, when there was still a block reward, when Bitcoin was still being mined? Like right now, Every block is 3.125 Bitcoin being mined. And, and there's still over a bitcoin per block right now. And that's going to be unheard of in the future in a very short amount of time.
- [25:11]
B
Yeah, it's a crazy thing to think about. And I think that for a lot of people who have started saving in Bitcoin, because that's what Bitcoin is, as you said, it's a savings technology. It's a return to savings. We're just not used to that being possible. We're used to needing to speculate, needing to gamble, because the thing we're supposed to be able to save in the money is broken. And so for people, when they hear what I just have to save money, I just have to save Bitcoin. And I don't have to be a super trader and be calling the highs and the lows and all these things. No, no, no. You can just focus on your craft. You can try to create value for society and you can save the value of that time and energy in Bitcoin and that's enough. You shouldn't need a second job as an expert trader just to be able to make ends meet. But that's where we're at right now. And that's. It's incredibly sad.
- [26:07]
A
Yeah. Yeah. It's hope for the future. Again, if imagine somebody just saying, yeah, I'm just going to learn a skill, can get really good at it, and I'll just do that and then I'll. With my free time, I can just enjoy myself and I'm just safe. What a wonderful, simple life that could lead to.
- [26:28]
B
It's beautiful. And I'm curious on a personal note for you, how has living on a bitcoin standard, you obviously create a ton of value through all of the work that you do. Now you live on a bitcoin standard. How has that changed your life, your perspective, your family's life since you've started this journey?
- [26:48]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, the. The first. The first thing that really took a weight off our shoulders was, or for me personally, was pre bitcoin. I could never save. Like, I never really saved much of anything in my life. I just had. I grew up learning bad habits and around money, as most people do. If I had a dollar in my pocket, I was finding a way to spend it. And that really shifted with bitcoin. For the first time, I had a reason to save. And it actually also, I never really worried about the price fluctuations because in my head, having anything in savings, even if it dropped, was already more than I had ever had. It was like, okay, well, dropped by 80%. Well, it's still 20% more than I would have had in the first place. I was never saving. And so it started to change the dynamics there over time as we saved. You know, myself and my wife. You know, when I first got into bitcoin, there are, you know, plenty of times where it's like, oh, crap, we've got bills and we do not have a way to pay bills. And what that gradually shifted to as we saved in bitcoin was, oh, we've got a cushion. We've got a cushion where if something happened and I was out of work for a period of time, we would be okay. And that grew to. We would be okay for a long time. And that grew to, we have a retirement, and now it's grown to. We have a retirement, and. And we are confident that we'll be able to help our kids in the future. And so it. You. You start looking out to the future, you start saying, okay, well, I'm. I'm good now. What am I. What do I want to spend my time doing? What does this free up for me? What am I passionate about? What do I want my kids to experience? What. What do I want out of My family, out of my. My life, out of my hobbies, out of my own personal, you know, health and fitness so that I'm actually around to enjoy this later. It. It takes the stress off of just trying to put food on the table, and it allows your mind to open to all of the other beautiful things that life has to offer.
- [29:22]
B
That is beautifully put. And if that's not. If that's not an enticing pitch for folks, I don't know what is. I want to talk a little bit, too, because you're the perfect person to talk to about this. Just kind of some practical tips for people. And one of the things maybe as a preface to that is perhaps what's the biggest sort of mistake or pitfall that you see. Obviously, you help a lot of people as they're starting their bitcoin journey. What's the biggest issue that people have when they're starting out? And maybe that's something on the technical side. Maybe that's something just on the way that their mind is thinking about its side. Do you run into as the most kind of common thing?
- [30:01]
A
Yeah. So one thing that I'm. I'm not going to dive deep into it, but one thing that sometime oftentimes comes up for people when they first get into the bitcoin realm is there are distractions out there. Right. There's all these other coins and things that people will try to market to you and sell to you as this is the next bitcoin. This is worth your time and your blood, sweat and tears and, you know, the fruits of your labor. And while I won't, I'm sure there's plenty of material out there regarding why specifically bitcoin. I will, just for the newcomers watching this, please tread with caution. Over many years, after dabbling in different things, I coalesced on just bitcoin and it took time to understand. If you get in the proper kind of stream of consciousness and you start listening to the right types of content and, you know, here with Walker, you're going to be led down that path. Absolutely. Especially with the prior guests in this series as well, you can begin to understand why that is. So I'm not going to dive into that, but let's chat maybe about the, the practical, you know, what do you actually need to do? What are, what are the main skills that you should probably focus on? So it's important to note that bitcoin is very much like cash or like a physical asset in that you. The. The best way to deal with it is taking full Custody, full control of it yourself, rather than leaving it with a third party. And so you, where we grow up thinking, oh, I got to be responsible for, you know, this, that and the other thing, you know, watch after my passport, keep track of, you know, all my important documents and all that. But the, the glaring hole in that is everybody's like, yeah, but don't you dare try to take care of your own money. No, leave that with the experts over here and they'll do some magic in the background. Don't worry, don't look behind the curtain, but leave your money with us. It'll be safe. And bitcoin is the antithesis of that. Leaving your bitcoin with somebody else is just about the worst thing that you can do it. You know, not only was bitcoin built in and around the premise of, of personal responsibility and removing trusted third parties, but the, the risk is greater there. And what I mean is we've seen many times where exchanges that hold people's bitcoin have blown up either through hacks or internal malicious intent or a host of other reasons. But at the end of the day, mistakes happen and people, real people, lose real money. And it's heartbreaking when that happens. Now some of you may think, well, yeah, but I, you know, if I take control of my bitcoin, what if I make mistakes? And my counter to that is if everybody on exchanges like FTX had self custody, some of them, yes, may have made mistakes, but the people that were on ftx, all of them lost their money, every single one. And so if you can learn the tools and you can learn a few basic concepts and skills, you can very effectively secure your money. And so what are, what are those skills? One, you need to be able to obtain Bitcoin. Where are you going to get it? There's lots and lots of options depending on your jurisdiction. And so, you know, I'm sure, Walker, I'm sure you talk about many different places that you can get bitcoin. So I kind of defer to, you know, places that you've talked about on the show before. But, you know, look locally, what's available for you to be able to purchase bitcoin. Number two is just getting familiar with a regular bitcoin wallet, like a hot wallet on your phone. There's tons of options for this. You know, if you're, if you're on a phone, then some, there's, there's lots of simple options. There's things like Blue Wallet and Aqua Wallet and you know, I like things like Phoenix and, you know, there's a lot of point being there's lots of different options. I've done videos on lots of different wallets on your phone. But this is your initial pathway to understanding what a bitcoin wallet is. Now, the interesting thing about a bitcoin wallet is even though I say you're taking control of your own money, you're holding your own money. Technically speaking, a bitcoin wallet, it. It doesn't hold your money. It doesn't have bitcoin in it. It has something else. And so what I mean is bitcoin is just a big ledger of who owns what. Kind of like a bank would have a record. Okay, this person has this much, this person, this much. That's what the bitcoin blockchain is. It's just a copy of where's all the money? And even though there aren't names specifically attached, there are a record. There is a record of every single sat on on the bitcoin blockchain and what addresses it sits in. And so when you have a bitcoin wallet, what you actually have is the keys to your money. You have a key, a digital key, and it sits on your phone. And when you create that wallet, you take that key, which is information, and you make a spare key. And that spare key, what it looks like is just a copy of, typically 12 words, sometimes 24, but 12 English words maybe written on a piece of paper. Some people go as far as stamping it into steel so that doesn't get burned up in a fire, but nonetheless, it's a piece of information. It's on your phone, and then it's written down in case you smash your phone or you delete the app. And so that's kind of the first major hurdle of learning bitcoin. How do I get a wallet? How do I back it up? How do I recover it if I do something wrong? And so if you can write down 12 words and keep them in a safe spot, which I'm certain many people can, if you have important documents that you've kept safe, you are qualified if you know how to download an application on your phone, you are qualified if you have children and you've managed to keep them, those children, safe and alive and thriving, you are indeed overqualified. So we do many important things. There's no reason to fear writing down 12 words and keeping them safe. So step one, where are you going to get your Bitcoin? Step two, learn a basic bitcoin wallet on your phone. And then I would say the third and final step for your average person is going to be let's get in something a little bit more secure. You can get a specialized device to secure your Bitcoin, often referred to as a hardware wallet. And this just keeps the keys to your money instead of on your phone. It keeps them on a special security device that's totally offline. And so if you can do those three things, get bitcoin, learn about bitcoin wallets and then graduate to a hardware wallet, you're nailing it in the bitcoin realm.
- [37:33]
B
I think that's fantastic and actionable advice because it's very understandable that people may, because of also all the bad information that's been put out there over the years. People may hear Bitcoin and maybe want to get exposure to it, but just don't know where to start. Luckily now there are, I mean there are so many amazing channels. If you want to have literally a step by step guide on how to do any of these things that Sessions just talked about, go to the BTC Sessions YouTube channel. I can't recommend it enough. It will literally be your one stop shop to learn all of these things in detail. Your personal guide basically to walking through these and that. And that's the thing is that it doesn't have to be too complicated. People want to act like it is. But really if there's one thing that's complicated, it's our current banking and monetary system. By contrast, Bitcoin seems pretty simple, at least to me. Is that what you found as well?
- [38:28]
A
Yeah. I mean, have you tried getting like getting a bank account and then logging into online banking and sending wire transfers and get, and, and not only that, but at times having your bank say no, you can't do that, or you need to call us or things are frozen, or we reversed a transfer or we don't know where that money is. You know that all of the, all of the things that can come along with somebody else dealing with your money. Yeah, it's absolutely in my. I will die on this hill that bitcoin is easier than traditional banking on its head. Bitcoin is, is much simpler, much less in terms of barriers to entry. You got to learn how to download an app, write down 12 words and if you delete the app, how to download the app again and put in.
- [39:21]
B
12 words again, it's not too bad. And one thing I want to talk about a little because you brought up just, you know, potentially getting cut off from the banking system. And that's something that you you personally helped a lot of people get through. Can you talk a little bit about the trucker protests and what happened there? Kind of at a high level, because I think we've talked up until now about, yes, you want to, you know, escape the. The pain of inflation. You want to kind of get off that hamster wheel. You want to be able to provide for your family. There's that kind of, okay, I want to be able to have a great savings technology, which bitcoin is. But there's another side to bitcoin, too, which is that it allows you and it's true freedom money. And so can you talk about that a little? Why people should really care, and even if they think, oh, it won't happen to me, that this kind of thing can happen to anyone.
- [40:09]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So you're right. We've been talking about kind of protecting yourself from the debasement of the dollar or whatever your local currency is, and savings technology. But bitcoin is also censorship resistant. And while many in the west come to bitcoin for protecting their savings, a lot of people from all over the globe come to bitcoin to protect their ability to just simply transact. And so, you know, we got a taste of this here in Canada in 2022. There was. It was the largest protest in Canadian history, the Canadian trucker protest. And the. I. I want to start by saying that these protests, while large, were completely peaceful. There was no violence that happened. There were families and children and music and bouncy castles and all kinds of great, like, live concerts, things like this happening in front of Canadian parliament. Was it noisy? Yeah, sure. There's. There were horns honking, you know, all kinds of stuff. There's music. It was loud. Yeah. It was the largest protest in Canadian history. But the way that the Canadian government dealt with it was painting anybody that was partaking in that as, I mean, name every kind of general slur in the book. They were all bigots and racists and deplorables or whatever they decided to throw at them. And the way that they decided to deal with these individuals, the organizers, the truckers that were down there, the individual businesses that they could target, they shut down bank accounts. They passed the Emergencies Act. They said, all right, if you're present down here, if we, you know, see that you're down here, if you're in any way involved, you run the risk of having your bank account shut down, your credit card shut down. They revoked people's auto insurance. They started doing all this crazy stuff. And so what ended up happening is well before all of this took place, when the protest was just beginning and they were doing the convoy across Canada and I was asked if I could help set up a donation page and manage bitcoin donations. And so we, we thought that most people would probably still donate through traditional means, but maybe we get a few thousand bucks, maybe we'd get, you know, four or five grand and that would have been great. That would have been cool. Maybe we could get some gift cards, buy people some Tim Hortons coffee or whatever. But what. When the Emergencies act passed, when bank accounts started getting shut down, when they started freezing donations on GoFundMe and reversing those, sending them back to the donors, you know, after saying they were just going to donate them to whatever other cause, they felt like they did get threatened with the lawsuit. So instead they just sent the money back to the donors. And then another, another platform stepped up and said, yeah, well, we'll accept the donations and, and we won't freeze them. And then when they went to send the money to the organizers to a Canadian bank, while that Canadian bank took those funds. So all of these digital payment mechanisms were just failing in the face of tyranny. And the one glaring thing that kept going was bitcoin. And people started piling in because they realized this, this is the shot we have. This is, we have a global example of this being censorship resistant freedom money. And, and yeah, like 1.2, $1.3 million, I think, donated to the Canadian trucker protest. It was effectively, it was over 21 bitcoin. So basically 1.1 millionth of the entire monetary base that will ever exist was donated to that single cause, which is crazy. And yeah, at the end of the day, not every SAT got there because, you know, some RCMP did kick open a door and use force to, to take some of the last few bitcoin, which to this day sit in a legal escrow awaiting the outcome of a lawsuit. But the vast majority of those funds were handed directly in care packages to truckers on the ground. And it was the only digital payment mechanism that was successful. And I'm very confident that had we made some smarter decisions earlier on and anticipated it being as big as it was, it would have been 100% of funds donated directly to the people that it was intended for.
- [45:09]
B
That story is just so incredible because again, it's, you know, there's the saving money and building up for a family, but sometimes your government is overbearing, oftentimes, actually, and you need to stand up for what you know, to be right. It's very difficult to do that when your access to the banking system is completely shut down. In America, if you want to exercise your freedom of speech, well, that starts with the freedom to transact. In Canada, same thing. You need to have the freedom to transact to truly be able to exercise your other rights. Otherwise, you know, it's pretty scary how quickly you can be cut off from everything just by getting cut off from the banking system. And that's where bitcoin is, this incredible lifeline. Yes, it's an escape valve. It's a escape boat to get away from punishing inflation. But it's also a way for you to escape something that is arguably just as dark or even darker in some cases, which is financial repression, financial censorship. These are things that may not seem important to you now, but if it happens to you, you really want to have another option.
- [46:23]
A
Yeah, there are examples around. Around the world, because of my involvement in, you know, the bitcoin donation side of things with the trucker protest, I've now, for the past four years, had active involvement with the Human Rights foundation, and we host quarterly webinars with political dissidents from around the globe, teaching them how to use Bitcoin as a tool for human rights and freedom. And we regularly have, you know, 100 to 200 people in these webinars every single time. And it's. It's. It's wild seeing some of the people that come through and recognize the importance of bitcoin. I'm talking going to events, and, you know, each person in the room standing up, saying who they are and what they do. And I get to stand up and say I make YouTube videos about Bitcoin. And then, you know, four or five other people in the room stand up to say that they've toppled a dictator. Which is like, if you ever want imposter syndrome, go to an HRF event and listen to people's stories, because these people have been through the gamut and. And have come out the other side just through insane amounts of hardship and human suffering. And they're still there, and they're still positive, and they're still working their asses off, and they're using Bitcoin as a tool in their tool belt, which is incredible.
- [47:57]
B
I think there's often a misconception, again, specifically in. In the west, that bitcoin, again, is just this speculative investment or this tech bro thing or, you know, associated with a certain political party. And. And the reality is that it's not. I mean, is it fair to say, in your opinion? I mean, like, bitcoin's for anyone who's willing to learn about it?
- [48:19]
A
Yeah, yeah, 100%. And, and I, I know that there's a, you know, right now, given the current political climate, many people would say that, you know, bitcoin is a partisan issue. I, I fully disagree. I, I agree that it's been painted into that just by nothing more than timing. But I, I think that all it has to do with is the time where bitcoin kind of began to grow and be used. The people that are most likely to use it are the ones that are at the current time most likely to have a degree of censorship, perhaps financial censorship. And it just happened to come about, you know, during a, during a political time where the political apparatus was leaning a certain way. And there was a shift, but pre, pre that shift, there was a very concerted effort to kind of stop people from using bitcoin. We saw something called choke point 2.0. We saw bank accounts, you know, being shut down if you were doing something with bitcoin. And so one side of the political aisle was able to latch onto that and the displeasure of everybody in the bitcoin space and, and, and use that to, to their advantage. But I, I very much believe roles reversed. It would absolutely be viewed as partisan in the opposite direction. What do you think they would have used if bitcoin was, was coming into being during the civil rights movement? What do you think would have been the money of choice then? Right. And when you look in different parts of the globe, it doesn't matter like the political affiliations. It's not a right or left issue. It's who is being censored. They're going to use censorship resistant money.
- [50:32]
B
Yeah, well said. And I hope that people take that to heart, because the last thing that I want is for somebody to not get into bitcoin, to not start saving in bitcoin simply because some talk show host or some politician has painted it to be one way. Don't listen to that. Do your own research. Check out channels like BTC sessions when you want to really dive deep into this and make up your own mind. Because bitcoin is not a partisan tool. It, Bitcoin is political. Money is always political, but it's not partisan. It's not right or left or red or blue or, you know, orange or yellow. Well, it is orange, actually, but it's not any of those other colors. And so I think that's really important to emphasize. I want to just as we're sort of wrapping up here. Is there something that you, some advice you would give to yourself if you could, you know, go back in time earlier in your bitcoin journey, maybe before you were buying, what advice would you give yourself? Or what advice do you most commonly give to people who are just starting to look at this, who have not started stacking yet?
- [51:41]
A
Yeah, I mean, times have changed a little bit over the years and the resources that I had at my fingertips for practical education did not exist. It was like, go to this forum and scroll down and there's a comment with some bullet points, points on how to do it. Oh, God, I don't learn that way. Things are different now. I, I think that the biggest piece of advice I would, I would give to people is don't wait on educating yourself. Don't think that you need to know it all before you can start dabbling in bitcoin and trying to use it. The medium is the education, right? Like by, by utilizing bitcoin, you are learning how to use Bitcoin. And so you don't have to go and be playing around with thousands and thousands of dollars, you can get 50 bucks or 100 bucks worth of bitcoin and learn how to use a bitcoin wallet and delete it and recover it and learn how hardware works. And, and so you can start to learn the tools with very little risk. You know, it's still good to have some skin in the game so that, you know, if you do make a mistake and you lose, you know, 50 bucks or something, that's painful, but pain is also a valuable and effective teacher. And so start with small amounts, but actually play around with real bitcoin. And if you make a mistake and you lose 50 bucks, I guarantee you you won't do that same thing again. And that perhaps $50 mistake, which I'm not saying people are going to lose 50 bucks right away, but if that were to happen, the $50 mistake prevents a mistake down the road that could have been hundreds or thousands of dollars. And so start learning the tools right away. Don't get analysis paralysis, act. And by acting, you actually learn. Don't. Don't just kind of try to read your way through understanding bitcoin. That's. That's not how it works. So the other thing that I would say is I have a. I actually set up a bit of a curated list of tutorials. I have a dedicated page for it now, and I sub in the mo What I believe to be the most relevant tutorials on each Kind of specific skill set that you can learn. And so if you're, if you're wanting to kind of start and learn some of the basics, I would just go to BTC sessions. Ca, it's Canadian SL learn. And on there you're going to see beginner, intermediate and advanced. And if you're brand new, there's three videos for the beginner part. Just take a look at those three and, and just begin your bitcoin journey. And you don't just tackle one at a time. You don't have to do them all in a night. Like, you know, do one a week, something like that, and just begin that process. Oh, how do I, how do I get bitcoin? How do I get a wallet and what is a hardware wallet? And it'll take you through those three things that I mentioned and then, and then you're pretty much good. Like, if you want to go beyond that, there's more to the page beyond that. But if you just get through the beginner section, you're golden and you can always level up later. So, yeah, go to BTCSessions, California, learn and that'll give you your base.
- [55:20]
B
I love it and I appreciate all the advice that you've shared with folks because you are truly the goat when it comes to bitcoin education. And so I'm very grateful for you to share that knowledge on here. I'll link that bdcsessions calearn here in the show Notes for people. They should also, if they want to follow you on x Nostr or YouTube, they should just search BTC sessions. You'll. You'll come up certainly.
- [55:45]
A
You're.
- [55:46]
B
You're the big, you're the big one there.
- [55:48]
A
But really, thank you. Look for, look for cartoon ridiculous hair.
- [55:53]
B
Yes, yes, absolutely. But really, Sessions, thank you so much. Appreciate your time. Is there anything else you wanted to leave folks with before we close out?
- [56:03]
A
I believe in you. You can do it honestly, once. Everything new is going to seem foreign until you've done it a few times and so act. Actually, as soon as you finish this podcast, go download a bitcoin wallet for the first time ever. It's a great experience. Just learn how it works. It's really cool and you'll be glad you did.
- [56:29]
B
Perfect Note to end on Sessions. Thank you so much for your time.
- [56:33]
A
Thanks, man.
- [56:41]
B
Thank you for watching Saving in Bitcoin, your financial freedom blueprint on the bitcoin podcast. Bitcoin is a return to savings, real savings built on sound money. Make fold your personal finance hub and take control of your financial freedom. Buy, earn and save in Bitcoin all in one place.