While traveling across the country visiting Bitcoin meetups, Captain Sidd found Bitcoiners have many things in common, but most importantly, they are all doers.
This is an opinion editorial by Captain Sidd, finance writer and contributor to Bitcoin Magazine.
“When deeds speak, words are nothing.” — African proverb
Grokking Bitcoin’s potential impact on the world often starts with diving into the enormity of the problem with fiat currency. The vast moral hazards and twisted incentives inherent in any centrally controlled monetary system or market make for plenty of pains to highlight. It’s no surprise then that Bitcoiners — especially on the internet through forums like Twitter — frequently lambast institutions that seek to control markets and people in the name of fixing the very problems to which they’re often a major contributor.
Keeping us informed about government encroachments on liberty or misinformed policies that create more problems than they seek to solve is important work. I appreciate those messages and what they make me aware of, however, being inundated with these views and attitudes can become depressing and demotivating. It’s my sense that social networks are fantastic at curating the content that triggers an emotional response — which can quickly devolve toward the negative.
However, when I go out and touch grass, I am excited by the people who are responding to this changing world by doing and building strong and beautiful things: families, homesteads, movements that lead to healthier, happier people. While it is easy to see a lot of negativity in the Bitcoin community, there are also bright rays of hope about the future that I rarely see in other communities. I wanted to meet the people bringing a better future to bear, and I figured what better way to meet them than through Bitcoin meetups.
Through 11,500 miles across the U.S. during summer 2022, I visited 30 Bitcoin meetups on my Harley Davidson and spoke with hundreds of Bitcoiners. Several Bitcoin-only companies sponsored my journey and helped promote the mission of highlighting grassroots Bitcoin initiatives: dollar-cost averaging service
Slim is working with ranchers like Jason Wrich and Cole Bolton to build a connection directly from ranchers to meat-eaters, cutting out the agro-chemical companies that have long captured the market, taking profits and decreasing quality. That work is coming through the Beef Initiative, where you can find educational material on food and bitcoin as well as ways to buy beef directly from your local rancher.
The Beef Initiative also puts on conferences bringing together ranchers, Bitcoiners, nutritionists and doctors to share knowledge and educate one another. I attended the first Beef Initiative conference in Kerrville, Texas in April 2022, and the second one occurred in late July in Crawford, Colorado at Wrich Ranches (run by Jason Wrich). At least one more conference is in the works before the end of the year.
Slim is a spark kicking off a grassroots movement for better understanding of where our food comes from and more forms of market access for both producers and consumers.
Dern And Michael Atwood Orange-Pilling Businesses
As many of us Bitcoiners know, understanding Bitcoin is often a very long and slow process. Helping others understand it sometimes takes even longer — a measure of patience and low time preference is needed. Dern from Chicago gets this; that’s why he combines his weekly shopping at the local farmers’ market with Bitcoin education. He asks vendors if they accept bitcoin often, and helps them get set up with payment solutions when they show interest. He’s having success, slowly but surely.
Bitcoiners from around the world are helping these efforts with open-source solutions like educational brochures that we can use when visiting businesses or talking to people about Bitcoin. A takeaway resource like this can be just what’s needed to turn a short conversation into a long dialogue about the workings and potential benefits of adopting bitcoin.
Michael Atwood from Oshi App is also a believer that businesses should be accepting bitcoin, if only because they can save 3% on credit card fees when accepting bitcoin instead. Plus, accepting bitcoin means attracting a whole new crowd of customers who are already on a bitcoin standard and want to trade their bitcoin for worthwhile goods and services.
Barnminer The Traveling Bitcoin Miner
Right after I purchased the Harley Davidson I used for the Bitcoin Tour across America, I met up with Barnminer for lunch. I learned that he often travels for work, and is using Twitter to find Bitcoiners while on work trips. His travels are slowly morphing into more than just for work, as he’s turning his passion for at-home bitcoin mining into helping new miners around the country get their own operations set up. Barnminer is one of many home bitcoin miners I met across America who are sharing their knowledge, whether in person or over the internet, to help new bitcoin miners enter the field.
The time given and knowledge imparted by these home miners is especially inspiring when you consider that new miners coming online technically lower the rewards for all the other miners as well because there’s more competition on the network!
Fun Fact: Barnminer was the first pleb to sit on the Bitcoin Harley, before I even had the saddlebags painted orange.
Jordan Bush With Bitcoin And Christianity
Jordan Bush was the first Bitcoiner I met after I departed Bitcoin 2022 in Miami, and our conversation left a deep impression on me. Bush was a missionary in Uruguay with his family for many years before moving back to the United States. We sat down for coffee and talked about his passion for the intersection between the tenets of his Christian faith and the operation of bitcoin as honest money. Bush even published a book titled “Thank God for Bitcoin” with co-authors that include Bitcoin programmer and educator Jimmy Song and one of the founders of the Phoenix Bitcoin meetup George Mekhail.
While we were talking about settling back into life in America, I asked Bush what’s next for him. His answer served as an inspiration for me as I embarked on my tour (and I was only on day three when I met him).
Bush remarked that he had a few plans, but was waiting for God to fill in some of the blanks and point him in the right direction.
I’m not a religious person, but Bush’s sentiment resonated with me: Sometimes we cannot force things to happen and we must wait to see what the universe has in store for us. Many of the Bitcoin meetup organizers I met, live this ethos with their meetup; they are not forcing growth, they are letting their community mature organically through word of mouth. While I met many ambitious Bitcoiners on my tour, they usually had a similar attitude about life and their projects as Bush has with his projects. Overplanning and overworking can often create problems and obstacles instead of clearing them away.
I took that advice throughout my trip, being careful to leave time for spontaneity and new directions to unfold rather than prescribing them far ahead of time. Just a few days after my conversation with Bush, my stress about the journey melted away and I started having completely unexpected and amazing experiences, like accidentally ending up in the first permanent settlement of the Louisiana Purchase while dodging a storm.
Touch Grass And Get Building
While the internet and social media are helpful for gathering information and making connections, they can often bring a downside in the form of hijacked emotional responses and drained energy. We cannot let these networks slow each of us down from building the future we want to see. Many of the Bitcoiners I met out in the real world are steadily and quietly building the futures they want to see for their families and communities.
With many of the Bitcoiners I met, each of their projects started very small: with a conversation or a piece of writing. With dedication and plenty of rest days, their projects grew to practically have a mind and momentum of their own. I am saying this as much for myself as for you: Resist the urge to let any Twitter echo chambers hijack your emotions and take energy away from your projects.
Go forth and build!
This is a guest post by Captain Sidd. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.