October 2013. New York City.
Visiting. I am shopping downtown and my card is declined. I try it again. DECLINED. I find an ATM around the corner. DECLINED. I call the bank’s fraud department. They say they can’t help me. I find the nearest branch. They say they can’t help me.
Puzzled, I think hard — I had just deposited a sizable check (signing bonus from the consulting firm that would be my post-MBA employer) into my account…could this be the issue? I hop on the subway for the long slog up to Morningside Heights, to return to the branch where I made the deposit the day before. Arriving at the branch, where yesterday they happily received my check, I am now greeted with suspicion and hostility.
“Thank you for your loyalty and congratulations on your new job” was replaced with an interrogation by the branch Asst. Mgr. — “Why did you have the check?,” “ How did you get the check?,” “Who gave you the check?…” After about 20 minutes of this, they tell me that my check is“bad.” And because of this, the money will not deposited and my account will be frozen until further notice. No further explanation is given. My protests are ignored.
At 5pm, the Asst. Mgr. goes on her 1-hour “lunch break” and I’m told that the branch manager, who I can see playing on in his phone through the glass walls of his office, is “in very important meetings” for the rest of the day. The branch closes at 6pm.
I am forced to leave, dejected and confused, the situation wholly unresolved. I have traveled cross-country to New York City to deposit my signing bonus only to find myself stranded in the Metropolis, completely cut off from my finances, and all but directly accused of check fraud by my bank.
Thank goodness I was raised to I always travel with a bit cash…
Gatekeeping Is An Act Of Love
I did not have a term for it then, other than perhaps wacky-mustache cartoon villainy on the part of the bank. However, I now understand that what I experienced in that moment in 2013 was definancialization.
The bank, being the omnipotent gatekeeper standing between me and my money, decided to demonstrate that it was not, actually, my money. Rather, insomuch as it was in their custody, it was their money that they just let me believe was mine for the sake of some vague social convenience.
Without an iota of exaggeration, this bank had, literally, a direct record of every single relevant financial datapoint on my person. I am certain that there was no better body of data indicating the near statistical impossibility of me attempting check fraud than the bank’s own customer file on me — a 3LA case file couldn't have done better...
Further, this being the location serving the Columbia University community, customers showing up with large checks from marque consulting firms was undoubtedly both commonplace and frequent. And yet, for reasons unknown, I was interrogated and had my account frozen, including money completely unrelated to the check deposit. To this day, as far as I can tell, this was all because someone, somewhere inside the bank decided that they didn’t believe that I could or should have a check of such as amount from such a company.
Things were ultimately resolved the next day. But only after I showed up at opening and sat outside of the branch manager’s office for several hours. Once it was clear that I wasn't going anywhere they finally, begrudgingly decided to take a second look at my situation.
It was around the same time that an inexplicable attitudinal reversal swept though the branch and it was back to all smiles and “Thank you for your loyalty…” My account was unfrozen. They even fast tracked the entire check amount into my account, on a Friday afternoon no less — something they previously said would take 7+ business days. It was all just damage control.
I assume this was because they got internal word back that my check, was, in fact, real — making their little interrogation game woefully unnecessary, if not outright discriminatory. And because a cursory glance at my customer file suggested that I might be just the type of person with the professional reach and savvy to pursue some type of legal/media action in response. Simply put, it now behooved them to play nice.
During this entire saga, it was their schizophrenic whiplashing of behaviors that I found most bizarre and offensive. They were the Judge, Jury, and Enforcer over my finances. They had the latitude to behave with impunity — and they knew it. There was, of course, never any recognition from that bank that something objectively wrong, deeply strange, or even just wildly inconvenient had happened. I was simply left to wonder, “Why?”
A Slow Burning Thing
Understandably, the experience left me with a deep mistrust of banks that was both specific and personal — as opposed to the general African American cultural-historical mistrust, or the popular, populist Occupy/99%/MAGA zeitgeist mistrust of the day — though it certainly helped with both of those too.
Stranded in the metropolis, completely cut off from my primary finances — all but directly accused of check fraud by my bank.
I felt that I was completely trapped. The most I could do was change banks, simply swapping one capricious Bridge Troll for another. I saw no alternatives, and so I believed there were none.
Instead, this experience marked the opening act of what I now look back on as a long, headfirst slide into financial nihilism. At the time, I was operating under the naive and Talented 10th and elitist belief that my education and corporate credentials would shield me for these kinds of “misunderstandings.” Not so, not so.
With this illusion shattered, my shock and anger manifested as a period of high-octane, consumerist mania. If access to my money rested on the benevolent grace of the bank, I was better off converting it into things that could not be so easily taken or withheld — clothes, meals, travel, experiences, collectables,— and so I did. I spent money just to prove that I could — as though it would somehow cause harm to the vain gods of retail banking who had wronged me.
(BEHOLD! Blowing several thousand dollars on clothes to prove that “no one could tell me what to do with MY money!” That said, I was FLY AF at business school that Fall...)
My desire to save in the banking system took a massive hit. Over time, this morphed into lazy ambivalence, if not total disregard, for the habit altogether. Rather than extinguishing debts, or building up savings, I would go on to burn through the entirety of my bonus and almost all of my excess income during my years in consulting with absolute gusto.
Widening the scope, there were certainly other contributing factors to the chaotic state of my finances in the years that followed — gambling, chief among them (but those are stories to be explored later). Regardless, this was a pivotal moment in hardening a destructive “IDGAF” / “nothing matters” approach to personal cash management that would stay with me for a long time.
Missing Bitcoin
Reflecting back, this was easily my biggest “bitcoin miss” — a situation where present bitcoiners imagine how fabulously wealthy we might be if we had just understood bitcoin back then. Bitcoin certainly did exist in October 2013. In fact, it was sitting around 200 USD per coin and would hit 1000 USD a month later.
But alas, I had not even heard about bitcoin yet. And even if I had, my reaction to my bank’s malfeasance probably would have been aping into bitcoin on Mt Gox only to be obliterated by an even more devastating loss when that exchange collapsed in February of 2014. Truly, I shudder to think what that might have done to my psyche at the time.
So I “missed” bitcoin and my financial disillusionment would continue on. And It wasn’t just the situation with the bank, it was everything. Even long after I had shaken off my initial rage at being temporarily unbanked, I still chose not save. Though I couldn’t fully articulate it, I felt the act of saving to be pointless in the face of the ever-ascending price tags of the trappings of “responsible” Boomerist adulthood.
Homeownership, a “respectable” (re: large and expensive) wedding ceremony, and the cost of raising even one child through to college all seemed laughable financial fantasies to me — even if, on my earnings, this should not have necessarily been the case. Once I had accepted these things as impossible, my mind made them real…
And while there are plenty of criticisms that can be lobbed my way — after all, my personal financial mismanagement during this time was just that, personal— the recognition of personal responsibility does not erase the truth about the regressive behavioral incentives that our present distorted money system imposes on people.
Such is the nature of financial nihilism — why should I sacrifice to save or plan for things that I did not believe were achievable? I could see myself living the carefree, mobile, and high-cashflow consulting lifestyle perpetually in the now but I could not see how even that would afford any type of stable, rooted future afterwards. In that state, living high on the hog, nestled snuggly in rented comforts, was the end unto itself.
How's Your Trading Going, King?
For many American Millennials, adult life has been an endless mad scramble to surf the Kali Yuga as the world careens from one mind-melting and testicle/ovary-shattering calamity to the next. 9/11, Byzantine wars in the desert, financial collapse, The Great Recession, global pandemic—each of these events obliterating whatever meager economic gains we might have made in the interim.
And, of course, the answer to each of these “once in a century” events has been to create ever more money to keep the music going. In parallel, every cash-rich Boomer with two brain cells, a generous pension, and the assurance of comfortable social security has raced to the exits to get out of dollars and into stocks and real-estate. Layer on an explosion of loose credit and a self-referential flywheel emerges — and it becomes easy, convenient actually, to believe that these two asset classes “alway go up.”
Such has been the experience of Millennials, Gen Z, and anyone counting themselves in the dwindling middle class — from 2002–2022 median home price has increased from 182,000 USD to over 450,000 USD, while median salary has only increased from 42,000 USD to 54,000 USD during the same period. Being the people, who as a group, command the lowest income and own the least homes or corporate equities, we have been forced to sit by, watching in numb, glass-eyed stupor as this asset inflation — and now just regular ol’ price inflation — rockets ever-skywards.
For those lacking the excess capital for property and stock investments, this dynamic is a regressive tax that favors immediate consumption to maximize declining purchasing power over savings, resulting in extreme financial fragility. And for those fortunate enough to afford significant investments, they are still incentivized to chase evermore speculative investments (which are often just toxic malinvestments themselves) and/or to join an increasingly parasitic rentier class just to beat inflation.
This is how FOMOing into objectively absurd “stonks” like Peloton or Zoom gets to be hailed as “making your money work for you!” How extractive landlordism (i.e. allocating newly created money to yourself via preferential loans, using that money to collectively drive up home prices, and then turning around to bleed rents out of the very people for whom your previous actions have made homeownership cost-prohibitive) becomes lauded as “F.I.R.E — Financial Independence, Retire Early!” And why blowing all your income on Cheesecake Factory, vape pens, and vacationing Tulum on credit is cool because of that one time Drake said “You Only Live Once!”
Despite whatever appearances to the contrary may be, people, generally speaking, are not stupid. Most people simply react to incentives. Many “irrational” human social behaviors are, at least minimally rational responses to irrational or perverse incentives — it is Charlie Munger’s “If you have a dumb incentive system, you get dumb outcomes” at scale.
Though I couldn’t fully articulate it, I felt the act of saving to be pointless…
Given this, we should all understand that our society’s present fetish towards speculation, rent-seeking, and over-consumption on debt are the more rational choices when money — the money that most of us have to work for — can be freely and infinitely created out of thin air and saving is perpetually debased. If the only expected return on the activity of saving is reduced future purchasing power, it should be no wonder that so few in our society engage in it. Perversely, in most cases today, one would have to be "stupid" to save...
And note, I do not mean to disparage stock or property investment as a rule. There is a role for them in any healthy economy. However that role is certainly not to be a proxy for stable money. Yet this is how both are presently being leveraged in our economy, our society, and in our minds.
The rush into housing and stocks is simply a function of people seeking to trade infinite fiat or things that they believe are more scarce or will generate returns. This creates an artificial “monetary premium” in these assets — a portion of price existing only because the asset is being used as a substitute for money. And this momentary premium has now become wholly confused with the “real value” of the asset just as “saving” and “investment” have taken on interchangeable meaning for the average person.
Consider now if technological advancements enabled a new, truly scarce, infinitely divisible, uninflatable, permissionless global money to emerge organically from zero…
Eventually the very same people running up home prices and stock valuations would realize that there is no shortage of land and housing can always be build upwards, that stocks can always be diluted, and that control over either can be rescinded by decree — as we learned from Robinhood/Gamestop and renter (but not mortgage) forgiveness in 2021. And when this realization does happen, if such a new truly scarce, infinitely divisible, uninflatable, permissionless global money does exist, that is where they will turn…
The Long Way Home
In all, I would take 8 long years before I finally came to a deeper understanding of bitcoin — the meantime was spent floating through the hazy morass of working extremely hard and making “good” money but never really getting ahead. At absolute best I was treading water and at worse I was just sinking more slowly than some of those with whom I might be compared…Understanding bitcoin has completely changed all of this for me. Bitcoin fixes this.
First, bitcoin makes definancialization much more difficult. Gone is the worry that the bank, because I violate someone’s preconceived notions of who should or should not not have money, would be successful in an endeavor to cut me off from access to / control over my stored wealth. Bitcoin, unlike money in the bank, or even homes & property, cannot be seized or frozen by writ by a hostile actor — whether company or state or fellow man.
Second, bitcoin restores the act and objective of saving. As a saver, bitcoin allows me to project wealth into the future with full confidence against debasement. I can rest assured that any amount of bitcoin I own will always be x/21,000,000 of whatever total value humanity has decided to store in bitcoin. Shielded from the grift of monetary manipulation, I am freed to think and act longer term and I am unbound from pressures to speculate, gamble, rent-seek or worse, simply to avoid falling behind.
Finally, bitcoin provides a deep wellspring of renewed hope for the future. Grand or utopian as it may sound, I can certainly say that the statement rings true for myself and many other bitcoiners I know. Its not that bitcoin magically solves all of our problems, rather it is that bitcoin demands a fundamental change in worldview. Once we are freed to store wealth securely for the future, we come to a fuller realization that it is the more fragile things in life, the things that get discounted by the demands of the fiat rat race — family, community, relationships, reputation, ethics, stewardship, truth — are most important. Buttressed by the benefits that bitcoin provides, we feel energized to set about pursuing, building, repairing, and protecting these things. And we can more easily see that most other things simply don’t actually matter.
They say that bitcoin passes you twice. First as a party boat, then as a lifeboat.
A Fire In The Master's House Is Set
Finally, in closing, I’d like to provide the real life, stunning conclusion of what happened with the bank, or at least the branch, from my story.
A few months later, I received a middle of the night call from a lawyer friend in New York with whom I had discussed the situation. I pick up the line and the first words out of his mouth are “Where are you right now?” Once I assured him that I was not in New York, nor had I been in months, he shares — I shit you not — “That branch. Where you had that problem. Well, it all but BURNED TO THE GROUND...”
In fact, it was a 6-alarm fire, of some still apparently unexplained origin, that raged for nearly 30 hours, gutting the building completely from top to bottom. Thankfully, there were no serious injuries and the fire didn’t cause any major damage to the adjacent apartments or businesses. But man, what a way to go out! I feel like there’s a lesson in here somewhere, but I couldn’t tell you what it is...
In case you missed them, be sure to check out Journey Into Bitcoin 01 and 02. As always thank you for your time to read and engage. More on the way!
Postscript
In the spirit of inter/multi-disciplinary bitconery, here are a few top notch recommendations that, to me, relate to elements in this piece.
Books: The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho; The Fiat Standard, Saifedean Ammous
Music: Liberation, Outkast; Poetic Justice, Kendrick Lamar; New Millennium Homes, Rage Against The Machine
USE THE TOOLS: I believe that every person with exposure to bitcoin should have a fundamental minimum skillset that includes the ability to manage 1) self-custody and 2) buying/selling bitcoin permissionlessly. Here are some helpful resources:
Robosats: P2P bitcoin exchange using Lightning over TOR (pro-tip, use gift cards as your method of exchange for maximum privacy)
Bisq: P2P bitcoin exchange over TOR desktop app
A Final Though
It is dangerous and naive to assume that centralized exchanges and banks will always be there to allow retail users to buy and sell bitcoin. If and as the prevailing government-corporate power structure feels threatened by bitcoin, this may change.
Governments may shut down or seize bitcoin from centralized exchanges, and banks may block consumer transactions that they believe are related to bitcoin under the guise of “consumer protection.”.
Bitcoin is often a tool that you don’t know you need, UNTIL YOU NEED IT. But when you do need it, you REALLY need it and you better hope you can get your hand on some. The same can be doubly said for holding bitcoin in self-custody and knowing how to buy/sell bitcoin permissionlessly. USE THE TOOLS.