Bitcoin and Self Actualization

A lot of people take an overly simplistic view of Bitcoin. They see it as just another way to increase their wealth and ‘get rich.’

But if you go a little deeper down the rabbit hole, eventually you come to realize that Bitcoin offers us something more profound than just the opportunity to become wealthy. It offers us the chance to achieve self-actualization.

Being wealthy typically features quite high on the list of things people might want to achieve in pursuit of a happy life. And there’s no question that having access to resources certainly makes life a lot easier.

If you’re struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table, then happiness is not likely to be your top priority and certainly won’t be easy to achieve.

But while poverty is not a good foundation for finding happiness, it’s important to recognize that being wealthy is not a prerequisite to, nor a guarantee of, finding true happiness either.

We know this because not everyone that is wealthy is happy.

The point is, growing your wealth can give you a better chance of achieving happiness, but true fulfillment isn’t something that you can just buy. Self-actualization lives somewhere beyond material means.

The best way to explain this is to explore Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

Money is essential to help you meet your most basic needs. It ensures you have access to food and water, and somewhere safe to sleep and rest. But as you continue to move up Maslow’s hierarchy, money starts to play a diminishing role in determining if your other needs will also be met.

When it comes to psychological needs, money might make it easier to socialize, attract what look like friends, and even draw attention from potential love interests. But that’s no guarantee that this leads to genuine fulfillment. In fact, many people who are extremely wealthy often report difficulty knowing how genuine their relationships really are.

Equally, money alone is unlikely to deliver meaningful feelings of prestige and accomplishment. Sure, society places a lot of prestige on wealth, and making your family financially comfortable is certainly an achievement, but ‘number go up’ can only take you so far on the path to true happiness.

Once you have ‘enough,’ growing your wealth for the sake of it will result in diminishing returns when it comes to fulfillment. Reaching your first whole Bitcoin might be exhilarating, but if you already own 1,000, it’s unlikely that reaching 1,001 will deliver the same level of satisfaction.

According to Maslow, if we want to achieve true self-actualization, then we need to look beyond the pursuit of wealth. Wealth can meet our fundamental needs, but our full potential can only be reached through creative pursuits, moral development, personal growth, and the pursuit of meaning—endeavors that don’t make the pursuit of money their primary goal.

It's only then that we can unlock the peak human experience of joy, transcendence, and insight.

 In this week’s newsletter, we will make the case that fiat money, no matter how much you accrue, keeps you from reaching self-actualization, whereas Bitcoin, no matter how little you own, will accelerate your path towards it.

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The Fiat Rat Race

You’re likely to be familiar by now with the fundamental problems of fiat money. It isn’t backed by anything of value, and central banks can print as much of it as they like, which over time has significantly eroded its purchasing power.

The impact this has on society is savage. As the currency becomes increasingly worthless, you need increasing amounts of it to purchase the things you need. But unless you’re getting pay increases of 15% every year, your wages won’t keep up with the rate of monetary expansion and rising prices.

To put it simply, the fiat rat race makes you progressively poorer.

This isn’t good news for someone trying to climb Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The obvious impact is that on a fiat standard, meeting your basic needs for food, shelter, and safety gets perpetually more expensive.

This in turn makes meeting your psychological needs more difficult too. Not only is socializing going to get more expensive, but if you need to work a growing number of hours just to make ends meet, you’re going to have less time to devote to nurturing and maintaining important relationships.

When you stop and consider that everyone is in the same boat, you can start to understand why reports of loneliness and isolation are increasing across all demographics. It’s hard to build a social life or build meaningful, loving relationships when you’re fighting just to survive.

If you’re not wealthy, then achieving self-actualization on a fiat standard becomes nigh on impossible. But even if you are already wealthy, the fiat rat race can still keep you from achieving it.

Even if you have managed to accrue a decent amount of wealth, when you’re operating within the fiat system, you face the constant risk of losing it all again. With fiat being perpetually debased, you can’t just save your money in a bank, or your wealth will simply evaporate. Instead, you have to continually speculate with your money just to try and keep pace with inflation.

On a fiat standard, even if you do win big, you can’t afford to leave the casino. There is no way to take your chips off the table.

This means that on a fiat standard, even if you’re wealthy, you can never afford to sit back, relax, and pursue the more meaningful things in life.

Instead, you are forced to constantly monitor and manage your investments for fear of losing it all again, which robs you of precious time and attention that could have been spent pursuing true fulfillment.

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Bitcoin – The Path to Self-Actualization

Bitcoin, unlike fiat, does give you a reasonable chance of climbing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and reaching true self-actualization.

On a fiat standard, you need to work harder each year just to make sure your basic needs are met, keeping you trapped. But when Bitcoin is your unit of account, the cost of your basic needs decreases each year. At the end of 2015, a dozen eggs would cost you over 1,000,000 Satoshis. Today, that same dozen eggs would cost less than 4,000.

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=PUbY

This means that for those without wealth, Bitcoin provides a genuinely viable way to start building some. By saving disposable income in a hard currency that doesn’t perpetually lose value, they can opt out of inflation and have a means to, slowly but surely, lift themselves out of poverty.

If you want to climb the hierarchy of needs, Bitcoin is the perfect foundation to do that from.

And for those who already have amassed enough resources to comfortably meet their basic needs, Bitcoin offers them the chance to continue climbing the hierarchy without the fear of sliding back down it.

On a fiat standard, even the wealthy were never truly free because they must continue to fret, worry, and manage their money to outpace inflation while avoiding making bad bets in capital markets that could cause them major setbacks.

With Bitcoin, this is no longer a problem. There is finally a way to leave the casino and take your chips off the table. Rather than continually speculate, you can simply store your wealth in hard money knowing that it can’t be corrupted, confiscated, or inflated away.

In Bitcoin, if you do manage to grow your wealth, you actually get to keep it.

The certainty, security, and predictability this provides creates an environment where those motivated enough can pursue true greatness and strive to become the best version of themselves.

For the first time in a long time, Bitcoin provides a way to exit the rat race entirely and provides the freedom to curate a life of true fulfillment and meaning.

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Pursue Fulfillment – The Bitcoin Way

We all use Bitcoin to preserve and grow our wealth. But your ambitions should be larger than that.

How can you enjoy the finite time you have and use it to improve the lives of those around you? What does life look like when your goals don’t always need to center around the pursuit of money? And leaving money to your heirs is one thing, but how can you create a more meaningful legacy?

These are challenging questions, and each of us will come up with different answers. But if you ever want to reach a place where you have enough time to seriously consider them, then Bitcoin is the tool you will need to get you there.

If you want to reach this level of freedom, then it’s essential you learn how to use Bitcoin to its full potential. Mastering how to use it is the foundation you need to build a truly successful life. When you’re ready to learn the skills you need, just book a free 30 minute call with one of our experts, and your training will begin in earnest!