Like many before me, I believe my Bitcoin journey started well before Bitcoin even existed. My entire life has led me here.
I was a 90s kid that excelled in school by following the rules, while something deep within me always whispered that there had to be more to life than following orders.
I got straight A’s without studying and slept through every class. I was an awkward introvert, but also a good athlete, as well as interested in the arts. Oh, and I also took a greenhouse nursery class for 3 consecutive years because I enjoyed agriculture (and the easy credits). I had my hands in enough places to get along with everyone, but never fully felt like I belonged anywhere.
I was an honor graduate with zero direction in my life. I expected to go to university, simply because that’s what you had to do to get a good job. I never thought about how I was going to pay for it. I was simply allowing the tide of life pull me wherever straight laced people were supposed to go.
One thing led to another and I ended up playing basketball at a community college instead of going to university. Little did I know that this last minute change of plans would have such an important role in the course of my life. Most notably, basketball allowed me to get my classes paid for and begin “real life” without any burden of student debt.
Somehow during my college years I ended up in the conspiracy theory algorithm of YouTube which resulted in me watching a documentary titled The College Conspiracy produced by a hyperinflation awareness group. It showed in great detail how the system is designed to create debt slaves. It clearly presented that inflation was imminent, and exponential.
The year was 2011. After watching the documentary, I decided two things. One - I was not going to university after my two years playing basketball. I was convinced the degree wouldn’t guarantee me a job, but it would certainly guarantee me debt. And two - I needed to buy gold. So I found myself buying gold coins off of an infomercial on late night TV. They ended up being rocks wrapped in a thin layer of gold on the outside. I was the sucker at the table.
I was so close to breaking through, but the matrix pulled me back in. After scaring away some friends with warnings that the financial system was destined to collapse, I ran out of the rabbit hole instead of diving in deeper. People were looking at me like I was crazy, so I had to back away. I wasn’t confident enough in the material or in myself to go down such a path on my own yet.
Years passed and I continued to drift along in life. I checked off the things that a respected person in society was supposed to do: get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, get a better job, buy a bigger house. I was running on the hamster wheel without even knowing it. Life wasn’t necessarily bad by any means, but I had completely forgotten that I wasn’t free - “sovereign” rather, as we bitcoiners like to say.
January of 2021 is when the crack appeared that allowed me to see a glimpse behind the veil again for the first time in a decade. Gamestop happened. I remember being absolutely mesmerized watching a stock go from near nothing to multiple hundreds in essentially no time at all. I couldn’t look away from the charts and couldn’t stop thinking, “How could this happen?”
For the rest of 2021, I started studying markets and watching every tick. I studied chart patterns, trading psychology, listening to podcasts, doing any and everything I could to understand how financial markets worked. I told my wife we would have a million dollars in one year. There was only one problem: I wasn’t making very many winning trades. It felt like the whole thing was rigged against me.
In 2022, my cousin recommended the book Flash Boys by Michael Lewis. I read it and was again convinced that the entire market is rigged against the regular joes. After paying “market tuition” (read: lost a bunch of money) I stopped trading, but didn’t stop watching. My Twitter feed became largely filled with macroeconomic content. Geopolitics and macro news became as entertaining and action packed as watching a sporting event. In November of the same year, that same cousin sent me a link to the single most impactful article I’ve ever read: The Dollar Endgame by Peruvian Bull. This was the true rabbit hole moment.
Never once does he mention Bitcoin, but he laid out so clearly the history of money and that there was a problem with fiat. I was convinced that, as Lyn (Alden) says, there was no stopping this train. Around this same time, Bitcoin twitter started showing up in my algorithm. I started thinking, “maybe there is actually something to this.”
Still watching from afar, I was learning more and more, but only via posts on Twitter. Then in March of 2023, SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) collapsed. It was time to get some skin in the game. I sat my wife down on the couch moments before she was leaving for a girl’s weekend trip. I very soberly told her the entire banking system was going down and we had to buy bitcoin, prepare for chaos. Not my best timing or delivery. But, because she’s a saint, she says okay and I very quickly made my first significant purchase of sats. I knew next to nothing about self custody or really how the more technical aspects of the bitcoin ecosystem worked at this time. I had gotten off zero, but the real work hadn’t even started yet.
I became obsessed. I started by reading The Bitcoin Standard, and have since read countless books and listened to thousands of podcast hours. I learned that self custody was what gave bitcoin its power. So I did what all newbies do, I bought a Ledger. Not long after, I saw a video suggesting I might want to change to a different device. I immediately got a different single signature hardware wallet, but who was to say this one was any better? While I have nothing negative to say whatsoever about this particular hardware device, the weight of knowing one wrong move could lose access to my life’s savings was quite heavy.
Ever since deep diving into bitcoin, it had seemed like the directionless wandering of my life now had a charted course, a purpose. I often tell people that my study of Bitcoin has been the substitute for going to university. I feel like I’ve gotten multiple degrees because of it. Going down the rabbit hole changed my life for the better in so many ways. All the time and effort I have spent to try to understand this thing, I couldn’t let myself be the single point of failure that screws it all up. And at this point, with my single signature setup, that was without question the case. One wrong turn and I could easily be back on zero.
I had heard Peter Dunworth on multiple podcasts, but mostly talking about the fundamentals of bitcoin. I had never really looked into the business he ran. In early 2024 I started searching for information on The Bitcoin Adviser. All it took was one inquiry call to understand the value proposition they were presenting. TBA was offering a helping hand in protecting the energy I was storing in Bitcoin.
The peace of mind that comes with their collaborative custody model is indescribable. I have likened it to having my wealth in a high security vault, while TBA is the armed guard escorting me to the door. I sleep easy knowing that my sats are in cold storage and there is a contingency protocol in place if something were to happen that was out of the ordinary.
The beauty of Bitcoin is that if something is good for one, it’s good for all. TBA are true Bitcoiners looking out for the wellbeing of each and every client, and simultaneously the entire Bitcoin network. They take pride in the fact that not a single satoshi has been lost in their collaborative custody setup. If you are serious about protecting your bitcoin now and long into the future, I cannot recommend the services at The Bitcoin Adviser enough.
Danny Tanner is a pseudonym but a real client. His drive to learn as much as possible about this thing we call Bitcoin is inspiring, but his primary focus is on protecting and providing for his beautiful family, and it's been great to watch them come on this journey with him. If that feels very familiar and you'd like to speak to one of our advisers to find out how you can do the same, please click below. Thanks Danny :-)