We think about our emotions as if they're like this all-encompassing power that just has to be harnessed.
But I would probably think we actually want and need our emotions to be driving us towards the vision we have for our life.
And if they're getting in the way, and if you're that person that's like always losing his mind and no one can talk to you and no one can issue or offer you feedback,
you've got to look in the mirror and at some point just be like, okay, what's the next most important thing that I can do?
towards changing. Welcome to Live with Bitcoin, where we delve into the human set of Bitcoin by
focusing on Bitcoiners' personal transformations and life stories. Welcome to another episode.
My name is BTC Viv, and today joining us is Adam O'Brien. Adam O'Brien is a Canadian
entrepreneur and early Bitcoiner who discovered Bitcoin in 2013 while researching for a more
transparent and trustworthy financial system. He's the founder and CEO of Bitcoin Well, a company
focused on making Bitcoin more accessible and helping people move towards financial independence
through self-custody and personal responsibility. Beyond his work in Bitcoin, Adam often speaks
about faith, family, and long-term thinking,
exploring how Bitcoin intersects with personal values,
sovereignty, and generational responsibility.
As a husband and father,
his perspective on Bitcoin is closely tied to questions of meaning,
education, and the kind of world we leave behind for the next generation.
Wow, that's a mouthful.
Man, that's a really good intro.
Thank you for saying all those nice things.
I think it seems like you stumbled upon Bitcoin on the search of meaning, rules or something that's deeper before you even know what you were looking for.
So just give us a little bit more context.
Sometimes we only understand our motivations in hindsight.
Yeah.
And you discovered Bitcoin back in 2013.
And tell us about it.
Before Bitcoin entered your life, what were you searching at the time?
That's such a good question.
I don't know if, yeah, I think what you just said is such a good point.
I was searching in hindsight because I was definitely not intentionally hunting for transparent financial.
I don't think I even knew what a financial ecosystem was at that point.
I think I was barely 20 years old.
But I think my life has kind of been preparing me to find Bitcoin.
I've always been contrarian.
I've always been libertarian-minded.
Even before I would have identified as a libertarian-minded individual.
people called me libertarian. Like I was just very freedom, personal responsibility focused.
And when I found Bitcoin, I don't know that I identified the mix right away. But when you find
Bitcoin, you hear it's a scam. And then the contrarian in me was like, I have to disprove
this scam. I have to prove somebody wrong. And so I started researching Bitcoin. And when you
research Bitcoin, you learn about the history of money, you learn about cryptography, you learn
about encryption, you learn about the money protocol, you learn about fiat and, you know,
the Fed and the money printing and the debt and all this stuff. And I was just, I was all consumed.
I couldn't stop. Eventually, it's like, oh, well, Bitcoin fails here. And then you're like, oh,
never mind. It doesn't fail here. Our money system fails here. It's like, oh, Bitcoin is
going to fail here. And it's like, well, that game theory doesn't work either. So then you went
over enough time. And for me, it took, yeah, it was just a few weeks of just hardcore reading.
I was like, wow, this is the future, at least for now. And I don't even know if at that point,
I understood the freedom implications of Bitcoin, but I understood the economic. And so when I saw
that, I started diving in. And then through my story of buying and selling Bitcoin for a few
years, that was where I realized the freedom implications of Bitcoin. And it was at that
point that I realized, if you don't own and control your money, somebody else owns and controls you.
and I'm not a guy that likes to be owned and controlled.
What?
Was Bitcoin the first scam that you looked into?
Because if that was your motivation,
that's a scam, I'm going to prove them wrong
or I'm going to be the conspiracist.
That's right.
So I can't imagine Bitcoin being the first one
that you looked into if you had that mindset.
Were there any other scams that you looked into?
Not deliberately, but I would say that I've always been
maybe not hunting to disprove scams,
But I've always been very curious, very interested.
And I drove my parents crazy.
I was always, I have two things,
like stories from my childhood are always around two things.
One is just questioning everything.
The other is selling everything.
I used to love, my dad was a traveling salesman.
He had like a big territory for like different products.
And so he would travel around and he'd leave
and I'd sell like our TV, I'd sell our couches,
I'd sell golf clubs.
Like I just nothing was safe if I was in the house.
I just love the art of making a deal.
And and then I also would like my mom worked.
She was an account or she's an accountant.
And so, you know, there's like a time I woke up early one morning and just took apart her computer.
I just wanted to see the inside.
I wanted to see like what how does it work?
How does the mouse move?
And you can see things on the screen.
And I just wanted to see it.
I was like, I don't know, eight or nine or something.
I was very young.
And so just always very curious and wanting to understand why and how certain things worked in certain ways.
And so when my parents would tell me certain rules, I would say like, well, why? How come? This doesn't make sense.
And my mom will remember like, yeah, when I was nine, 10 years old, I would like my logic center was was hitting a certain point.
She'd be like, I actually don't know. Like, this is a great question and I have to do more. I have to think harder.
And so I think it was that mindset that drove me to wanting to identify what Bitcoin was, why it was being touted as, you know, this cypherpunk future.
I don't even know what a cypherpunk was at that point.
I was I was so green.
I was so, so fresh, you know, growing up in the prairies in Alberta.
It was like, you know, oil, farm and hockey.
Those were like, that's the culture in Alberta.
It wasn't like cypherpunk, tech, liberty and all these incredible things that Bitcoin offers.
And so it was just such a brand new world.
I'm just so naturally curious and just, yeah, I was just diving into it.
What made you wanting to look into Bitcoin?
Because for a curious person, like were you already a tech savvy person looking into a lot of technology?
Because for someone who's also curious, then they may not be looking into Bitcoin.
Yeah, I was I've always been pretty technically literate.
I was not and I am not a programmer or like I'm not I'm not a developer by any means.
I had to learn a lot.
You know, when I found Bitcoin, there was no there's no like hot wallet.
There's no there was no no simple to use BitKey or Blockstream Jade or anything like this.
Like it was like it was very much like run a Bitcoin node.
I had to learn how to use the command line for the first time.
I was like brand new to all this stuff.
It was pet and lucky for me, like Bitcoin's got this funny way of naturally aligned incentives.
So at the time there was Bitcoin talk for him at the time, of course.
But the IRC chats was where was where all the good conversation was happening. And so I had to learn how to access the IRC chats. And lucky I had a buddy that kind of walked me through that. I met a I met a buddy at like a local Bitcoin event. There was like five of us in this little event. And I really him and I got along great. And so he kind of took me under his wing and walked me through. He showed me how to make a paper wallet. He showed me how to roll dice to roll a seed, like, you know, taught me about how to even print a wallet securely.
Like, you know, we bought an old printer and it never touched the internet and bought an old computer.
Like we went, it was, it was awesome.
We taught me about PGP.
And so it was like a really cool, I was just, I felt like for the first time I was just learning, learning, learning, learning, learning, not, and, and wasn't forced to take a test after.
Wasn't forced to like sit in a, you know, read, read this boring textbook.
It was just, it was just natural.
It just felt normal.
It felt good.
And so, yeah, I think it was more out of my curious nature.
and then the honestly the dopamine of learning about new technology is is always been amazing
and so yeah well i guess not everybody get dopamine from that way true but i totally see it i totally
see it being one route and i and i see the point of having someone to hold your hand
walking it because it's very complicated it's very overwhelming yeah and even for seasoned
Bitcoiners when you send a Bitcoin transaction.
So get, oh yeah.
Right?
So it never goes away.
So the fact that you had someone who were there for you and really walked you through
that process would make the world's difference.
Because now you approach Bitcoin in a different lens and you get practical learning of how
to protect your coin, how to do self-custody.
Those information in a private setting is very valuable.
And I think this goes to show like why Bitcoin, wow, is sponsoring like meetups and bringing people together.
And I see maybe that trickle through your experience being a Bitcoiner.
And it seems like there was a process between you becoming really convicted after a while when you made the shift, when you truly realize what Bitcoin is and being early and realizing that, oh, we're early.
Was there some sort of fear getting involved in Bitcoin early when you realize what Bitcoin really is and what you could do?
No, for me, it's always been excitement. It's always been, thank goodness we're early. I like being on. And it's funny. I think from the normie perspective, I'm on the bleeding edge of tech most times. But I think from my perspective, I'm in the, you know, the early majority is how it feels to me. I never feel like I'm bleeding, bleeding edge. But I think in terms of the macro, I probably am.
But it really excites me being able to look at a technology.
And now that I've matured and I've learned more about how the world works and I have this
repertoire of, I don't know, success or I'd say just experience broadly, I think I have
a better ability to see technology and then understand how it can actually change the
world for the good and for the bad.
And then also, I think more importantly, weed out the things that won't.
And funny enough, the technology that actually changes the world is actually things that I think look more like historical technology just, you know, brought to modern times.
And I think that's a really cool thing as well.
So, yeah, it's been a really fun journey to be able to look at Bitcoin for what it is, which is like it's not a financial instrument.
It's so much deeper, so much more than that.
And really, it's like a yeah, it's it's a it's a liberation tool.
And I think that's that that realization, the conviction, the, you know, the evil forces that want to prevent that.
They all they all look like obstacles to me.
And I love obstacles.
I love jumping over obstacles.
I was going to ask you this question.
When you realize the power of personal transformation, because on this show, we talk a lot about personal transformation.
When you realized the personal transformation, the personal transformational power of Bitcoin, were you, did you catch yourself in a moment of being in fear of a this empowers me this much?
Now I need to go do something.
Yeah, great question.
I don't know that Bitcoin itself has ever pushed me to a point of that.
but bitcoin i would say has laid a foundation to be in the constant pursuit of personal
responsibility and when you think about personal responsibility like with your you know with your
money is one thing with your health is one thing but with your soul with your spirit with your
morality this is like this is where things get very interesting and deep and convicting and
and that's not i think i think bitcoin is a likely catalyst to get to that spot but it's not
necessarily Bitcoin centered. It's I think it's much, much deeper, much more than than Bitcoin.
But definitely the journey of the journey of personal responsibility is an important one.
And it's a deep one. And I worry that we as a society have lost all touch with personal
responsibility. And it's it's very traumatizing to see a world or to think about a world where
personal responsibility is outsourced. And I'm hopeful I'm hopeful that Bitcoin will be a catalyst
to that but ultimately you know it ends with with a relationship with jesus it ends in this way
right and uh and i'm i'm pretty i'm pretty bullish on that right and speaking of um kind of
finding finding jesus finding your path were you and personal let's talk about personal
responsibility because this is something that big winners come to come to to realize and then a lot
of us still haven't realized in different aspects of our life right now you have money where you know
what some money is and you're saving in some money but that's a more big winner there's a lot of big
winner right now are making it about stacking stats which is great and the the concern i have
is that i see big winners also letting go of their life to do that in the sense that they have a
mattress they have a chair and they're stacking stats good for you right good for you and i respect
that. And I, you know, there's there's certain perks that goes into that. But I see people
that give up on weddings, give up on honeymoon, give up on summer camps for their kids. And
they're sacrificing on these experiential things for themselves on the lifestyle to say that I'm
able to success. I'm building towards that generational wealth. And sometimes I ask myself,
where is that balance? Where is that trade off? And so let's talk about personal responsibilities.
In your view, like what are the most important elements of personal responsibilities?
Like if we were to say we I want to be someone who take responsibility for myself, what areas should I be looking into to be that person?
I think first and foremost, it's humility and rejecting any temptation to push the blame somewhere else.
if somebody wrongs you and this is something that I think Gary V actually talks about and and I align
with deeply I don't align with you know some things actually I don't align with everything
anybody says and I think that's a really important thing to like forge your own path and slay your
heroes to an extent but you know if if somebody wrongs you we have a natural inclination to and
actually I have a personal story about this so somebody stole about just over five hundred
thousand dollars from from Bitcoin. Well, we had to go to court. There was a big lawsuit. It was
like it was brain damage. It cost us a bunch of money in in lawyers. It was just like it was no
good. And it's very natural to be like, that guy sucks. And, you know, that's probably like the
natural response to when any whenever anybody wrongs you. But I think the better, healthier
attitude is to understand where did I go wrong that that person was in a position to steal from
us in in that way. And when you have this mindset towards things, you can identify the gaps,
whether it be security gaps, whether it be mindset gaps, whether it be philosophy gaps,
whatever your gap might be, and get this incredible self awareness skill to be able to actually
identify where am I acting unfavorably, because like it or not, the reason somebody can steal from
you is your fault. You know what I mean? That's like, you know, if somebody if somebody breaks
into your house and steals this this tree it's like why did you have a house that was so easy to
break into you know what i mean not like that guy shouldn't have done that for sure that guy
shouldn't have done that but you can only control you and so what this does is it simultaneously
um it takes power away from the persecutor let's call them and it brings power back to yourself
it's deeply empowering to think i can solve all of my problems and i'm and i'm talking you know
more on like the metaphysical, like not the spiritual, right? Spiritually, we're damned and
we need help to do that. But like, just actually, physically speaking, you can solve all of your
problems. And sure, there might be some bad luck and bad circumstances and all this stuff. But how
you respond to that is completely inside your control. And if you actually want to have a shot
at being, you know, having this personal responsibility and actually increasing
personal responsibility, you look in yourself and you realize, where did I go wrong? What can I do
better in the future and then move towards that. And when you frame every problem in that mindset,
then I swear you're going to have more opportunity for success and prosperity because you're going to
actually be focused on your power and not focused on, you know, giving like you just when you blame
somebody else, you give them all the power, right? Oh, I'm just helpless. I couldn't have done
anything differently. And I'm being robbed. I've been stolen. I, you know, like in our case,
two-year legal battle and all these legal fees and blah, blah, blah. And at the end, it worked
out because we were able to suppress the emotion. We were able to understand what was at stake.
We stayed the course. We stayed humble. And we just went through it. And we won. And it's like,
we got all the cash back. We got legal fees. We got interest. We won. And that wouldn't have been
the case if we were just playing the victim. And so when you get out of this victim mindset,
and I think, by the way, the victim mindset that the world is, it's very intentional.
It's very easy to control people that are convinced they can't do anything, right?
Oh, I outsource.
Like, we've all been outsourcing our money for a century.
But we've also been outsourcing our education for a century.
We trust, like, literally, we trust strangers to teach the next generation.
And then we wonder why the next generation, and by the way, the strangers that teach the
next generation, they're not like, that's not the pristine job.
That's not like the highest salary.
We don't have the upper echelon desiring to do that.
And I think teachers are amazing and they think they work incredibly hard, but they're
just, they're, they're not, they've not been put in a position to succeed.
And then same thing, we outsource our medicine, we outsource our health, we outsource our
food.
Like we are walking through the world as outsourced machines.
And when you look at that, flip that on its head, you take control of your money, you take
control of your kid's education, you take control of your diet, you buy whole foods
and not packaged foods.
Like every single thing that we outsource, we are giving power to somebody else.
And that a slow drip that very dangerous And I think that Bitcoin kind of wakes you up to that and then shows you that you can yeah that you can kind of take that power back How do you think about the personal responsibility on the mental spiritual side of things
Like where right now you see people are not taking personal responsibility mentally, psychologically or spiritually right now?
Yeah, this is a hard one.
you know, mentally, especially I have yet to find a problem personally that I couldn't just
brute force through habit. I don't drink alcohol. I don't, I don't, I don't take substance. I drink
caffeine through the form of coffee and green tea. And I probably eat too much sugar. But other than
that, I'm like substance free. And that hasn't always been this way. I have a, I have an extremist,
high energy, addictive personality. And so, you know, when I participate in substance or gambling
or any type of like dopamine activities is like, whoa, it's hardcore. And so, you know,
running through that track, though, I kind of realized that and then, you know, take the
responsibility to like to stop that. And I think it comes from having personal responsibility for
the purpose of having an external responsibility, meaning like I can't be a good husband if I'm
chasing dopamine hits. I can't be a good father. I can't be a good businessman. I can't be a good
a good I can't be a good boss I can't be a good son like and when you start to actually want to be
whatever a good leader a good father a good husband a good friend a good son a good nephew
when you actually want to be those things then it's just very easy to make decisions but you
need to actually want to be those things and I think that we have this world of apathy that just
doesn't really care help me understand here because I totally agree but there's so many people
they would say the same thing.
Oh, I want to be good, right?
Like I want to do the right thing.
That's what most of us would do.
We would want to do, right?
And then we say we want to do our best
in a family setting.
We want to do our best in a professional setting.
We want to be the best daughter, son, husband,
father, mom that we ever want to be.
But they don't go there anyways.
They break people's heart anyways.
And then they slack off anyways
or don't take care of their children the way they do anyways.
Like, where is that gap coming from?
Yeah, so probably two places.
At the root level, it just comes from the human condition.
It comes from the fact that humans are rooted in sin
and we are not capable without a savior to climb out of that.
I don't believe anything that I have done or anyone can do
from like a salvation or like a self-help perspective.
I don't think you can achieve maximum self-help without Jesus.
That's kind of, that's the only logical decision
that I think exists in the whole world.
But on the physical or on the direct level,
you can see that in a person and identify that in yourself
in how you receive feedback.
If somebody tells you, if you say,
hey, I want to be a good person.
And they're like, then how come you're always doing XYZ bad thing?
And like, whoa, don't tell me about that.
I don't want to hear that.
That's what you're talking about.
You're rude.
How dare you bring that up?
I'm offended and I'm out of here.
And I'm never talking to you again.
If this is your response to feedback,
then you have to like really think to yourself,
oh, like nobody can really say anything to me
that offends me.
If you tell me I'm a bad father,
I will ask you why.
How I want this insult.
Where's my blind spot?
Like I'm deeply interested in learning
why anyone would perceive me to be a bad father.
I want to be a good father.
And if you think I'm not,
please tell me why.
I'm starving for this feedback.
If you say I'm a, if my wife, if my wife were to come up to me and say, hey, I don't feel
loved.
I wouldn't be like, how dare you say that?
I do this.
I'd be like, okay, let's fix this.
Like my job is to make you feel loved.
How do I fix this better?
It's not some personal attack on me.
It's some like, it's like if anybody in your life loves you so much to give you direct
insights, direct data into how you can improve, take it.
And understand that, you know, you can take that data in without any emotion and then analyze it and just be like, do I agree or disagree?
And it just becomes easy.
Of course.
But you have to understand this is easier said than done.
Oh, yeah.
So my next question is, are you always, have you always been like this?
Do you feel like you have just this lucky gene that nobody, you don't take anything hard to hard and always at ease?
Or it's a really learned behavior?
Learned behavior.
It's definitely, it's learned behavior.
It's difficult.
It's a muscle you have to.
And again, the single greatest thing that has helped me here is reading the Bible and
understanding prayer relationship with Jesus.
Like, you know, if you read the Bible, we're like, we're shown these examples.
We're shown this stuff.
And so the prayer, I went through a season of praying a prayer of change desire.
Don't help me through situations.
Change my desires so that I can adapt to situations.
And that's such a such a different.
And like, I think it worked.
Praise God.
I'm like, I'm a changed man.
And and I think that that's not by my doing.
So maybe it's maybe it's lucky gene.
But I think it's deeper than that.
I think that I've got this.
Yeah, I'm I've got this desire to truly follow Jesus.
And I feel like I've got a relationship with him that I can ask questions, ask for change,
desire, ask for humility, ask for grace.
You know, I can ask to love my enemy and my heart has changed.
That's and that's where I think things get really fascinating is we we think about our
emotions as if they're like this all encompassing power that just has to be harnessed.
But I would probably think we just we actually want and need our emotions to be driving us
towards the vision we have for our life.
And if they're getting in the way, and if you're that person that's like always losing
his mind and no one can talk to you and no one can issue or offer you feedback. Like you got to look
in the mirror and at some point just be like, okay, what's the next most important thing that I can do
towards changing that? And maybe it's just you go through a whole week and you write down every time
you lost your temper externally. And then for the next week, you just attempt to just don't even,
just don't lose your temper, right? You can feel all the bad feelings, but just don't give into them.
And then the week after that, you think, OK, I want to cut the amount of times I feel bad in half.
And then over the course of a month or a year or a decade, like you're just going to you're just going to have different thoughts, different feelings.
See, that's an important switch right there to the point that you're asking for a change of desire.
You're asking for help. You're asking for strength and whatever to help you with the situation.
And I think this is where most people are still stuck is that we don't want change.
yeah right we don't want to change and that's the personal responsibility come into play because
if i admit i truly want this then we're like smart individuals so you see the path to go there
yeah and then it's like i have to do that yeah that's a lot of work i think that's the that's
the even more important and hard hardest part for people to to get over so do you feel like
Do you always like what is this? What is your relationship with Jesus coming from?
Were you brought up as Christian or or you brought up religious?
Yeah, I was brought up in I was brought up when I was 12, maybe 10 to 12 ish.
My mom started bringing me to church and I got super lucky, plugged into an amazing church, found a really good group of friends.
Over the next kind of few years, got baptized into my teenage years and yeah, fell in love with the church, I would say. But then as I grew older, kind of got just had other priorities. No longer. It was less of a priority for me. Stopped praying, stopped reading the Bible, stopped attending church, started partying, started enjoying the fruits of the world, if you will. And then I got super lucky. One day I just woke up and I was just like, want to go to church.
and so I just went back to church and then the next week it was just like I guess we'll do that
again and then kind of over this time over this this you know couple year period started getting
more and more invested in what the church was but still I would say it was pretty pretty lukewarm
it was there to serve me I wasn't there to serve it but then my wife who wasn't brought up in a
like overly Christian environment never went to church or anything like this she's obviously
coming with me. And she now, when we, I think just after we get married or just, yeah, right
after we get married or right around the time we were getting married, she gets baptized,
you know, she gives her life to Christ and same thing. Her and I are kind of at the early stage
of our relationship. But then through, it was really through COVID, my wife started really
diving into the Bible, really understanding like, what is all of this? Why are we like this? So,
You know, why is the government just capable and able and willing to shut everyone down
and keep everyone away?
And like, so she starts diving in.
And then I started, so she starts this kind of deeper journey into the Bible and stuff.
And I'm quasi interested, but I'm also kind of like, yeah, it's great.
Like high level, surface level.
And then I start researching for a talk that I was giving called
Time Preference with Orange Pilling Your Friends.
And the thesis on the talk was basically like,
look, you don't need to orange pill your friend in one hour or one dinner. You need to just
give them the data and then slowly nurture them and live your life. Exactly. And like when they
ask questions, you got to be there. You got to be humble. You got to, and I'm, I'm reading,
I'm like prepping and writing this talk. And I'm like, man, this sounds a lot like when you're
trying to tell someone about Jesus, like this sounds a lot like the journey to Christianity.
And so I was like, this is my wife is diving in to the Bible. I'm starting to see this like
kind of connection between orange pilling someone and like Jesus pilling someone.
And I'm like, hmm, I wonder if there is more to that. And so I started diving in a little bit more
to the relationship between money and the Bible and then how Bitcoin principles and Jesus's
teachings might align. And it was like, you know, in the Matrix, when he like wakes up, he's like,
I know Kung Fu. It felt like I just had all these like, like this whole thing just aligned. And I
I was just like, my goodness, like the relationship, like your Bitcoin journey leads you to Jesus.
And like you can you can really like this path just became so clear to me.
And so, you know, it was at that point where I was like, holy smokes, if the Bible and at that point, I was kind of just like I'd never really read the Bible intentionally.
I was kind of just thinking to myself, it's there.
It's a good book.
We should probably read it when we're feeling sad or scared or if we need a little bit of like encouragement, you just open it up.
but it's, it's, you know, it's there when we need it, but it's not. And then I started really
intentionally reading it. And I was like, whoa, it says this about money. It says this about
government. It says this about like, you know, I was shocked to hear that God's original vision
for the world was with no king with no, with, it was decentralized. And, you know, when you think
about the story of Jesus, how he comes and then he decentralizes it, he says like, you know,
Hey, you guys go and spread and make disciples of all nations. And, you know, there's like this
historical element to the Bible that I hadn't considered before. And it just it all got so
interesting and so fascinating. And then, you know, if the history of the Bible looks accurate,
then what about the spiritual side of the Bible? And it was at that point where the prayer of
change desire and, you know, like God opened my eyes, show me what you've got. And yeah,
that's kind of where how I ended up there. Wow. So and you've been in Bitcoin since 2013. So
So that's been a long time.
And it seems like during and your personal journey with Bitcoin coincide with your journey of basically growing up,
like becoming an adult and having relationships, becoming a father, homeschool and starting a company.
Like there's this life path just completely changed because of it.
But it seems like you as a person was already quite aligned with a lot of the Bitcoin ESOs on your own journey.
So I'm interested in learning in this period, like 13 years almost.
How have you changed?
What did you have to do to become this version of you that really felt uncomfortable?
Yeah, certainly there's been periods of time where like just not jumping into my emotion, my emotional response.
And that was the biggest transition, I think, was being able to identify the emotional response against the logical response.
and then understand that both are probably not correct
and finding the balance based on my end goal,
based on my mission.
And so I think the hardest thing was and is,
and I should preface this with like,
I'm generally an optimist.
I rarely, like I'm the guy,
like I'm thankful that that guy stole money from us
because it showed me a gap in how we create partnerships
that we can like fix in the future.
Like it's like, I'm just naturally optimistic.
And so I probably have, you know,
there are a large group of people
that would probably be like,
like that sucks like poor you and I'm like I'm just thankful it wasn't five million bucks like
it was only you know it was 500 not only 500k but like it wasn't more it didn't cripple us we were
able to survive and we got through it and like no problem right so I just generally have that like
happy-go-lucky optimism I suppose and so I don't feel like I can't unfortunately draw into any like
really tumultuous period except for in hindsight the period before diving into like I feel like my
path like diving into Jesus. I feel like my path is clearer. My mission is clearer. I'm having more
fun at work. I feel like I'm doing more more so than ever. I feel like all of my efforts are
converging into what Adam was created to do. And the journey to get here was effectively just one
of constant evaluation against myself, like, which is like, not always pleasant, right? Getting,
you know, I sit here and I'm like, just make sure you take feedback. But like, I didn't use to take
feedback pretty good. I used to be the defensive one that was like, no, you're wrong. Like I'm
doing things better. And realizing that actually another good book that I read was Never Split
the Difference. If you, if you look, if you read that book by Chris Voss, it's like, you know,
he looks at all conversations as just data. And when you can identify what, if you get all the
data and then you get to identify which data you want to use based on your, on your missions and
on your purpose for life, then I think you win. And so I don't know if that was necessarily a
painful journey, but certainly like reconciling the problems I've had in the past was not,
was not super easy. But yeah, I think looking, looking at life as a journey and as each day is
you have at the end of the day, whether you like it or not, you're going to be better or worse than
you were yesterday. And if you're just constantly pursuing, just getting a little bit better every
single day then that compounds like crazy right right and there's two two concepts in spirituality
and bitcoin that having that seem to have a little bit of a trade-off or contradiction in
bitcoin we talk about sovereignty we talk about take responsibility to be sovereign
becoming sovereign individual that's the whole narrative and then in spirituality you have
surrender yeah of letting go and you have like losing yourself in the act of service and being
like ego desks and community and service like all these things like how do you see the connection
where the where the difference between being sovereign as a bitcoiner and being a surrenderer
to God? Totally. This is such a good question. So when you when you start your Bitcoin journey,
it almost always starts for fiat gains, right? You find Bitcoin because number go up,
and you want your number to go up. And so you buy Bitcoin. And then you research Bitcoin because now
you're financially invested. And you realize there's more to money than just number go up.
It's mostly about freedom, actually. And then in that journey, the like, I'll give you a first
example again i put away one bitcoin in 2017 and i said when this bitcoin can buy me a mclaren 720s
i'm gonna get it like when one bitcoin is about 400k this is my this is my bitcoin for that car
that that same you know it's it's it's it's one utxo in a in a cold card like locked away
clean and square clean and square but that is now for my grandkids i don't want a mclaren anymore
I don't care for one, you know, I and I think that that that mindset, it's like you get into something.
And when you get into Bitcoin, you do want that, you know, and then so your Bitcoin journey, then it ends up on sovereignty.
And sovereignty is like, you know, the McLaren, let's let's everyone's got their McLaren, right?
Maybe it's a house. Maybe it's a vacation. Maybe it's a car. Maybe it's maybe it's whatever.
Maybe it's a painting. I don't know. But everyone's got their McLaren that they're saving for.
And then you realize like through your Bitcoin journey that McLaren doesn't really matter.
I'm not that interested in a McLaren anymore.
And so then you're all about personal freedom, personal responsibility.
And this, I think, is where it gets interesting.
And if your journey, you know, brings you to the Bible, you start to understand that God actually wants you to be liberated.
God, there's a whole history of God liberating slaves, of God liberating oppressed people from a tyrannical government.
That's like, I think that's the entire Old Testament.
It's like the history of the Old Testament is literally just that.
It's like humans gain power, humans enslave sub, you know, like this, this subclass of
society.
And then God intervenes and like breaks the chains.
And then we just repeat, repeat.
It's like, it's just this story of constant liberation of slavery.
And I think that our money system is a form of, of slavery.
And so you can kind of see this example in the Bible.
And then you understand that there is something greater than you on the earth.
And your hunt for sovereignty turns into a just a biblical version of yourself.
And you understand that being sovereign from humans is a lot different than being sovereign from your creator from your God And the surrender to God is actually only like the only thing that matters
And, you know, if I felt like we see throughout the Bible, God asking difficult things.
We also see him.
I love this quote.
God doesn't call the equipped.
He equips the called.
And I love that, you know, and I don't know where I land on this.
I would like to think that if God called me to like start from zero, I'd like to think that I would.
I have no idea.
I don't feel that calling, thankfully.
Yes.
But like your relationship needs to get like to the spot where because the lowest time preference, which is what we learn in Bitcoin, learn about low time preference.
You learn about you don't want the McLaren.
You want your great granddaughter to have a good life.
Like this is the this is the tradeoff that you kind of that you kind of make.
But the lowest time preference is not really physical assets on Earth.
It's glory in heaven.
And so, yeah, as your time preference
gets lower and lower and lower
and you suppress these like high time preference
earthly desires,
you naturally end up in a state of surrender
because last time I checked,
I have no influence in heaven, only God does.
If my low time preference is mission,
is glory in heaven,
then my inputs have changed.
The way that I act changes naturally
because I no longer want the Lamborghini or the McLaren.
I now want glory in heaven.
And so when our desires change, your actions just naturally follow your.
Right. And if you look at the young generation now, like from a global scale, but I guess mostly in countries where it was previously Christian, that the ratio of people believe in God and their behavior after that becomes there's consequences.
Right. So what do you think is standing between like for those of whom who are struggling a little bit, because right now everybody is a little bit like with the society, like with, you know, like our mental state and everybody's traumatized and everybody has generations of generations of trauma coming, trickling down from history, from from the individual families and everybody carry all these wounds already within them.
and we can all benefit from God's teaching.
So what's standing between individuals
finding their relationship to God?
Probably humility,
which is probably why Bitcoin leads you to Jesus
is because we've got this,
we grow up being told that humans are the apex.
We're the top of the food chain.
We're the only ones that were smart enough
to be able to communicate with our voice boxes.
We're the only ones that figured out the industrial revolution.
We're the only ones that can build buildings.
We're the only ones that have evolved.
We completely take God out of this equation.
For our entire formative years, we're taught, you are the luckiest.
You know, the consequence of your ancestors' evolution has made you the apex.
Congratulations.
This is what it is.
And you just naturally have this kind of ego and pride.
And so now what does that ego and pride manifest?
Well, if I'm the apex and we're just a happy accidents of molecules colliding, then I'm going to take what I want.
I'm the apex.
This girl looks good.
Let me have her.
Right.
This food looks good.
Let me have it.
It's like, you know, I'm the apex.
It's full of seed oils.
Who cares?
I'm the apex.
There's a pill that can help me get skinny.
Let me have it.
I'm the apex.
And then the Bible tells a different story.
The Bible says you were knit together in your mother's womb.
that something, someone, the creator made you for a purpose and made the earth for a purpose and has
a plan for the earth and has, you know, loves the earth so much. It pains him so much when the earth
goes into turmoil that he sent like his son to be perfect and then die. And like there's this
spiritual warfare. And like the Bible tells a completely different story where you're part of
a plan, you're not some apex creature that just gets to do whatever he wants. And, you know,
when you become, when you become part of a plan that you don't really have much control of,
we have free will, but we, you know, at the end of the day, the plan's going to happen with,
with or without you. The plan is in motion. You're deterministic. No, I'm not a, I'm not a,
I don't believe that the Bible is, is, is, I'm not like a Calvinist. I'm also not an Armenian
or Armenian?
What's the,
what's the,
have you heard of this?
Like the other side?
Yeah,
the other side of it.
My question here is,
usually are you
a probabilistic person
or deterministic person?
What's probabilistic?
What is,
how do you define this?
What do you think
is the nature of reality?
Like,
do you think the nature
of reality is determinism,
like deterministic,
or is probabilistic?
I would say probabilistic
just because I hear that
to be the opposite
of determinist.
I believe that
God has given us
free will.
This is such a good question, actually, because we've been diving into this in our church series this last month is around like the it's called Behold Your God.
And we talked about the sovereignty of God, which kind of like there are certain, you know, if you look at the story of Jesus, what the Bible says about the story of Jesus, it says that God planned Jesus's death, which is crazy.
That's like, that would, you know, hint towards a determined society.
However, it also says that the Roman Empire that killed Jesus acted in their own free
will, which is like, what?
You know, it's like God's playing chess with pieces that can move on their own.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
And so I think the Bible tells a very clear story that God has a plan.
God has a plan for us and for our lives.
But it also shows that we have free will to choose.
God didn't just make a bunch of morally autonomous drones that just, you know, he's selected people to just be with or not.
You know, look at like one of the most famous verses, John 3, 16.
God so loved the world that whoever believes in him, it's not like it's not who God has chosen to believe in him.
It's that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
This is the promise of God, that we have free will to find, to believe in, find, love, and then serve Jesus to have eternal life, glory in heaven.
Cool note about glory in heaven, too, is that Jesus, there's a story of Jesus in the book of Matthew, where he's talking about his disciples ask him, who's the greatest in heaven?
And he says, whoever humbles himself like a child will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
It's like, it's all these Bitcoiner things just wrapping up into the Bible, which is amazing.
But I think that we have free will to operate.
But I also believe that God is sovereign
and that his plan will prevail.
God knows us better than we know ourselves.
I think he can probably anticipate our instincts.
And, you know, you obviously,
you don't have any free will over when and where you were born.
And so maybe God, maybe that's God's orchestration.
And he puts the pieces in place.
He knows how people act.
And so does he predetermine it?
Or does he just rely on our free will?
I have no idea.
These things are way above my human brain.
I feel sometimes like when I read the Bible and have these big thought provoking discussions,
I feel like an ant trying to read blueprints for like the greatest building on earth.
Like, you know, I just, I just can't, I can't fathom.
I can't understand.
But what I do know and have faith in is that there is God's macro plan in motion.
And I deeply want to participate.
I deeply want glory in heaven.
And I deeply want to let Jesus's kingdom be on earth and to participate in that.
And so I think I'm using my free will to, you know, to do that.
Maybe I'm not.
Maybe this is just like, well, you know, maybe not.
But it feels free because I feel like I can stop at any time.
I don't feel like I'm being manipulated or controlled.
And so, yeah, I don't align.
But I actually have a problem with these camps.
Everything has a camp now, right?
Are you, you know, are you predeterministic or are you probabilistic? Are you a libertarian or are you a socialist? Are you a Democrat or are you Republican? Are you a big blocker? Are you a small blocker? Are you a knots, core knots or core or are you a knots? Like we've got humans just love to get into camps. And really, this is, you know, are you a financial engineering fiat bro or are you a sovereign bitcoiner in self custody?
Like we just put ourselves into these camps.
Usually these camps have leaders.
And I think we just need to do away with that.
We need to get back to basics, back to like first principles thinking, you know, like
Saylor does a lot of good things and he does a lot of bad things for Bitcoin, Michael Saylor.
And it's like, that's okay.
You can, you can, you don't need to be all in on MSTR to like, you know, to, to, to own
the stock.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like you can just, you can just, the Bible doesn't show us a world of just dualism.
It actually shows us a world of like multiple different paths converging into one creator's
desire.
And I want, if I could leave the earth, I would just get people out of their camps, slay
your heroes, follow Jesus and get out of the self-identified politics or religion or like
other things.
Even, even within the church, you know, you look at Jesus comes centralized, then he decentralizes
it, which is amazing.
We have all these different, but then, and this is the problem with decentralization,
we've got the Catholic church that kind of forms a few hundred years later.
And then we've got this Protestants protesting what the Catholic church was doing.
So we have to split.
And now you're a Catholic or a Protestant.
You're no longer a follower of Jesus.
You're a Catholic or you're a Protestant and you're getting this camp.
And now the Protestants are unhappy with each other.
So now we've split there too.
And now you've got these different denominations.
And these denominations have happened a bunch of different times.
And it's just like, come on.
Like, are we arguing about Catholic or Protestantism?
Or are we arguing about like, what does the Bible say?
And how does Jesus look?
And I think that we try to get back to those basics.
If you think about it, it's about the teaching itself.
It's about the wisdom.
It's not about who said what, when, how, you know, like, it's not about who is fighting,
who is about the word being said.
Are they wise?
Can you learn something from it?
And that's the most important thing.
And I have a slightly kind of different experience with God, I guess, my path to spirituality.
And this relationship came from, was a Bitcoiner actually.
We had this discussion and I brought up in an ACS society, I brought up from an ACS family.
I was always into spiritual things without pointing fingers at it.
I was always into psychology, human minds and all, which kind of led me to Bitcoin in a way.
And then I had this conversation with a Bitcoiner and he was talking about this peer-to-peer relationship with God.
And then I was, it got stuck with me somehow.
I was like peer to peer relationship with God.
I was just contemplating that word and going through my life challenges, right?
And then I was like, okay.
And then I started to think about it in the back of my mind.
And then I start to have experiences that are random.
I would have random conversations and they would say things to me that are,
you can tell that are really, really genuine.
They're really, really genuine.
and then they would be like jesus loves you god loves you and they would be like as they would
show up as messengers and give me fruitful thoughts and then i developed i started to
develop this relationship because i didn't grow up with jesus teaching like i'm not literal in that
sense in a religious sense so i just going through my life and and basically have an open heart
wanting to learn because I was lost. And then last summer, I had this experience where I was just by
the beach and I was sitting on the bench and having a moment and not in a good mood, but I was just
whatever. And then this random guy came over and sat on the same bench with some distance and started
to eat his sandwich with no words being spoken and all. And then I just felt this whatever and I
start crying whoa i just started crying on the bench and then i started like the the tears trickled
down and then and then like two minutes later i couldn't contain and i was like started to make
sound and then he was just sitting there eating his sandwich just sat there right and like no no
contact or anything no no words and then when he was finally done he looked at me and he said jesus
loves you and then he walked away wow that was it like no name no nothing and he walked away and
he was a little bit limping and i was like what and then i i was looking at him walking away
and as he was walking far enough for one second he was almost stopping to limp like he was like
walking as normal wow and two days before that two days before that another incident
different location by myself, by the beach, on the bench.
And there's this guy walked past me.
It was like this seawall.
So they're walking, walking, walking.
And he was looking at me when he was approaching me.
And our eyes crossed.
He slowed down as he was walking.
And we were just looking at each other.
And he walked, he walked, he walked.
And he finally, just before walking away,
he stopped and he sat down next to me.
On the seawall?
Yeah.
Okay.
And he sat down next to me.
And then he said, he said, I'm sorry, you have to go through this.
He basically sat down next to me and prayed for me.
He was like, can I pray for you?
And then I said, OK.
And then he prayed for me next to me, had like a one minute long prayer for my health, for my mood and everything.
I wish you a great life.
Goodbye.
And then he walked away.
This is two days before the stranger on the bench.
Holy smokes.
What a week.
So I have some of these experiences, like random conversations.
and then I learned to develop this relationship with God
where if I need, I don't pray often.
And when I pray, I'm usually in deep shit.
Like I feel like I'm in deep shit and I'm like, I need to pray.
And I always have one prayer, just one.
And I would always say, thank you.
I would only say thank you.
Because I know there's, I'm personally deterministic
and I think there's a reason why I'm here.
And my faith in this is that everything happens for a reason.
for the better. And if I can't see it yet, that's fine. I already know. I just need to trust. I just
need to have faith that it is for the better. So I'm in these moments, I'm saying thank you because
I know it's better for the better. I don't know it yet. You know better and you put me through this.
So thank you very much because I know the best is yet to come. That's a cool mindset. There's
biblical evidence of this in the, I think it's the book of Corinthians. The author is called Paul
and Paul's writing a letter to the church of Corinth.
And he, I think as Corinthians,
I'm gonna make me wrong on this,
but he basically says that it is only because of Jesus's death
that Jews get to be in heaven.
And that's such a crazy like mindset,
Jews and Gentiles, both Gentiles being non-Jewish people,
both get to be in heaven.
And so to your point, like taking this horrific evil
that was able to, you know, change the world.
And so to your, you know,
to your kind of like deterministic mindset,
it's like, and this is where I get stuck
in this determinist versus free will piece is,
you know, we're taught, we're told
there's biblical evidence that God will use all things
for his glory and our good.
And that's a really important deep faith and trust
that you need to have to, you know, say thank you.
It's challenging to do.
What to act after that, right?
Like we always have to,
I think the biggest difference that I had
after being in contact with God
and having this relationship
is really having the higher self
stepping in way more.
It's really having embodied the God consciousness.
Like what would Jesus do?
What would the God do in this situation?
And then you remove yourself, right?
To the point that it's God acts.
Yeah, yeah.
And having the humility to pursue that.
But at the same time, if you say that, God act through you.
That's a tremendously, seemingly egotistic thing to say.
So my next question is, what is your relationship with ego in the context of spirituality and Bitcoin?
Because we say, we say, stay humble, stack sets.
But we see Bitcoiners or just people around us in general, sometimes not humble, sometimes not stacking sets.
where sometimes that can't match that.
What is the, like, where do you think the ego comes in here,
like, to play a part?
And how can we, like, what is your personal relationship with ego?
And what is the transformation you have to go through with ego
to be where you are, be the person you are?
Yeah, I think my ego is an interesting one
because I definitely really like speaking.
I like, I love influencing and inspiring people.
I mean my personal mission is just to inspire the next generation I just I just deeply want the next
generation to thrive and I believe in generational wealth and prosperity I believe in generational
faith I believe in generational trauma like I believe that I mean even the bible like we're
called to leave an inheritance to our children's children like that's the calling of the bible
which I align with yeah I think that means set set the next generation up for success and I think
that ultimately comes from thinking about somebody else before yourself is kind of like the definition
of a cooled, of a chilled ego.
And I think that I'm probably getting it wrong
in a lot of spots.
And I'm definitely hoping that I'm able
to take the feedback when someone points that out.
And I think that ego, ego is such a,
without ego, with no ego, you're apathetic.
And that's not good.
With too much ego, you're prideful.
And you're the driver.
And your desires trump everything.
And that's not good.
And so like everything, it's just balance.
And it's having having Alex Formosie says this thing about like entrepreneurs.
He says entrepreneurs have have three traits.
One is this this delusional confidence that they can do absolutely anything.
Two is this horrific fear that they'll never be able to do it.
And then the third is this like I don care attitude and that nobody can get in their way And I think that those three things pulling and pushing all together it just equilibrium and finding the equilibrium between those three forces
the confidence, the fear and the like attitude, I guess, where there's yeah. And then obviously
all of that driving you towards towards a purpose towards God's plan for your life.
And that's probably where where I align. So yeah, what do you have to do? I think it's just
constant feedback and fix it. Right, right. What does that balance look like for you?
Um, I think it's running towards pain, running towards discomfort. It's probably seeking out
feedback, right? Reducing yes men and driving towards actual betterment, actual improvement.
Yeah, I think for me, it's just being really open to pain and discomfort.
And then, yeah, I think ultimately it's just like faith and faith and understanding in God's sovereignty over the world, I would say.
Interesting. You say your answer is running towards discomfort when the question is how to balance the ego, right?
because that means because that's actually spot on.
If you think about it, you have to be able to just brush it off
when your ego is hurt and stand up and go on to do your thing
and move towards your mission instead of saying, oh, my ego is hurt.
Yeah, yeah. Crying a hole. You get all sad.
Yeah, right. So I think that's a really great way to put it.
Let's talk about love because when we get into the Jesus lessons
and God's teaching, like a lot of it is love.
God is love.
And to this day,
when you're just wandering around,
interacting with people,
can you tell just by brief interactions
or just by looking at them,
their relationship with God?
You know, I'd like to think so,
but I also...
Have an educated guess.
I probably have an educated guess.
And probably, you know,
I mean, really, when we interact with someone,
we're having one of two responses.
I want to be like that person
or I don't want to be like that person.
And so, you know, in my mind, there's objectivity in that.
I think that objectively speaking, we're not all the same,
but we all should want to be like God.
And I'd like to think that I have a good understanding
of, you know, what, who God is and what he calls us to do.
I think ultimately what that comes down to
is a level of humility that is unmatched,
coupled with this servant leadership,
which probably stems from humility, but like, you know,
the servant leadership is, I think, the big one.
Can you die to your ego and serve someone that you perceive to be lesser than?
And, you know, if someone's not willing or able to do that, then, you know, I don't want to be like that person.
I'm inspired by people that are by all worldly metrics superior.
Right. This apex kind of concept that we talked about earlier, but that their actions don't display that.
I think that's really cool. So, yeah, that's how I like judge.
But then we're called not to judge. So it's tough.
I'm asking about ego in that context is because I've been I came up with this question and I asked myself and I have a guess.
So I wanted to hear your answer on that.
Like I was wondering to myself, if God has God complex, would it make God less God?
Good question.
I don't think God can have God complex because he is God.
I think that God, you know, when you read the Bible, like God gets to be egotistical.
like we are we are called to worship we're called to praise him and only him like god's got god's
got all these characteristics of like uh you know like a terrible narcissist so god don't have to
stay humble well no because he he's here because of him and i think the humility that we have
we're we're humble before god because he's our creator right because he chose to put us here
because he could take it all away in a second.
And we're petrified.
Like that's too much glory.
That's like, whoa.
No human can make that claim.
And so because God is outside of time,
God created time.
God is timeless.
God is formless.
God is everywhere and nowhere all at once.
Like God snapped his fingers and made the sun,
the ball of perma energy.
Like God is everything.
Anyone less than everything doesn't get to make that claim.
But because God is everything, made everything, can take everything away.
I think he gets to be.
If God is everything, aren't we part of that?
Yeah, so this is the right question.
So there is a, there's some logic that can get there on the like, we are all,
this is like the universalism type of theology, right?
I don't align with this ideology because I can't get to the natural heaven.
Heaven becomes earth.
And the Bible tells us very clearly that heaven is perfect.
Heaven is without pain.
Heaven is without suffering.
Heaven is really just eternity with God.
And it's very clear that it's eternity with God, not as God.
And I think that for that reason, I probably don't align with the idea that we are, that God is in us, that we need to like find him.
I think that the Holy Spirit is in us and that's from God, not by God in us, if that's making any kind of sense.
Yeah, I see what you mean. Speaking of love, God being love, if we were to tell you, where do you find the difference of decisions where it comes from love or where it comes from fear?
I mean, is there a difference? Both those are just emotions that I think fear comes out of the idea of losing something. Love comes out of the desire of building someone else.
up. And so it just probably depends on your motive. I think that that's actually a really
interesting thought to dive down is like, and really only you get to, you know, only you get to
kind of decide that like, you can arguably give your wife the best possible life on paper,
and it be wrong, because you only did that to be able to say that you did that, or, or because
she'll, she'll give you what you want, right? Like, are you willing and able to love someone
so much and ask for nothing in return is really what the deepest form of of acting out of love
would be and i think that we'd all like to say yes but like you know test it like you know just
be self-aware and and test it uh can your you know can your wife just be miserable and not do
anything and you know you guys don't have intimate time and like none of this stuff and you still
want to serve her can this happen for a day for a week for a month for a year for a decade and can
like and like the funny thing is if you were just relentlessly trying to serve your spouse you know
they will just want to serve you back like you know we we get what we want by serving the other
but only if it's genuine and yeah you know i would argue that your servant leadership stops when you
start asking for something in return right right and what is how has kind of spirituality or bitcoin
to have impacted your relationship because you've really matured in that process, right? You've
become a husband, you've become a father. And how have these kind of ESOs that made you adapt
certain behaviors or values in your relationship that you probably wouldn't have? Yeah, I think
it's low time preference and humility. And actually, like, pragmatically, my wife and I,
about a year ago, maybe a little bit longer, actually, yeah, longer, maybe a year and a half
ago now. We sat down. So we've been planning and running a system called Traction at work at
Bitcoin Well, and we run it at GetBased also. And it's basically this concept of like having this
insane 10 year BHAG and then just working backwards from that. And it's going so well at work at the
companies that I was kind of just like, we should do this at home too. So my wife and I sat down
very intentionally. We said, okay, our youngest was or our oldest was about seven. We were kind
I'm like, all right, 10 years from now, like he's adult, right?
What does our life need to look like for us to be considered,
for us to be like, we did it.
Like we're happy with where we ended up.
And it was like us and the kids are in love with the Lord.
That's first and foremost.
Her and I have a tremendous relationship.
The kids all have the idea and the understanding of,
you know, what a healthy relationship looks like.
you know we have the we're stewarding God's resources appropriately you know we have lots
and lots of kids the kids themselves have their own relationship like so we started having
just this amazing brainstorm of what is does 10 years now look like and they're like okay that's
true in 10 years what is has to happen in three years for us to be on track and what about this
year and then what about right now and since doing that that single very intentional and you'll learn
that you and your wife
or you and your husband,
you're probably wanting different things
and you get to come together
to now have one single family mission.
You have, and now when her and I make decisions,
it's just like, how does this help?
How does this hurt, right?
There's the 10-year vision.
There's the goal.
Are we closer or further away?
Then my question here is this,
it's about commitment
because right now,
like there's a lot of big winners maturing
and going through,
going to the season of,
okay now it's time to now i have some money yeah and good for you right good for you and now now
what right and they're thinking about building a family and then they're thinking about starting
or maintaining their long-term relationship and doing something with it and what you said was
deeply touching and was really reassuring from a female's perspective because i know that girls
aren't like this right if if they're treated nicely if they're they're treated fairly and
they're loved and nurtured then they have a lot of emotional energy and nurturing energy for their
spouse for their kids because they're that motherly from instinct right so but it was a lot
sometimes for men to say i want to be serving my wife because they are thinking i have a wife and
she serves me yeah so so for those of whom who are looking for love who are looking for starting
a family both men women because we have this saying as post-modern individuals i guess like
all together that oh what can i get out of this so how can we what is something that you can say to
single folks out there who are looking for love looking for relationship something that they can
shift their mindset and they could really benefit their relationship in the long term
find someone that you are very very happy to serve it's just like you know like and think of it
honestly, you know, when you, we at Bitcoin Well, we've, I've probably hired over the span of
Bitcoin Well, over 250 people. And we have a much smaller team than that. But, you know,
the rotating door and the upswings and downswings and all this craziness. And I love the interviews
where I'm interviewing them. What can you give to me? But they're also interviewing me, right?
How is the company? What is the pay going to be? Is there incentive? Is there work life? You know,
we don't have any work life balance, but it's like, you know, do I get vacation? What is the
culture like? What is the leadership style like? And I think that for, you know, we should approach
our relationships the same way. I am simultaneously asking the team member, what can you give me?
And I'm showcasing what I can give to you. And that's actually how we start all of our job
descriptions is here's what Bitcoin Well can offer you. Now, here's what we need from you.
And I think if we approach relationships the same way, you know, hey, beautiful lady,
here's what I can offer you, right?
I'm not perfect, right?
And that's a Bitcoin wealth.
We're not going to pay the highest salary.
We can't afford it.
We're not, you know,
we're not going to fly you all over the world
to go to every single Bitcoin conference.
We can't afford it,
but we're going to change the world.
We're going to enable independence.
We're going to pursue the Bitcoin standard relentlessly.
This is our promise to you.
Do you want to be a part of that?
Okay, great.
If so, here's what we need from you.
And so it's like, hey, beautiful lady,
here's what I can give to you.
Here's all of my best qualities.
And here's my flaws.
You know, here's what I'm looking for.
Are we fit?
And now it's bullshit.
Yeah, that's right.
Just like, just get to the point.
It's like, there you have it.
There's this amazing thing that I saw about the man-women roles.
And a man's job is to like make or buy the house.
But a woman's job is to make that a home.
And women think like men can go from zero to one and women go from one to 10.
And they they take all the resources like, you know, and I'm not saying this in like the like I'm just saying they bring such an amplification energy to a man.
And it's such a beautiful harmony.
It's amazing.
It's both ways.
Absolutely.
Well, if there's nothing nothing to amplify, you know, and and at the same time, if you know, if the man can't appreciate the amplification, then that's also a problem.
And I think that, you know, we misquote the Bible so frequently.
The Bible says that women are meant to serve their husbands.
And lots of women have a hard time with that.
And men ignore this part.
The Bible also says that husbands are supposed to love their wives as Christ loves the church.
And when you look at Jesus's life, you look at someone who literally suffered the most painful death in the pursuit of the church's prosperity.
And it's like, you know, okay, women, serve your husband.
husband, you know, get whipped and lash and crucified and take the burden of the world
for your wife. And that sounds like a two way street to me. That's not a one way street. That's
like, that's not women serving men. That is a partnership. It is a partnership. Yes. Going
going towards. Yeah. Going towards Jesus. And I think that's cool. I think this is great because
number one thing people need to understand that it is a partnership. It's not a it's not necessarily
about infatuation or passion or all these jazz.
Yeah, yeah.
Marrying for love is such a modern, like, nonsense concept.
But you need love.
You definitely need love as a foundation.
And you would say, as a man, you just go out there and say,
these are what I can offer to you.
And that is a lot.
Because that is a personal responsibility.
Right.
In this world, right?
That is personal responsibility at Disney.
You have to take the responsibility to improve yourself
to the point that you have the foundation
and then the confidence to say something like,
this is me.
This is what I'm looking for.
No bullshit.
And it takes a lot of honesty and humility
to be minimum bullshit.
Yeah, big time.
Well, because we all are worse than we want to be.
And we all want to show someone
a better version of ourself.
We're worried that no one will take us at face value.
And so we lie about who we are.
We lie about the face value.
and then we're surprised that when someone figures out the face value that you know they leave yeah
totally and we didn't have time to delve into the the um the homeschooling part but i but i have to
do it again yeah we'll have to do it again but i i can totally see how the idea of personal
responsibility and and love and warm relationships it's it's something that's deeply fundamental to
And I'm sure it's going to trickle down to your education, to your family.
Generations of principles, I guess, is in the making.
So we'll have to definitely do this again.
So we'll dive into more on the education and homeschooling side.
And I'm interested in learning more about the practicality and the day-to-day because it's such a myth.
There's not enough resources, not enough people who are doing it, who are sharing their stories.
So we'll be having a different conversation hopefully very soon on that front.
Last question here.
What if someone feels lost right now, financially, spiritually, or personally, what would you want them to hear?
I mean, what you heard from the stranger is pretty good.
Jesus loves you.
I think that that can feel, though, unfortunately empty.
That's a nice thing to hear.
But it kind of sounds like, you know, Santa Claus is going to buy you a gift.
It kind of sounds...
And then it happened when I already had this relationship.
So you had the impact.
So the phase was pre-existing, right?
So for someone who's lost and looking for guidance,
they're looking for guidance.
What is something that you...
So I would encourage you to read the book of John in the Bible.
The book of John.
John was like, he was this young guy full of riz.
He was, I think he was like 15 when he joined Jesus' discipleship.
He's super charismatic.
He's like this young alpha male.
And you read, when you read the story of Jesus
through that perspective, you just cannot help,
but it's gonna light you on fire.
And it's gonna like, you just want to learn and learn more.
And so I would read that book like a book.
Don't read it.
Don't piecemeal it.
Don't like just chair, like I cherry picked verses today.
Don't just do that.
Read it from start to finish.
Read it as if John is writing you a story about a man that came to save the world.
And then just get on your knees and pray for guidance.
I mean, that sounds like a weekend job.
Monday morning, you should be good.
You should at least have the next step towards...
And if you don't know what to say, just say thank you.
That's it. That's it. Yeah.
All right. Thank you so much, Adam, for joining me.
It's a really pleasant conversation.
I love diving into these topics and always appreciate it again.
So we're willing to talk about God.
And I hope this happens again.
I'm really happy to have you and have this opportunity to meet you and learn more about your principles.
And I've learned a whole bunch and I'm sure our audience have too.
Thank you so much for joining us.
And thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Live with Bitcoin.
Thanks so much for having me.
Cheers.
And we'll see you in the next one.