@ STIMMY #40HPW🎧

Military service members and veterans can appreciate bitcoin on a deeper level than most people realize. By personally knowing the cost of war, veterans are primed to peacefully raise those costs further and usher in a bright orange future. In this essay, I seek to explore aspects of my time in the US Army that helped me find the bitcoin rabbit hole and how finding it has improved my life. I certainly can’t speak for anyone else but hope that fellow vets and plebs will find something familiar or encouraging here as they upgrade to life on a bitcoin standard.

Bitcoin is freedom technology

In the United States, decades of an all-volunteer force have been possible from both issuing the global reserve currency and having young people self-select to take greater risks than their peers. Setting aside valid debates about the ethics and employment of said military, individuals who seek purpose far beyond the self in youth may be inclined to carry that trait forward. Accomplishing big things in the pursuit of noble ideals is like bitcoin in that once you see it, you can’t un-see it.

Purpose-driven and mission-oriented lifestyles are clearly abnormal under the incentives of a fiat monetary regime – especially when those lifestyles voluntarily center on brutally hard work and profound responsibility. But people animated as such are well-positioned to lead in other capacities throughout their lives.

Individuals who choose to join the military are no better or worse than others based on that choice. However, service members do enter a subculture that is markedly different from broader society. Most internalize good elements of that subculture like valuing hard work, prioritizing team over self, embracing humility, constantly learning, and possessing confidence to tackle daunting challenges. However, there are also many negative parts of the military ripe for disruption. After running into the bad aspects frequently enough, individuals hit their own tipping point where they recognize it’s time to get out.

For me, the tipping point came when my wife delivered our first kid in an Army hospital. Suffice it to say, government-run healthcare can be appalling. While I deployed again after deciding to get out and made almost every possible mistake in the transition to civilian life, the best decision I made was to stack bitcoin. Owning this unique money forced me to think about it more deeply, question other investments, and running bitcoin became a hobby in its own right.

“Writing a description for this thing for general audiences is bloody hard. There’s nothing to relate it to.” – Satoshi Nakamoto

Newcomers to bitcoin may struggle to see past its novelty. Veterans who are accustomed to being humbled by circumstances may have an advantage with taking an open-minded approach. Here are the main reasons I think veterans are more readily inclined to take the orange pill than the general population and why it matters:

1. Freedom: Bitcoin is more aligned with American values than the dollar system. Veterans surrendered some of their rights in the military and can appreciate freedom sincerely when they reacquire it. Those who see the practical utility of peer-to-peer electronic cash may graduate to recognizing that the impossibly huge amounts of debt, debasement, corruption, and surveillance in the dollar system threaten individual liberty. Opting for better money is a liberating experience, the type of thing many of us only dreamed about in uniform.
2. Purpose: With fiat money threatening freedom, bitcoin offers a purpose worth pursuing. Why limit freedom technology to yourself when its benefits grow from network effects? Veterans are often leaders in their families, workplaces, and communities. When they grok bitcoin and begin to shill it (as is the custom for many newcoiners and OGs alike), veterans can be convincing salesmen. Connecting to and educating others on bitcoin can help this grassroots movement succeed. Veterans who work to separate money and state are building on their prior service in a profoundly wholesome way.
3. Peace: US veterans of recent generations fought in wars their country didn’t care to understand and didn’t have to because the money printer enabled policymakers’ hubris. Veterans learned the cost of war and saw the human condition in broken places. As a voluntary system, bitcoin can’t be forcibly imposed on others. Using public-private key pairs, hodlers’ wealth can’t be easily taken either. Under a bitcoin standard, any “leaders” who want to fight will have to make an exceptionally compelling case to raise funds and mobilize for war. Veterans who want to protect future generations from the horror of war can appreciate the peace that will be possible when we separate money and state.
4. Savings technology: Plenty of veterans broke their bodies in uniform, reducing future opportunities and earnings potential. Throwing on 100 pounds of gear and walking many miles over rough terrain to get in gunfights is a fairly typical day for infantrymen. Developing arthritis before age 30, however, doesn’t open any doors in the private sector. Like Russell Okung’s work championing bitcoin for athletes, veterans can benefit from saving in a superior money. Some of our bodies may give out prematurely but our purchasing power shouldn’t. Pro tip (a la Dan Held): VA disability payments are great for stacking sats.
5. Connection: After leaving the military, many veterans struggle to relate to family, friends, colleagues, and community members. After seeing the best and worst of humanity, it can be hard for veterans to find a new tribe like they had in former platoons, flights, or vessels. There is no such hardship among bitcoiners, where shared values and incentives support cooperation and reaching global consensus requires a real meritocracy of ideas. I am amazed daily at the caliber of bitcoiners’ work and by the number of veterans I see adopting it. It feels good to be on a winning team.

Bitcoin is healing technology

“Only you know the shit you’ve been through. You gotta take care of yourself now.” I couldn’t believe it, hearing my First Sergeant acknowledge human weakness. While catching up over brunch, he shared ghastly physical and mental receipts from an infantryman’s career. His skeleton was ground to chalk, he had cancer, his parasympathetic nervous system was fried, and he was slowing down for the first time in his life.

At 40 and recently retired, my old First Sergeant spent over 5 years in combat on several deployments. He survived Sadr City, the Arghandab Valley, and even brigade headquarters. He was a great mentor to many and we especially bonded over “talking” machine guns and shipping home one of our fallen. Now we were both out of the Army and looking down a rabbit hole together that I didn’t know existed, how warriors can reconnect with their humanity.

Just 9 months into the civilian world too, my nervous system was still cooking – waking up 20 times per night, scanning constantly for ambushes, and planning how to kill coworkers in meetings should they become insider threats. I just assumed these moments were normal, unavoidable, and besides, other people had been through far worse and needed help more. However, First Sergeant’s encouragement steered me to accessing care in the VA system, which has been surprisingly good to both of us.

As a civilian, I filled newfound leisure time with the gym, reading, picking stocks, and earning an MBA. Life was laughably simple in fiat land. Colleagues complained about 45-hour work weeks or gossip in meetings while I had just left 140-hour weeks chasing terrorists with Afghan allies who would occasionally shoot at us too. Although life became simpler as a civilian, post-traumatic stress quickly showed that it wasn’t easier.

Mundane things in everyday life brought up strong reactions that I couldn’t consciously control and would shut down my emotions for days at a time. The smells of changing a diaper would instantly transport my mind to the smells of loading a friend into a body bag. The sound of fireworks would set my heart racing and conjure images of car bombs and rockets. Sitting with my back to a door would induce later nightmares about insider attacks (sometimes called “green on blue.”) Anxiety was my new normal, constantly on guard for things to avoid.

Years of psychotherapy helped me learn to control my reaction to those flashbacks and invasive memories, especially eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Yet I still struggled between sessions as new stimuli entered the picture from kids and work. It felt like I plateaued and would never find inner peace or new purpose. This is where bitcoin began to shine as a tool for healing.

Buying bitcoin for its number go up technology at first, I also found it fascinating to learn about. Curiosity helped me succeed in the military by obsessing over the details of becoming a better Soldier and leader. With the staggering amount of free time available in civilian life, curiosity came to the rescue again regarding bitcoin and learning how to hodl.

While obsessing over bitcoin, I began to notice mental updates installing. These included optimism and purpose, highly refreshing to my burned out and depressed psyche. During and after moments of deep learning like reading about difficulty adjustments, running coinjoin software on my node, or coordinating a multisignature quorum, I recognized an abatement of post-traumatic stress symptoms. Did filling my head with new content evict some of the demons? Probably.

In no particular order, I came to identify focus, trust, and hope as aspects of interacting with bitcoin that supported my mental health. They’re equally important but presenting them this way is like a shortened acronym for “faith” so I’m gonna roll with it.

Focus

Combat is the ultimate high time preference activity. Advantages in training and technology don’t guarantee survival. Inches separate life and death on a two-way range, so respect for the enemy and acceptance of randomness are essential. No amount of preparation can make this humbling experience real until you’re shot at for the first time. People can either learn to focus in combat or they die.

While civilian peers spent their 20s chasing frequent dopamine hits, veterans found far bigger dopamine hits. However, the totality of a mindset one needs to survive and thrive in battle isn’t sustainable. Holding onto a high time preference leads some veterans into risky behaviors, addiction, and despair. Nations also become addicted to war when they combine perceived advantages with urgency for their politics, disregarding the second- and third-order effects of violence.

After the military, I struggled to focus even though it had been a previous strength. It was nearly impossible to meaningfully concentrate on minutiae that made no difference in anyone’s life – which is an unfortunately large share of economic activity under inflationary money. Finding purpose in sales negotiations, inventory management, and just existing in a generic office environment was “all very acidic, above the shoulders, mustard shit,” to borrow from Matthew McConaughey’s Mark Hanna in The Wolf of Wall Street.

However, I found that the act of focusing on bitcoin rekindled this skill. It sparks far more curiosity than I’ve found anywhere mining fiat. Whether measured in minutes or days, digging into any number of bitcoin topics forced me to concentrate on learning. Learning forced me to question. Questioning forced me to dig deeper. The mechanics of this process didn’t leave room for flashbacks or invasive memories. Perhaps the simple act of repetitively forcing my thoughts into the present and future wired new brain circuits – and bitcoin’s uniquely magnetic appeal made that possible.

Focusing on bitcoin can set in motion virtuous cycles of directing mental energy in a positive direction. Those cycles can extend individuals’ time preference and long-term thinking leads to better decisions. Pulling one’s mind out of the past can orient it on the future. Veterans who need this stand to benefit immensely if they’re open to it.

Trust

“Do I bear responsibility [for Afghanistan]? Zero responsibility.” – President Joe Biden

Everyone has a bad boss from time to time. The beauty of having bad bosses in the military is that you can’t escape them, they get people killed, and the standards of accountability are rarely applied to senior ranks – while they are ruthlessly enforced on junior ranks. The command climate while deployed amplifies perceptions of both trust and betrayal. We used to say that situations in the Army were so dumb because all the smart people got out. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 became a meme because it accurately described Army culture.

I lost all trust in military leadership when three colonels changed the material and findings contained in my intelligence reports to paint a false, rosy picture to their bosses. They sealed the deal by questioning my integrity when I protested. Those officers were simply following the perverse incentives of a broken system. Unfortunately, the colonels’ lies led to misallocation of resources and undue human suffering.

All too many veterans can relate, unfortunately, and losing wars that way is truly awful – as if war itself isn’t awful enough. These breaches of trust create profound moral injury for veterans and everyone betrayed. The US abandonment of partners in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving American citizens to fend for themselves, and gaslighting senior leaders stir a bitterness in veterans’ hearts that is deeper than we knew possible. And that’s saying something for a population that thrives on dark humor.

Bitcoin fixes this. There are no leaders, it’s only a timechain. But Satoshi’s design records truth all the time and around the world. There is no trust to betray and no way to betray it. Veterans who are accustomed to the benefits of accountability find it natural to adopt the ethos of “don’t trust, verify” in bitcoin’s context. While our politicians and generals make careers out of lying, veterans have an opportunity to affiliate with fellow truth seekers among bitcoiners.

Thinking about the future, I see bitcoin’s incentives restoring honesty to individuals and populations. This perspective helps mitigate the damage of moral injury by giving me something to look forward to. And the prospect of separating money and state can motivate veterans to protect their descendants from the grotesquely dishonest culture we live in today.

Hope

“War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse… There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them.” – Alan Alda as Hawkeye in M.A.S.H.

In the military, doctrine matters. It’s the base layer on which to build operational design and implement tactical decisions. Doctrine is written with the blood of mistakes from previous battles, so while it can be helpful, much of it is inherently outdated before the ink dries. My experience adapting doctrine to the real world also centered on Afghanistan, where the Afghans’ sense of time is primarily backward looking. Centuries-old tribal disputes factored into most locals’ daily lives far more than any notions of the future they wanted. It’s a bad combination to inject slow-moving military bureaucracy into a civil war of fatalistic cultures.

It was natural for me to leave that and become an even bigger doomer running headlong into the civil-military divide and ignorant populace as a new veteran. I wanted to find a new mission that could stop the abusively poor utilization of armed forces and protect young people from the kinds of situations that broke me. With laughable domestic politics and a money printer running hot, reform didn’t seem possible. Even being accustomed to accomplishing the impossible and desperately wanting to leave a better world for my kids, I concluded it was out of reach. Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone in holding a bleak outlook on life and stopped counting the number of dead Army buddies when it passed 25 – mostly from suicide.

Then I discovered implications of bitcoin and thanked God for cypherpunks writing code. It is truly a miracle we get to live today and discover the potential of liberating individuals and markets with sound money for the digital age. Plenty of veterans entered service with noble ideals only to see them dashed by corrupt leaders sending people into the worst situations this planet has to offer. With bitcoin, there are no leaders to abuse our trust and the incentives for cooperation outweigh those for conflict. We have a chance to replace today’s sclerotic political economy with better alternatives.

Bitcoin offers hope to those who can see its value into the future. I hope to see more veterans acquire bitcoin, become fabulously wealthy over time, and lead lives worthy of our fallen friends. We have the opportunity to once again be part of something far bigger than ourselves, this time immutably enshrined through proof of work.

Conclusion

Bitcoin is therapeutic for the veteran’s soul, at least it has been for mine. After several close calls in combat, I fully expected to die years ago and lucked out. Or I could have easily joined those who made it home yet succumbed to their demons. But everyone’s heart is different and it is up to each veteran to write his or her own story. My call to action as you write that story is simple: stack sats, build meaningful relationships, reflect on your strengths, acquire new ones, and contribute to bitcoin projects and education as you are able. We’re going to win, and the world will be better with you onboard.