Wealth, freedom and privacy.

Image by Matthew Henry

When talking about wealth, freedom and privacy, a good place to start is with this quote:

“You will never be free without privacy. Privacy is not secrecy, it is the ability to selectively reveal yourself to the world. It is a prerequisite for freedom because private information may be used to control you.

You will never be wealthy without freedom. It is a prerequisite for wealth because otherwise it is not your wealth.” Matt Odell

There are countless examples of why it is important to protect your privacy. Now I know many are going to say, give me some examples. Well why not stop and have a little think yourself. Think about every single military conflict in human history. How many strategists do you think would have set out to plan the offence or defence in the open?

Another really great argument for privacy is the I have nothing to hide. Sure, that may be the case, but I always enjoy asking the following question back: “why does your post come in an envelope and why do your file away or shred your bank statements, why don’t you leave them at your front door” or “awesome, I’ll pop around later today to install a camera in you and your wife’s bedroom”. Now, let’s take this a little further, think mobile phone camera, your children and bathing.

Privacy ensures our freedom and ultimately protects all our future wealth. So the question is how do we get there? The answer is not overnight. It’s a process that takes years and new smarter ways are constantly being found to harvest your data, so you are going to have to be on your toes to turn the tide. Remember the saying:

“If its free, you are the product”

If it is free, ensure the software is open source and a not for profit organisation. Also don’t be afraid to pay for services that protect your privacy, if anything does go wrong, you will have recourse to damages if your privacy rights are infringed. Think about all the free services you are currently using at the moment.

Like everything, the best place is to start. Find a couple of reliable people and sources who specialise in privacy / cryptography and see what they are doing. What messaging / calling apps and social media platforms are they using (Signal) and which ones are they not using?

For email, start by migrating your financial and legal accounts to services that have encryption build-in (ProtonMail) and if you have other accounts like gmail, use PGP. This is a great article I found and had PGP on gmail setup in an afternoon - How to use PGP encryption with Gmail. Use the PGP keys you generated with desktop and mobile apps like Canarymail.

Start using VPN (ProtonMail have a service for paid subscribers); Tor (See Brave browser options), 2FA and password managers.

Also remember, owning Bitcoin on an exchange is like owning gold in a vault you have no access to or having fiat in a bank account that you can be removed from (recent examples in Canada and Russian reserves should be something you are taking note of). Start your journey with hardware wallets (Ledger, Trezor and ColdCard), self hosted multisig: (Sparrow Wallet, Electrum) and maybe even build your own dedicated node: (Umbrel)

In the end, try not to over complicate things and take it slow. There will be ups and downs along the way, but remember you have to start somewhere. There are some incredible resources here: https://citadeldispatch.com/

No sponsored content, no affiliate links, no ads - The content above provides education as to general privacy and security practices. Should you choose to apply the practices described in linked content in anyway now or in the future, you do so at your own risk. Nothing shall be construed as providing consulting, financial advice or general advice.

The Distortion of Money

Image by Javier Allegue Barros

Very rarely do you come across a youtube video that includes a discussion about a large number of important topics of our time. Each is then perfectly interwoven into the next to provide a holistic view of the broader topic for understanding and then action.

Complex problems can not be addressed through sound bite online news and aggressive social media platforms. There can never be a proper discussion on platforms that encourage conflict to attract views. This youtube video, has in my opinion, shown that it is possible to discuss complex problems and possible solutions to all things including learning, money, fairer systems, free market economics, truth and what lies ahead in the future.

The Distortion of Money with Jeff Booth

Jeff Booth is Entrepreneur and Author of ‘The Price of Tomorrow’. In this interview, he discusses the distortion of money, how Bitcoin can herald in a fairer system based on truth and a free market of ideas, and the transition from scarcity to abundance. Shout out to Peter and team from WBD for another fantastic podcast.

“These ideas of communism and free-market collide, and they’re both communism over time. And that sounds harsh, but it’s a control structure. There is no free market, if there’s a distortion of money, because everything else is on top of that distortion of money.” — Jeff Booth

Here is a comment from the video which I think is worth repeating:

“Came for the bitcoin got a lesson on how to be a better human. It’s what I love about the bitcoin ethos so much. It forces you to stretch and grow as a person. Jeff is a sage of a man I hope to be able to be half the man he is when I’m his age. Great interview Peter!”

DISCLAIMER

This publication is general in nature and is not intended to constitute any professional advice or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any financial or investment products. You should seek separate professional advice before taking any action in relation to the matters dealt with in this publication. Please also note our disclosure here

Came for the gains, stayed for the brains

Image by Hal Gatewood

There has been a lot of talk recently about bitcoin and energy usage.

The ESG narrative and how crypto mining is so bad for the environment. We even have the energy policy makers in the EU looking to ban POW crypto mining (let’s leave their last success stories out of this conversation for now … LOL).

What are the odds they are accumulating BTC themselves?

As a reminder let’s see how much energy BTC mining is used globally. Here is a link to an article that covers the results from The Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) Q3 2021 study.

It’s easy to get caught up in the 2 liners, on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, on why mining is supposedly so bad for the environment, but here is a lengthy conversations about the intricacies of energy and the role bitcoin is currently playing in actually solving some of our global energy problems.

Bitcoin Energy Markets with Shaun Connell

In summary, according to the Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), Bitcoin mining used 0.38% of the worldwide 50,000TW/h energy that is wasted due to inefficiencies. The Bitcoin and crypto mining industry is actually trying to solve problems and are in fact part of the solution. Many of us started in this space to fix a financial problem (gains being a small component of this), we have staying for far greater causes (the brains are here).

DISCLAIMER

This publication is general in nature and is not intended to constitute any professional advice or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any financial or investment products. You should seek separate professional advice before taking any action in relation to the matters dealt with in this publication. Please also note our disclosure here

The Bitcoin Gambit

**Update: If the YouTube videos don’t load please search on Rumble.

Firstly, apologies for the delay in getting of out our newsletter and blogs this quarter. We were waiting for the 2022 Bitcoin Conference before publishing. We wanted to highlight the best and most significant keynotes given during the conference.

Our number 1, really explains the power of the bitcoin network and why it is significant, number 2 is all about the asset, how to protect yourself from the fiat fraud and finally number 3 - the ESG narrative and shaping the future.

Number 1 - Jack Maller’s Announcement and the King’s Gambit

Many people that get into crypto and bitcoin will always talk about price. What they are actually talking about is the asset (the incredible store of value proposition) . Bitcoin is more than that, it is a new financial network that enables customers and merchant without middlemen.

Jack’s “Kings Gambit” keynote is the best I have ever seen on this topic!

Rumble video if below doesn’t work here

Bitcoin 2022 Conference - Jack Mallers

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Number 2 - Cult of the Central Bank: A Fiat Religion

If you don’t know what financial repression is then this is a great talk to understand how governments confiscate the wealth of their citizens in the form of inflation. He highlights how in 8 years he went from a $2000 salary to $20.

Our journey in the west is only starting, it’s time you understand hyperinflation and fast. It’s also worth noting his thoughts on CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) - they are the same flavour as fiat, so they will have the same properties… they will be debased and used against you.

Let’s just hope that some lesson can be taught and that people don’t have to learn the lessons of hyperinflation the hard way - only time will tell.

Rumble video if below doesn’t work here

Bitcoin 2022 Conference - Ricardo B. Salinas

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Number 3 - bitcoin: Revolutionary Youth Movement

This is is one of the comments from YouTube that perfectly sums up the video “This might go down as one of the speeches that is recognized as vital to this revolution ! That man's voice was cracking because he was afraid he was being compelled to tell the truth ! Going public is handing your company to government indirectly !”

“ESG is the real enemy, it’s a hate factory and when you think ESG, think CCP”

For me, the key take away from this keynote, is that we have have momentum, we have an asset that can protect our wealth and labour, it’s transparent, fair and inclusive. We need to be careful, regulation it’s almost always used as a tool to corrupt a movement and finally, we need to be sceptical of the ESG narrative.

Rumble video if below doesn’t work here

Bitcoin 2022 Conference - Peter Thiel

One point I would make at around the 6:48 mark is that Peter’s slide should be changed. You can remove the ETH logo and replace it with the Bitcoin logo now that we have Lightning.

Updated Slide

Lightning Network has enabled this!

The final piece I will leave you with is a quote form Cathie Wood during the conference. As she says, every single word is important:

“Bitcoin is the first global private (i.e. non government) digital rules based monetary system in the history of the world”

DISCLAIMER

This publication is general in nature and is not intended to constitute any professional advice or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any financial or investment products. You should seek separate professional advice before taking any action in relation to the matters dealt with in this publication. Please also note our disclosure here