10. Denominate in Satoshis not BTC.

Start denominating bitcoin purchases and your expression about them in Satoshis. Make this well known. Run this all over twitter. Change the narrative.

Psychologically people don’t want something if they can’t own one of it. Nobody wants to own part of a house, half of a car, or a third of a hammer. For this same reason people don’t want to buy .01 BTC. Bitcoin represents secured digital property rights and as such is an incredible technology, but this instinct toward wholeness in people is a marketing impediment for Bitcoin.

Accept that wholeness is an important psychological base layer for any purchase of a tool or commodity, and that bitcoin needs a re-frame if it’s going to conquer this hurdle.

The key ingredient here is to denominate in Satoshis. When you buy .01 BTC the importance of the value of its sub units needs to become the sociological base-layer of the experience. There are 100 Million Satoshis in every bitcoin. You didn’t buy .01 BTC, bro, you bought $1M Satoshis. That’s a lot! It’s theoretically plausible that one day much or all of finance will be denominated in Satoshis and that people may not even be acquirable for fiat, instead they may only be accessible via trades for hard goods or real services.

9. Stop calling Bitcoin money.

Money is meant to be a good medium of exchange. Bitcoin, even with its 10 minute blocks is not a good medium of exchange. (Granted anon, lightning network solves for this with a L2 layer of trust = not base layer. But set that aside for now). By the time I bought an espresso and waited 10 minutes at my local coffee shop for the transaction to settle, it would be cold. Similar to how we don’t walk into a restaurant and pay for our dinner in gold bitcoin is not meant to be a medium of exchange. Bitcoin is meant to be a store of wealth. It’s probably a better marketing move to push that bitcoin like gold is a store-house of wealth that protects against the dilution of value of fiat currency via inflation and is not an ideal medium of exchange. Take the L.

Many no-coiners think bitcoiners want bitcoin to be money. Repositioning this narrative with the angle that bitcoin stores our dollars that we don’t need today in an energy container called bitcoin, for purchasing power that we may need tomorrow, could help with adoption.

Bitcoiners rightfully presume that if and when we draw upon that energy (with a low enough time preference) that it will be converted back into whatever currency is suited for a particular need, market, or jurisdiction, with a greater measure of power.

8. Don’t make Bitcoin a religion.

A recent headline from The Rug went something like this, “Bitcoiners File for 501(c)3 Religious Tax Exemption.” Let’s admit that the Bitcoin maximalist conviction is critical to the success of the network and the hodl mentality of its participants. However, the religious zealout undertones of that conviction isn’t helping adoption. Let religion be religion and finance be finance. Separation of God and Coin.

7. Let go of the vitriol.

A no-coiner coming into bitcoin listening to someone on twitter call them “fiat fed cux” doesn’t make somebody want to participate in the network. Bitcoiners would do well to hold fast to the radical nature of their belief in the network, but present it with a little bit more panache. Blunt, rude, crass, anger doesn’t attract converts. Kill them with kindness.

6. Find a different PFP.

The red eyes in the profile pictures squad? Not working. It looks like an army of demons. Not to mention it obfuscates the face of a person, which if you do believe in God, is a reflection of that divine image. I get the meme, laser focus, but can’t we find a better way to connote our conviction in bitcoin? Ethereum’s ultra sound money (bat + sonar) symbols are nice because they don’t change the face of the PFP. Bitcoiners could - gasp - emulate ethereum by finding emojis that connote a hard cap of 21 million, and add those to our profiles instead.

5. Stop calling everything else $#it coins.

Regardless if Bitcoiners believe every type of coin or token that is not bitcoin to be a “$#it coin”, this is not helping bitcoin adoption. What it reads like is insular non-open mindedness. It doesn’t read high-conviction like it actually means. If bitcoiners can’t accept that Ethereum has provided a new worldwide settlement layer for over-collatoralized lending and borrowing, and a more robust smart contract for greater functionality, then just keep it to yourself man. Sotheby’s is selling Beeple’s art and the currency bids are a host of fiats, Yen, Pound, Dollars, and ETH.

Instead lets reposition any criticism of not bitcoin as an acknowledgement that blockchains like ethereum solve for different use cases that bitcoin does not want to. It’s not that bitcoin couldn’t solve for those issues but that it has purposefully ossified itself to do one thing really well, security, and nothing will stop that.

People are going to collect NFTs on Solana, Donald Trump launched his PFP project on Polygon, and L2s are surprassing L1 transactions on mainnet. Let’s stop calling the world that is growing up around us $#it coins. We look like a angry stubborn grandpas. Just say, “other blockchains have different use cases bitcoin is a store of wealth.”

4. Let go of the narcissistic God-Complex.

Us bitcoiners that heard about this stuff in 2012 or earlier, and had the good head space to act on what we learned, are not gods, we’re just early-adopters. That’s it. Being right too early, and not having conviction in your truth, is tantamount to being wrong. Think of people that dumbed bitcoin under $100, or $1,000. I’ve heard podcasts of bitcoiners back-slapping each other for being so smart, and that they’re going to run the world. On some level as BTC becomes the most powerful store of value on the planet there will be commensurate energy to be allocated by holders. And, this is better than people running the world who print money and steal value from holders of it. Indeed, bitcoiners have proof-of-concept, proof-of-time, and proof-of-work. This is all well-deserved. Good job. But we’re not God, so wind down the narcissim.

3. Accept bitcoin isn’t for everyone.

This may fly in the face of a top 10 list on marketing but it is possibly the most clutch. This is a strong point made by a bitcoin maximalist named Alex Svetski. He goes pretty hard in the paint on bitcoin which respect. Svetski nailed the concept of The Remnant, that bitcoin is meant for those who find it and not everyone. This is a key marketing concept for adoption. By not wasting time trying to “convert” someone who isn’t ready to understand bitcoin, we’re allocating more intelligent attentions into domains where someone is. Know our audience. Bitcoin isn’t for everyone.

2. Give bitcoin away.

Be a part of the value for value network. Podcast apps like Fountain, let someone listen to their usual podcast (any cast with an RSS feed), earn Satoshis, and then send “spikes” of sats to the creators they enjoy. This attention economy, and other formulations like it around sports, film, or music, is certainly a major marketing opportunity for bitcoin. Be on the forefront of applications and systems that deliver these value-for-value platforms without compromising custody, and help improve the UX/UI. Let’s give our bitcoin to each other to show what we pay attention to.

1. No more finger pointing.

Yes we know the Federal Reserve is neither “federal” nor has any “reserves”. Brilliant designer, engineer, and architect Buckminster Fuller once said:

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

We have the new model that could make central banks obsolete or at the very least less relevant. This sagely advice from Fuller illustrates the problem with going ham on corruption, coercion, and theft in the traditional banking system.

If we take the energy placed into expressing what was wrong with the previous system and redirect it like BTUs into the ability to expand and implement the “new model that makes the existing model obsolete” we’ll have an immediate duel effect: Look a lot less pissed off and have a remedy that people can focus on.

Not everyone needs the historical lesson on why banks are bad. However, those whom are ready for it will want to learn about how bitcoin can secure their property rights, and protect them against the inevitable onslaughts of an unpredictable tomorrow.

Frank America is an author, researcher, comedian, and musician. He is Co-founder of The Rug and a Content Manager at Bankless Publishing.

“A NICKEL AIN’T WORTH A DIME ANYMORE.”   - Yogi Berra

What is Money?

Is money not simply an instrument that people agree to pay attention to? Whether it’s seashells in Papua New Guinea, Grecian coins made of precious metals, tobacco sticks in a prison yard, or custom chips at a poker table, group attention flows through these instruments just as vibration runs through strings, making them “money”, charged with the harmonic value of an agreed upon medium of exchange.

The Watery Language of Money

Perhaps money’s fluid nature spawned its numerous water-based terminologies. Assets which cannot move are said to be frozen. A person who is highly liquid has lots of cash. Holding an asset valued at less than its initial cost means you’re underwater. Just as boats are collectively stored in a port, a collection of stocks is called a portfolio. Products priced to move are said to be on sale, admittedly a mere homonym, though akin to the sails that move windblown vessels across the seas of commerce. Currency, (from Latin currere, meaning “to run”), shares the same root as current.

Money is an instrument people agree to pay attention to. - Frank America

Currency is historically controlled by banks while a current’s movement is always directed by nature’s propensity to find the fastest way forward, the path of least resistance. With that in mind, could the current of financial progress, as it has evolved across land, water, air, and wire, be why we’ve found ourselves in this new era of cryptocurrency?

Difference between Digital Currency and Cryptocurrency

Digital money is powered by an electric current, which carries a charge. The digitization of fiat via credit and debit cards, or in analogous value structures like airline miles or game tokens, are things we are familiar with. The evolution into this digital money transfer system dates back to the mid 20th century, with the introduction of credit and debit cards. VISA launched a credit card in the United States in 1958, went international with it in 1974, and debuted the debit card in 1975.¹ Interestingly, the credit card went overseas just three years after we left the gold standard.

Fast forward to today where cryptocurrency exists as a different version of digital money; it is a currency that does not have a direct correlation to fiat. Cryptocurrency operates on an electric current just like digital transactions enabled by credit and debit cards, but unlike these digital representations of fiat, cryptocurrency is set apart by an additional layer of security, which is essentially how it defined its value outside of a fiat economy.

Definition of Cryptocurrency

To understand what cryptocurrency is first requires a definition of crypto and currency. Crypto refers to cryptography, which, in the context of cryptocurrency, uses complex math problems to protect information. Cryptography at its core solves the double-spend problem, incentivizes the completion of a hash (a tough math problem), and synchronizes the verification of transactions on a blockchain via a decentralized ledger.

Currency means a medium of exchange that is in circulation, which is a form of movement, like a current. Cryptocurrency is therefore a digital currency that protects information in circulation with cryptography. Many things have been and could be money. However, as a medium of exchange, money works best if the items chosen to represent units of exchange are small, scarce, predictably similar, and difficult to fake. Think exotic shells, precious coins, illustrated notes, custom chips, etc.

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that protects information in circulation with cryptography.

Cryptocurrency, or code-based money, isn’t just small, it’s physically absent. It’s not just scarce, the total supply, like with Bitcoin, can be pre-determined. It’s not merely predictably similar, but each unit is an exact replica of any other. This is peak fungibility. An example of deteriorated fungibility within the world of fiat comes from buying trinkets in local markets or bazaars where the cash returned to the purchaser is typically the most weathered, torn, and undesirable version of that fungible currency. Lastly, forgery isn’t even possible because of the value proposition of cryptography. It is this code-based protection which has given rise to its characteristic “trustlessness.”

Cryptocurrency protocols are full of code that can be copied anytime (what’s called a fork), which is why the value truly resides within the specific instrument we agree to pay attention to. As far as intellectual property rights or “stealing someone’s ideas” go, the status quo is to say, “Yes, please go ahead and copy this code. See if you can make it better.”

Historically, forks in blockchains have proven the value lies with attention. Is there more value in Bitcoin or the forked Bitcoin Cash? Is there more value in Ethereum Classic or the forked Ethereum? These consensus-driven decisions prove that it is the social layer, layer zero — or what lies beneath the blockchain — that is the ultimate arbiter of value. What people pay attention to is what counts.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

-Ayn Rand

The Adoption of Cryptocurrency

Similar to how the shift from newspapers to news websites reached a critical mass, we’ve seen a shift from paper-based fiat to secure digital money.

Verified users in crypto has gone from 5 million in 2016 to 225 million in 2021.² According to Chainalysis, global adoption has grown 2300% from Q3 2019 to Q2 2021, with Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, Kenya, Nigeria, and the United States leading the way.³ Notably, Kenya had the highest peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange volume. Crypto adoption in Africa is well underway.

With this in mind let’s look at some traditional payment transactions tools. As of last year, Paypal has started accepting Bitcoin,⁴ Cash App sends and receives Bitcoin,⁵ VISA settles transactions in a dollar-pegged stablecoin called USDC,⁶ and Venmo offers a menu of cryptocurrencies complete with educational materials.⁷

When it comes to banks, Goldman Sachs has started offering Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies to its wealth management clients.⁸ Morgan Stanley plans to offer up to 2.5% Bitcoin exposure to its clients with an “aggressive risk tolerance”, individuals with $2 million or more to spare. Clearly, these are signals mainstream adoption is afoot.

Demographics of Cryptocurrency

Millennials are the largest demographic group in America, at over 73 million, due to inherit $30 trillion from baby boomers over the next three decades.⁹ ¹⁰ Morgan Stanley’s research arm forecasted in 2019 that millennials will be the largest borrowers over this next decade, and that digitally native Gen-Z will reach 78 million in population by 2034.¹¹

This wealth, like water, will run downhill, and it’ll settle in the estuaries of demographics that prefer mobile banking and cryptocurrency. A 2021 study by Chase showed that “98% of Millennials use a mobile banking app for a wide range of tasks”.¹² Smart-phone owning Gen-Z is already keeping pace with Millennials in terms of mobile banking activity, checking accounts, and transferring money on their phones.¹³

According to a 2022 Financial Literacy study that surveyed 4,000 Americans, at least one in four millennials, Generation X-ers, and Generation Z-ers invest in cryptocurrency, and all of those who do believe “the greatest returns from their investments will come from cryptocurrency.”¹⁴

CNBC recently published a finding that among millennials with over $1 million in investable assets, almost half (47%) of them had a quarter of their portfolio in crypto.¹⁵ Business Insider reports that the number of millennial millionaires hovers at around 618,000.¹⁶

Although “the great wealth transfer” may be a slow trickle, and this wealth may be spent by boomers on Mai-Tais and beach vacations,¹⁷ there will be an increased wealth running downhill over the next few decades, and an increase in borrowing and earning from millennials and eventually Gen-Z. We’ll probably grow into an age where “mobile banking” sounds as redundant as “internet store”.

The wealthiest portion of the largest demographic in America, the world’s wealthiest nation, uses their smartphone for banking, holds a quarter of their finances in crypto, and is scheduled to receive $30 trillion in inheritance over the next few decades. If this isn’t a perfect crypto-cocktail storm, primed to expand the parameters of traditional banking and digital money, then what is?

Plus, We’re Already Digital

We’re already in a full-blown digital fiat system. The credit card, which issues debt, is a digital loan. The debit card, which pulls from deposit balances, is a digital checkbook. Few people carry cash. Swipes and taps are the norm. If anything, the pervasiveness of this digital economy is evidenced in how nonchalantly we send money to one another on Venmo after dinner.

Perhaps soon, the money we exchange on our smartphones won’t just be digital fiat, but a secure cryptocurrency on a decentralized blockchain. Paypal, Venmo, Cash App, and VISA are signaling this cultural shift. The mainstream adoption of the new digital crypto economy could be a rising tide that lifts all boats floating on the digital current.

A Better Version of Money

A cryptography-governed asset, which is viewable on a blockchain and baked into the native language of computers, is arguably a more enduring version of money. Whether this becomes a dollar-pegged stablecoin, fractions of bitcoin and Ether, or some future token, remains to be seen.

Regardless of form, a knowledge of how cryptocurrency works isn’t necessary for it to become the predominantly used medium of exchange. But paying attention to it is. This attention doesn’t require technical know-how or expertise. After all, most people don’t know how a car runs, and they drive them just fine.

For example, a litany of celebrities and talk show hosts purchased jpegs of cartoon apes in human clothing.¹⁸ The mass adoption that ensued didn’t necessitate a technical understanding of what a non-fungible token is. The only barrier to growth was easier on-ramps for fiat-to-crypto purchases.

These smoother routes, or paths of least resistance, to passing the crypto driver’s test are already happening, and will continue to happen under the hood, while everyone keeps pursuing the nearest and fastest on-ramp.

Meanwhile, a new highway is being paved beneath our feet.

Paving The Road: Bitcoin 101

Bitcoin started as a peer-to-peer money exchange platform. Over the last thirteen years, Bitcoin has shifted from a means of payment for small purchases, to more of a store of value. One of the most persistent arguments against Bitcoin is that you can’t easily buy groceries or gas with it. Of course, you could obtain a Bitcoin-backed debit card, which converts your crypto automatically upon purchase, but this is another adoption barrier.¹⁹ The point here is that you can’t buy groceries with gold or stocks either, but both are worth hanging on to!

If you bought $1,000 worth of bitcoin on Aug 21st of 2011,²⁰ five years later you’d have had over $50,000, and if you had waited a decade, those same bitcoins would have been worth $4.3M.²¹ Granted today it would have dropped to a measly $1.8M, but we’re looking at 5 year increments. By Aug 21st of 2026, we may see a similar jump.

Consider that in the same decade Bitcoin went from shady drug-dealer money on Silk Road, which the US government seized and auctioned off,²² to official legal tender alongside the US dollar in El-Salvador.²³

The phenomenon of a peer-to-peer financial transaction system wasn’t revolutionary with Bitcoin; PayPal launched P2P financial transactions in 1998, and blew up after being acquired by eBay in 2002. Bitcoin is revolutionary though because it offered peer-to-peer financial transactions without a bank or other intermediary*.* Bitcoin is like PayPal except the money isn’t stored in your checking account, it’s stored in your self-custody wallet. This money isn’t even digital dollars, it is digital code.

Bitcoin is a Digital Vault

Bitcoin, the blockchain, is like a digital vault. Its math-locked code is like digital gold. When people talk about buying bitcoin the cryptocurrency (BTC), they mean purchasing access to specific and unique information stored on that blockchain, and retaining private keys for that access. If one loses the keys, they lose the coin. There is no need for a custodian. There’s no such thing as a bank run on Bitcoin that leads to a loss of funds. The blockchain is the bank and the network of users own it. The value of bitcoin is self-evident, because unlike a dollar or a euro, which gets watered down over time, one bitcoin will always be equal to one bitcoin, it’s inflation proof.

Bitcoin is like a digital vault with keys of math-locked code.

Bitcoin can’t be over-printed and hyper-inflated because there is a limited amount of them. There are only, and will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. About 90% of those are already in circulation.²⁴

Bitcoin’s market cap, which is the amount of bitcoins in circulation times the value of each bitcoin, at its current value of 409 billion dollars,²⁵ is worth more than 97.8% of the companies making up the S&P 500.²

As the first out of the digital money gate, Bitcoin secured the perimeter of a new financial fortress. The blockchain became the vault, the bitcoins are the gold, and the culture is now the moat that protects it. Ethereum, on the other hand, is like a bridge over this moat leading to uncharted lands further westward, where the decentralized world could operate in a faster and more flexible way.

Enter Ethereum, The Ultimate Swiss-Army Knife

If Bitcoin is a safe, one could think of Ethereum as a Swiss Army knife. What makes Ethereum so versatile is its smart contracts.

Smart contracts execute customizable functions on a blockchain for financial, legal, social, and governance purposes. These use cases for Ethereum are non-exhaustive, and still relatively unexplored. The possibilities range from secure and transparent voting systems to managing supply chain operations, from deploying loans and executing trades to granting music,²⁷ or film royalties in real time, from proof-of-ownership tools to peer-to-peer fundraising platforms without a middleman (take a hike Kickstarter).

Self-Driven Decentralized Finance

The strongest use case on Ethereum, since its inception in 2015, was turning ordinary lending and borrowing into a human-error free, automated process. This is broadly known as decentralized finance, or DeFi. DeFi is to finance what Uber was to transportation.

Uber replaced a centralized monopoly that overcharged for a service by offering the same service at a better value in a decentralized manner. Ethereum’s blockchain offers something similar with lending, borrowing, and trading.²⁸ So long as the services are legitimate, enjoyable, comparable in price, and dependable, the “Uber-version” always cannibalizes the centralized version via the force of market adoption.

DeFi is to finance what Uber was to transportation.

DeFi applications went from holding $1 billion in 2019 to over $100 billion in less than three years.²⁹ What may result with DeFi is the financial equivalent of no more yellow taxis.

Decentralized Finance Cannibalizes Traditional Savings Accounts

Insert Coinbase, a popular cryptocurrency exchange company publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker COIN, which designed a lending program in 2021. Keep in mind the current annual percentage yield (APY) in most traditional savings accounts is 6/10ths of 1%. That means if you put $10,000 in a savings account in a year you’d get $60 back. As part of its lending program, Coinbase was prepared to offer 4% APY. That’s more than 6X what you get from a savings account for keeping your money with them. Move that $10K over to Coinbase, convert it to USDC, and you’d see $400 come back a year later. A sizable difference for money just sitting there. The kind of difference that could cannibalize traditional bank savings accounts across the nation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent a letter to Coinbase informing them they would get in trouble if they went forward with it. Coinbase rescinded its lending program shortly after.³⁰ Their Chief Legal Officer shared their side of the story in a blog post titled “The SEC has told us it wants to sue us over Lend. We don’t know why”.³¹

The point here isn’t Coinbase getting blocked by the SEC, but rather that a $50 billion dollar cryptocurrency company³² was confident enough in DeFi to offer all of its customers a risk-reduced rate of return of ~4% APY. Can you imagine what that would do to centralized banking? Who would park their money in a savings account when they could earn six times that with similar guarantees on an app downloaded to their smartphone? The SEC blocked this mainstream adoption valve, but the tools Coinbase was going to use to supply 4% APY are still here.

Hamstringing a user-friendly front end for DeFi can only be a speed bump in the inevitable mass-adoption of a superior financial system using better code-based instruments, i.e. smart contracts. DeFi is trustless, automated, secure, and open 24/7 just like 7–11.

Growth, Change, and Industry Regulation

Regulating DeFi growth incentivizes and redirects currency flow beyond constrictive jurisdictions, and passes on a boatload of what would have been taxable income. DeFi will never be beholden to the jurisdictions of regulatory giants like the United States or China. However, DeFi will always look to major financial players like the US and China to provide meaningful regulatory insight that prevents bad actors and creates guide rails for doing digital business in a morally fair way. But the US thinking everyone should take a yellow cab will not stop DeFi. Uber drivers appeared where the passengers were, not the other way around. DeFi will show up at the doorstep of an accessible IP address. Countries that dial in a smooth front end for DeFi will be the first to benefit from faster financial "transportation", much like the flow of a current always finding the most efficient route guided by the natural contours of the land. Plus, with DeFi, your compounding APY will make that trip down the river at record speed.

DeFi is trustless, automated, secure, and open 24/7 just like 7–11.

To quote the Red Sox owner in Moneyball written by Aaron Sorkin, about being the first guy through the wall, “He always gets bloody, always. It’s the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. But really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods… and anybody who’s not building a team right, and rebuilding it using your model right now, they’re dinosaurs.” So long Tyrannosaurus USA and The People’s Republic of Triceratops.

The Evolution of Money Will Be Digital

The Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains are too important to stop, too helpful to ridicule, and too profitable to ignore. Both arrived at financial prominence by climbing up the ladder of economic influence instead of printing money from the top of it. At the heart of the behemoth that is Bitcoin and within the head of the leviathan that is Ethereum isn’t greed, control, or usury, but observable code and as such moral transparency. No more secrets.

Money, in any moment, like some sort of emergent autonomous zone, is that which people agree to pay attention to. Cryptocurrency may be an innovation on par with the steam engine and electricity. Just as the steam engine shrunk the earth, and electricity lit up the night, blockchain promises liquidity in your own bank.

*This article originally appeared on BanklessPublishing.com on 7/1/2022.

Author & Editor Bios

Frank America is an author, researcher, comedian, and musician. He has a background in English Literature, Philosophy, and Communications. Frank is a co-founder of The Rug News, and content manager at Bankless Publishing.

Zero Mass* is a writer exploring the unique space of DAOs and crypto. His pseudonym is purposefully designed to test the “trustless” concept.*

Sixian* is an editor at BanklessDAO. She’s interested in the potential of decentralized technologies, especially the ways in which individuals and communities can self-organize, activate alternative economies, and explore deeper notions of wealth.*

Footnotes

¹ “The History of Credit Cards”, creditcards.com, 12 Aug 2021, https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/history-of-credit-cards/, Accessed 22 Aug 2021.

² Debest, Raynor. “Cryptocurrency Adoption Amongst Consumers Statistics and Fact”. Statista.com, 29 Mar 2021, https://www.statista.com/topics/7705/cryptocurrency-adoption-among-consumers, Accessed 16 June 2022.

³Chainalysis Team. “The 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index”, chainalysis.com, 14 Oct 2021, https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adoption-index/, Accessed 26 June 2022.

⁴Manning, Landon. “Paypal Accepts Bitcoin for Merchant Payment”. Nasdaq.com, 5 Apr 2021, https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/paypal-accepts-Bitcoin-for-merchant-payment-2021-04-05, Accessed 15 Aug 2021.

⁵https://cash.app/Bitcoin

⁶ https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.17821.html

⁷https://venmo.com/about/crypto/

⁸Hale, Kori, Goldman Sachs Cryptocurrency Endorsement Boosts Wealth Management, forbes.com, 5 April, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2021/04/05/goldman-sachs-cryptocurrency-endorsement-boosts-wealth-management/, Accessed 8 Aug 2021.

⁹ McKeefy, Shane, “4 Ways Banks Can Keep and Win Millennial Customers”, gallup.com, 3 Apr 2018, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/237734/ways-banks-win-keep-millennial-customers.aspx?, accessed 15 Aug 2021.

¹⁰ Choi, Audrey, “How Younger Investors Could Reshape the World”, morganstanley.com, 24 Jan 2018, “https://www.morganstanley.com/access/why-millennial-investors-are-different”, accessed 25 June, 2022.

¹¹How Millennial and Gen Z Could Reinvent Banking”, morganstanley.com, Jul 31, 2019, https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/millennial-gen-z-loan-growth, Accessed 19 Aug 2021

¹² White, Alexandra, “millennials and Gen Z are the Most Likely to Use Mobile Apps” — here’s why, plus budgeting tips”, cnbc.com, 29 Jan 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/select/why-millennials-gen-z-use-mobile-banking-apps/, Accessed 22 Aug 2021.

¹³ How Millennial and Gen Z Could Reinvent Banking”, morganstanley.com, 31 July 2019, https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/millennial-gen-z-loan-growth, Accessed 19 Aug 2021

¹⁴ Rosenberg, Eric and Valasquez, Vikki. “Younger Generations More Bullish on Cryptocurrencies”, investopedia.com, 4 Apr 2022, https://www.investopedia.com/younger-generations-bullish-on-cryptocurrencies-5223563, Accessed 16 June 2022.

¹⁵ Frank, Robert, “Millennial Millionaires Have a Large Share of Their Wealth in Crypto, CNBC Survey Says”, 10 Jun 2021, cnbc.com, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/millennial-millionaires-have-large-share-of-wealth-in-crypto-cnbc-survey-.html, Accessed 22 Aug 2021

¹⁶ Hoffower, Hillary, “Meet the Typical Millennial Millionaire in America…” businessinsider.com, 9 Nov 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-american-millennial-millionaire-net-worth-building-wealth-2019-11, Accessed 16 June 2022.

¹⁷ Garcia, Gabriel, “That 30 Trillion Great Wealth Transfer is a Myth”,cnbc.com, 22 May 2018, “https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/that-30-trillion-great-wealth-transfer-is-a-myth.html”Accessed 26 June 2022.

¹⁸Dickens, Sean, “TV Host Jimmy Fallon Reveals He Owns a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT”, finance.yahoo.com, 11 Nov 2021, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tv-host-jimmy-fallon-reveals-164716453.html, Accessed 16 June, 2022.

¹⁹ Metz, Cade, “Coinbase Just Debuted the First Bitcoin Debit Card in the US”, wired.com, 20 Nov 2015, https://www.wired.com/2015/11/coinbase-unveils-countrys-first-bitcoin-debit-card/[,](https://www.wired.com/2015/11/coinbase-unveils-countrys-first-Bitcoin-debit-card/,) Accessed 16 June, 2022.

²⁰ “Bitcoin Price USD”, Bitcoin.zorinaq.com, 21 Aug 2011, https://Bitcoin.zorinaq.com/price/, accessed 21 Aug 2021.

²¹Ibid.

²² Higgins, Stand. “US Government to sell over 44,000 Bitcoins Today”, coindesk.com, 6 Nov 2015. https://www.coindesk.com/us-marshals-final-silk-road-Bitcoin-auction, Accessed 22 Aug 2021.

²³ Avelar, Brain. Jones, Sam. “El Salvador Becomes First Country to Adopt Bitcoin as Legal Tender”, theguardian.com, 9 Jun, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/el-salvador-Bitcoin-legal-tender-congress, Accessed 22 Aug, 2021.

²⁴ Chanalysis Team, “60% of Bitcoin is Held Longterm as Digital Gold, What About the Res?” chainalysis.com,18 Jun 2020, https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/Bitcoin-market-data-exchanges-trading

²⁵ https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin

²⁶ https://fknol.com/list/market-cap-sp-500-index-companies.php

²⁷ Bain, Katie. “The Chainsmokers Giving Fans a Share of New Album’s Royalties as Free NFTs” billboard.com 12, May, 2022. https://www.billboard.com/business/tech/chainsmokers-free-nfts-royalties-new-album-royal-1235069874/

²⁸ Gupa, Nakul. “How Defi is eating financial services” cyptechie.com 30 June, 2021. https://www.cryptechie.com/p/defi

²⁹ DeFi Market Cap. 26 Sep 2021. Coingecko.com https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/decentralized-finance-defi

³⁰Bosch, Christopher, J. “A September to Remember: Coinbase Avoids SEC Clash by Dropping Crypto Lend Product”, natlawreview.com, Sep 29, 2021. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/september-to-remember-coinbase-avoids-sec-clash-dropping-crypto-lend-product, Accessed 26 June 2022

³¹ Grewal, Paul, “The SEC has told us it wants to sue us over Lend. We don’t know why.” blog.coinbase.com, Sep 7, 2021. https://blog.coinbase.com/the-sec-has-told-us-it-wants-to-sue-us-over-lend-we-have-no-idea-why-a3a1b6507009, Accessed 26 June 2022

³²Leder, Michelle. “What Was Coinbase Thinking When it Dissed the SEC?” 15 Sept, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-15/what-was-coinbase-thinking-when-it-dissed-the-sec, Accessed 26 June 2022

This essay is entitled, “Paper Cuts”, and it’s meant to cover all the tiny ways that we lose and a few ways we can gain money. Money is energy, it is a time-locked consolidation of power, and represents freedom of choice. Growing one’s amount of money is a reflection of one’s own ability to control their reality, and impress their value upon it in such a way that it can be stored up for future operations.

During a routine mundane everyday transaction, a teller once asked me if I want my change. It was a bit more than a nickel, and I laughed. “Do I want my money?” I thought to myself. I countered, “is it money?” They said, “well it’s not much.” I said, “if it’s money, and it’s mine, yes, I want it. I want my money.” And so should you.

DISCLAIMER:

Some of the tips in this short essay may seem or feel frugal, or at their worst, miserly, but bear in mind that the only thing that represents control, power, and freedom in the material world is money. If you do not take it seriously, the mechanisms, structures, and automations built into the system we operate within are designed to extract that power, control, and freedom from you at every single turn. So be vigilant, and watch your power grow.

1. Stop tipping.

This may sound miserly and that’s why I began with it. Tipping as a culture in the USA has become so expected, that even a server who brings you the wrong food, isn’t respectful or polite, and doesn’t tend to your needs during a meal would feel angry if you did not leave a tip. This is absolutely ridiculous. We might even feel guilty for not doing it. The only place tipping still feels appropriate is when dining out, and I would still generally recommend tipping in these situations, but just make the tip commensurate with the service. If you were well served you can leave a good tip.

As for the rest of it: stop tipping. Everyday transactions, like when you swipe your card at a coffee shop, purchase any sort of service, anywhere, for anything, like every time you take an Uber or Lyft, every person that does some small thing for you generally expects a tip. My advice is not to tip. Instead give people awareness and kindness, and reserve tips for particularly good service, which tends to be less frequent.

2. Pay in cash.

For anything less than $100 USD, pay in cash. This has a two-fold benefit. The first is that you have a better sense of the money you spend when you pay in cash. You feel those four twenty dollar bills in your wallet or purse, and when you hand them over you feel that you are paying for something. With digital transactions this essence is lost. One doesn’t think much about the amount, and with the click of a button, can easily add 20% to something that they haven’t truly physically or mentally processed. By paying in cash you tend to be more conservative, as well and thoughtful about your purchases.

3. Keep your change.

The second benefit to paying in cash is that you receive change. Receiving change is an important energy to understand the meaning of money. If we always pay whatever small nick-knack amount of money with a card, $5.24, $14.72, $25.19, we immediately pull that exact amount of money from our digital accounts, and have no means of conserving money for a future date, what amounts to (because of the time differential) an additional revenue stream.

This may sound strange, and mathematically it’s more of a mind hack, but if you receive physical change for all your <$100 purchases, and save your quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies in jar, then once every few months you can take it to your bank, and convert that jar into a singular larger sum of money. Maybe $50, $80, or even $150.

Although your net amount of money is still the same, every few months you have a spike return to your bank account.

4. Be weary of auto-pay.

Review all of your automatic withdrawal agreements, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Spotify, YouTube Premium, Gym Memberships, automated philanthropic donations, anything that is allowed to recurringly draw from your account (remember your account is your power). The most sneaky of recurring payments is the annual payment. I’ve seen situations where people I know have gone 3-4 years without realizing they had a recurring annual payment that they no longer had need for. This has happened to me as well with website URLs and hosting services. This is because it only shows up in your statement once a year. And if you don’t have notifications routing to the right email, or if they end up in spam, it is easy to miss.

How many times have we signed up for the “free 1 month trial” with the intention to cancel and forgetting for more than two months to do so, thereby justifying the reason behind “free 1 month trials”. With that said I’ve probably started and stopped Amazon Prime like 4 times. But it requires effort.

5. Ask your Credit Card company to send you another card.

This is the easiest way to hack the auto-pay web of obfuscation and extraction. Without cancelling your credit card, and thereby not affecting your credit, you can receive a new card with different numbers. This immediately severs the tie of any auto-pay you’d previously attached the old card numbers to. Sure, it may be a bit of a pain to re-enter information here and there, but it gives you the upper hand.

Sit back and watch the emails roll in. Most services won’t even disrupt your service, providing grace periods and reminders to “update your payment information.” The genius of this move is it puts the onus back on the extractors of your account. They can no longer get in, and believe me, they will come a-knocking. Review accordingly.

6. Save 20% of all income.

This is something I started with my friends called The 20% Club, and you’re welcome to join. The rules are simple. 1. Save 20% of all income you receive. 2. Remove that 20% from any bank account in small bills, $1, $5, $10, $20. 3. Save that bundle of money like a power center. When the time comes to need cash for something, well you’ve got your own ATM. Be prudent.

Note, 401(k)s and things of that nature are smart and advisable, but are not included. It’s basically 20% of what comes in after everything that automatically comes out, income taxes, life insurance, 401 savings, etc.

Side note: if you happen to be amazing at this there is no point in going past $10,000*. Plus, savings accounts can provide you a yield, albeit laughably small, and the fluidity of digital access to finance.

One friend who joined the 20% club went from $13,000 dollars in debt to various credit card companies to having over $65,000 in savings in less than four years.

The reason for the small bills is when you do end up using that cash for less than $100 purchases, people appreciate either exact change or small bills, and particularly ten dollar bills. I’m sure you’ve noticed ATMs across the USA have seemingly all agreed to only dispense $20s, with rare exceptions.

*You cannot fly internationally with more than $10,000 in cash.

7. Buy Bitcoin and Ethereum.

If you really want to get a leg up on inflation - the dark shadowy invisible and most pernicious form of theft on the planet - start buying bitcoin and ethereum and holding those assets in a cold storage wallet like a Ledger, or Trezor. This circles back to the “your account is power” mantra, but now it is truly actualized. Bitcoin cannot be inflated, ethereum may become deflationary, and when you hold both in a cold storage wallet, that is self-custody of funds, you’ve truly become your own bank. Congratulations this is the next level of protecting yourself from paper cuts.

Purchase BTC & ETH via whatever method is easiest to you, Coinbase, etc, at a regular interval, at an amount that you can afford, and immediately withdraw it to your own bank. It’s amazing.

8. Consider your cash outflows.

Expensive dinners, buying drinks with friends, Ubers around town, movies with ridiculously priced popcorn, theme parks and or concert tickets. Whatever your favorite forms of entertainment may be, have a moment to consider their return value. If you were to just prune one or two of your higher cost habits, you may be able to improve your power level (your financial level) a great deal. All of the events just mentioned, and others like them are fun, just as they should be. I’ve found they are even so much more fun when they are prudently and selectively chosen. After all, sometimes you gotta splash the cash.

9. Make all big purchases via Credit Card

By doing all your large purchases via credit card, and ruthlessly paying off every cent owed before any interest is due, you’ve just immediately improved your credit score, and entitled yourself to two of the coolest words in the matrix: cash back. We need a credit history if we are going to get decent rates on big ticket items we don’t want to pay for in full up front: cars, houses, boats, etc. Even if you aren’t buying those things, good credit scores can lower your insurance, get you better deals on rental cars, and generally show the matrix that you know how to take care of your books. Again, your books being in order is an indicator that you have will power, control, and dependability.

As far as cash back, fowk an airline mile or a hotel deal, just get that sweet sweet cash back and return it to your power account. Find the cards without annual fees (if possible, I’ve managed to find three of them), use them for all major purchases, and get your cash back.

10. Don’t Buy Gift Cards

Sure we’ve all had the auntie who got us $25 gift certificate to the movies, or Amazon, or if your an outdoorsy type perhaps REI. All of these are scams. Money is the freedom of choice. To collapse money into a gift card is to reduce it to degenerate version of its true power. It’s not like your handing out meal tickets to homeless people so that you don’t have to think you helped them buy drugs. Don’t buy gift cards. Do not give any capital organization the ability to trap your choice. If you want someone to go to a movie theater, or shop at REI, give them a nice card that reflects that ethos and some cash. After all, it’s up to each person to learn how to allocate their power.

Not to mention can you imagine how many nick-knack gift cards for $5, $10, or $15 dollars from Grandmas and Grandpas the whole world over have been given to niecces and nephews only to resurface years later in boxes and drawers after they have expired. According to one study, Americans have left 3 Billion dollars on the table in unused gift cards. Get out while you still can. If someone gives you a gift card, and you can’t immediately think of a way to spend it, try and sell it to a friend who wants it at a kindly-slashed rate of value.

The idea here was to trigger a certain kind of thinking.

It’s not like all these ideas are novel, or gold, or will make anyone rich over night. But the most important thing to impress upon you lovely reader, is to say that your money is your power. Your ability to manage your books is your ability to keep your power under control. All these little paper cuts from the matrix are designed to bleed us dry, just like the year-over-year inflation that makes the prices at the grocery spike each time we return. Inflation secretly steals wealth because it is a hidden tax.

That cash we keep in the 20% club is losing 8% a year, but it has high usability and is in a matrix accepted form. Number seven in this short essay is perhaps one of the only parachutes out of this wild world of paper cuts. We get to learn how to operate powerfully both within, and above, the machinations of capitalism, and financial vampiricism.

Nothing is free, no trial is free, no buy one get one free is free. These tools are designed to find ways for us to open our wallets and purses and pay. It’s all within the account. Be mindful. Be vigilant. Be strong.

Frank America* is an author, researcher, comedian, and musician. He is Co-founder of The Rug, and a Content Manager at Bankless Publishing.*