What do people can do to improve their individual physical and mental self-sovereignty beyond Bitcoin and self-custody, which we'll talk about?
What do you mean?
Self-sovereignty goes, I think, beyond just stacking sats probably.
In a situation in Lebanon, you know, maybe there were people around you, not the many, but the few who somehow through some sort of form of luck or skill came through this financial collapse.
Maybe a few of them were because they were in this commodity business, they did well or this service or they were in this gang or they had Bitcoin or something else.
But you still have to kind of live in the physical environment and have, like you were saying, mental health to come back or rise from these things.
Yeah, man, this is it. It was it was, you know, human support.
You know, everybody had to support one another.
Just when somebody thought they were going to break down and give up, you'd have others rally and try to comfort them and lift them up and boost them, try to distract their attention from all these dark thoughts and what have you.
But it's very difficult.
I mean, there are a lot of folks that I grew up with that I knew that are unfortunately not here anymore because of everything that unfolded.
I don't talk about this too much because there's no point of it.
It's too dark and it's not going to make much of a difference.
Just, you know, bringing back all these dark memories.
But, you know, people learned many skills.
I learned many skills.
I learned how to cut hair.
You know, I learned a little bit of plumbing.
I learned how to change tires, you know, like become a bit of a mechanic.
Like there's a lot of things that you think you will never do.
I'm a tech guy.
Like I had no business changing tires or learning how to fix a car engine or, you know, turning such tools into different, you know, different utility factors.
Right. But you learn all of these things because, you know, it's survival tactics, like how to turn a wrench into a weapon type of thing, you know, like how to use that for that.
people had to adapt like we had to become chameleons in everyday life in order to survive
because you never knew when the next threat was going to come and in those first months there was
no bitcoin anywhere like nobody nobody knew this thing even existed it was find me cash in order
to trade it for a piece of bread or some fruits and vegetables to feed my kids it was like imminent
It's like, I need to eat by 6 p.m.
Let's figure something out to get something
and then we'll split it amongst everybody that's here.
That really how everybody was rallying together And so nine months of of hell and then you know when i discovered you know when
i one day i just sat down in front of the computer again and just decided just to disconnect and i
came across that video i don't know man like i think my my past my past career just you know
came back to me and it's just you know i just felt alive for like those 30 seconds
And I had to watch that video many times because, you know, like in my mental state, I couldn't trust like if I was being delusional.
Right. Because I was so desperate that anything sounded like good news.
And so this is why, you know, I sat down, watched it several times.
And then, you know, then it just clicked.
And that's when, you know, the whole the whole rabbit hole unfolded.
But, you know, starting your life on a Bitcoin standard when everybody around you has no idea what that is and has no interest in learning about anything except where the next meal is coming from.
That is, you know, like trying to run up Mount Everest, you know, when you've had no training whatsoever.
So it's but, you know, I'm living proof that even under the most seemingly impossible conditions, when there's a strong enough will, bit by bit, you can lift yourself up and you can rebuild your life.
And once you do, you become a completely different human being.
I mean, like Tony 1.0 before the collapse.
It's not the same person sitting in front of you here having this conversation.
I was very successful in the past, like Fiat successful, very successful.
I ran three companies, extremely successful.
I was essentially retired.
So I was living the life of someone who's not worried about money.
And then you go from that to what I just described, flatlined, homeless, having to figure things that I've never done before out.
And so now money means nothing to me.
Right.
Like now when I discovered all of this, I'm completely desensitized to money.
I don't give a shit about money at all.
Even with the work that I do now, I don't do it to get rich.
I have a sense of purpose now that goes way above and beyond any form of currency that you can possibly offer me.
My mission here, my currency is the separation of money and state.
I know who's responsible for these attacks.
I know who's responsible for the evil in this world.
And I'm going to do whatever I can in order to put an end to it, if I can.
And the way I going to do this is by arming as many people as possible with the knowledge and intellect to protect themselves and opt out of the very system that is causing all of this Right We can go to war with these people This is an octopus that has grown far and wide beyond anybody capabilities like physical capabilities
So the only way to defeat it is to render it irrelevant.
And the only way I know how to do this
is by like refusing to use its product.
You opt out of the dollar, you opt out of the fiat currency,
you pretend it doesn't exist now that we have a viable option
that allows us to do this. So as of 2009, that entire world became optional as far as I'm
concerned. You don't have to live in it. Of course, it's a bit of a workout depending on where you are
to get to this level of conviction, but it is possible. And I and millions of other people are
living proof of it. And once you live in that new future, nothing phases you anymore. You know,
like you develop the sense of a fearlessness because now you know that they can't confiscate
you, they can't shut you down, they can't debase you, you don't give a shit about what they're
doing. Whatever they say, whatever they babble about, whatever they try to regulate, it doesn't
matter. You are no longer living in that world when you understand Bitcoin truly for its essence
and you just decide to walk forward, right? So there's a lot to unpack here, but really like I'm
trying to sum up the transition between someone who has done really well in a fiat world,
collapsed through reasons that have nothing to do with his failure, and then rebuilt himself
in a way that that past can no longer affect them. Yeah, I'm really trying to process all that,
you know, the ride and the journey of being very successful in the way everyone sort of
sort of denominates or sort of categorize i mean we can call it the fiat world but that's
everyone else's world for the most part i mean bitcoin adoption yeah very low
of course and and i can't imagine a fall from grace even of not my own fault i'd still have
really you know the weight of my world of the world on my shoulders and uh my pride would
probably be wounded and i get sort of the idea of like money means nothing now because we're in this
weird economy or being that traditional world but it just it can screw with people and through
no fault of your own you're in this position and now you but then you find bitcoin i i i'm but i
got to go from finding bitcoin on a video it sounds like to the mission and conviction you
have now i mean i kind of want to hear more about that journey but i can only imagine also i'm sorry
sorry to interrupt but like i can only imagine then my family being like wow we were whatever you want to call it let call it rich Now we poor And now we on our way back to stabilization again And dad this is kind of crazy what you talking about We just want to be back to normal Like now you talking about not even going back to normal when we get upright
You're talking about taking on the world and this new mission and Bitcoin standard. And what does
that mean? You know, and were they on board? Yeah, it's really interesting. Man, there's no normal
anymore when your life collapses in such a way. If you survive it, there's no way you remain the
same human being. You know, like there's a saying that when you die, you are free, right? So back
then I died. And when that happened, I became free, free of all the lies and the bullshit that
I've been fed since the day I was born. This is something that to this day, too many people
don't comprehend. They don't understand what money is. They don't understand who's behind
the money that they're slaving for. They don't understand that they're being exploited on a
daily basis, no matter where you are in this world, if you're using that product.
Like for them, like this sounds like crazy talk because their turn hasn't come yet, right? I mean,
a lot of people complain, high prices, you know, too much taxes, blah, blah, all that shit.
but that belongs to a club that has created this system specifically for the exploitation
of everyone that uses it it's not by fluke that things are expensive that you know everybody knows
what the word inflation means now all of a sudden it's like 20 years ago nobody even knew that word
right now everybody everybody talks about it because it's like inflation inflation inflation
because now they can't buy anything, right?
So pain causes you to learn things very, very quickly.
And so once you understand
who is fueling this world of pain and evil,
that rabbit hole becomes endless.
I was never a historian.
After my collapse, I started reading things
that you can't possibly, you know,
pay me to read previously.
The wars, why they happened.
Now all the pieces start to fit together, right?
like how is a war possible well it's possible when it's a business a profitable business
how is it funded a money printer who controls that bloody money printer aha well now we know
where the origins are now connect the dots everywhere else right and so once you go down
that rabbit hole and you absorb all that information and you factually prove it as a human being
Why would you willingly keep yourself in that world, right?
When you know you have an option.