The Bitcoin Hero's Journey | Bitcoin 2026

All right, we're going to mix things up today. Today I want to talk about the hero in every Bitcoiner. You guys, you Puncher, you Lauren, PSG. These are some of the uh studios I've uh produced movies and TV shows at. I had a AI make the uh Bitcoin only version just for fun. Uh MGM, Warner Brothers, Universal. Anyways, after having produced 20 movies and 30 TV shows, I realized that the formula that we use in Hollywood is the same formula that we Bitcoiners should use to tell our story. This, of course, is the hero's journey. Many of you know it. You've studied it in literature. It goes all the way back to biblical times. Plato, caveman sitting around a fire. And it has these 12 critical stages. And the reason it works is that it's built into our DNA. You see, as humans, whenever we want to transform, we naturally go through a sequence. Whenever we want to optimize or improve or grow, the hero's journey just puts nice 12 labels on this process. And so, I'm going to go through those with you today. So, the first phase we're all familiar with. This is the ordinary world. This is the world we know when we're sitting in the fiat world. We know this because prices rise. We seek higher wages. We're rewarded with credit scores. And for many, this means more debt. But of course, this for a lot of us leads to more credit cards, more payment plans, and more payday loans. But the thing is, we're motivated by an external scorecard. You see, we're incentivized to get our name on the office door, to get uh the corner glass office, a better parking spot, a better suit, a better title. And a lot of this stress and anxiety is quieted by social media and news. And if that doesn't work, there's a pill for that. And of course, they'll sell us those pills with those same outlets. They want to keep us compliant and domesticated. It's simple. In the fiat world, earn more dollars because in the fiat world, there is no difference between dollars and money. But deep down, we know something isn't right. We just can't quite put our finger on it. We remain somewhat comfortably numb and we just trust the system. We are Keo Reeves in the Matrix. We're sitting in our florescent build cubicle office. We are Dorothy in Kansas. And we are Truman in the Truman Show living a normal but manufactured life because it's all that he knows. This is of course our ordinary world. But then we get the call to adventure. We all hear that computer sounding word Bitcoin for the first time. We all remember that. And maybe it was uh someone at a barbecue who told us only back then we were the one that wanted to change the subject. Maybe it was a global event like the COVID crisis or the Canadian trucker protest that followed. Maybe some of you lost a home in the great financial crisis or your parents did. Regardless, we all felt the inflation that followed afterwards. Whoo. This is your wakeup call. This is the tap on the shoulders that we can all cut the fiat puppet strings and Bitcoin is offering us the scissors. This is your mission impossible should you choose to accept it. You are getting a call from a crazy professor and I'm sure we'd all love to go back in time and smash by some Bitcoin. So, this is the call to adventure which we all remember and we all remember the refusal of the call. Every one of us refused Bitcoin the very first time we heard about it. Just like Ben Stiller did in The Secret Life of Walter Mitti. He said no to an adventure of a lifetime. He liked the temperature controlled offices, the coffee, his co-workers. Bilbo Baggins and The Hobbit said, "I do not need an adventure. I'm comfortable and happy at home." We all do this. For us Bitcoiners, this is the FUD phase. We think it's a scam. Who the hell is Satoshi? And look at the price. When am I supposed to buy? It's so volatile. Many of us are also well educated and we may have even earned a VC vest. All the more reason to reject Bitcoin's alien properties. But only a fool or a liar would pretend that they're not scared. As humans, we want to survive. We want to mitigate risk. So, we remain in the fiat world. And thus, we refuse the call. That is until we meet our mentor. And just like the basketball players in Indiana needed Gene Hackman and Hooers, just like the scrawny kid in Van Ice, California needed Mr. Miyagi and The Karate Kid, and just like Goodwill Hunting needed Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting to get past his ego and realize he had more potential than just getting in bar fights. Regardless, a guide cuts through the noise. And whether it's someone or something, we all need a mentor to help us along the way. For me, it was this podcast. It was Guy Swan's Bitcoin Audible. It's all I could find at the time, and this was my mentor. For you or others, it might be a Michael Sailor video. Still others, it might be a ridiculously sexy guy who floats along the beach with Yes. with some loud music and clunky graphics. This is the moment we all have to stare in the mirror and admit to ourselves all this time, wow, we don't even know what money is. And so thus with the mentor we are able to advance to the next stage and cross the threshold. But we're not going to be able to cross the threshold unless we're willing to challenge our beliefs because we can only enter with humility. And then as we take that first step we shift from an observer to a participant. And the minute we land, we ask ourselves, what is Bitcoin? Is it a payment system? Is it a ledger? Is it a tech stock? It's different things to different people. And that's because it requires a new language. Think about these four words. When before Bitcoin did you ever use these four words? I never did. And then we realized Bitcoin can fix the world. It's a brain explosion. Just like when Dorothy left the black and white Kansas for a technicolor world in Oz. Just like when the humans went into Pandora in the movie Avatar. And just like Roy Shider got on that boat to go hunt Jaws. They crossed over into a new and foreign world. This is crossing the threshold. And the minute we get into this new world, we have a very trying stage because it tests our conviction. And this is the tests, allies, and enemies. And many of you know this is where we spend a lot of our time being tested. So, we have to find our allies to help avoid our enemies. Most multiseason TV shows you could retitle test allies and enemies. Game of Thrones, Succession, Billions, any of these could be retitled tests, allies, and enemies. For us Bitcoiners, this is the mouth of the rabbit hole. We get a glimpse of who we could be in this new special world. But we immediately have to be weary because there's a lot of people that want our Bitcoin. They want to sell us other things. They wanted to sell me this NFT for $70,000, which of course I bought for $70,000. But don't worry, I sold it for $300. So, it was a very expensive lesson and uh I needed to find my allies. They also tried to sell me these better bitcoins and all these talking heads on CNBC said you should diversify. Put $1,000 or $100 on each one. You don't know. But we learned very quickly that diversification means less Bitcoin. Shout out to Trey Sellers of Unchained, wherever he is. This is his quote. And this is because we know Bitcoin is a completely different world. It's a world of rules. And everything else, the those NFTts, the altcoins, they all belong in the world of rulers. And because of that, Bitcoin is only going to go up over time against everything else. So, we need to find our Justice League. We need to find our Avengers. They went through the Mount Gaus hack. They went through the block size wars. They lost Bitcoin on a paper wallet. And so with our allies, they help us navigate all of the scams because our enemies would rather we spend five years longer trading crypto than going straight up the road to success. This is our test allies and enemies. And when we get to the end of this phase, we start to approach a deep cave down this rabbit hole. And this is where our minds start to get blown even more. Many of you here know this, but the normies don't. What happened in 1971? while we used to actually have real money and we were rugged. It was pulled from us. They took our car at the valet stand and now we just have valet tickets and they've convinced us that the valet tickets are valuable and that's all we need. And then of course they can make as many more valet tickets as they want to give them to themselves first while we have to work harder for them while they've already bought appreciating assets. But okay, it's nothing to worry. We're going to get some free stuff. They'll keep us compliant and happy in the short term. And this is why even in Hollywood, it's like it's very tough to sell a movie. Your TV show doesn't always get picked up. Duck Dynasty went for 11 seasons for me, but I did equally a 20 other shows where the pilots never went anywhere. So, I had to find my side hustle. Thankfully, I was really, really good at real estate. At least I thought I was really good at real estate. This makes you question everything you own in the fiat land. And how much of a slave are you to everything you were using just to try to chase and hurdle inflation? And it opens up your eyes to all the interdisciplinary aspects of Bitcoin. I didn't really care a lot about game theory or mathematics or philosophy, but I started to once I learned what Bitcoin was. We are Timmy Shalamé going deeper into that dangerous desert as he did in Dune. We are Margot Robbie going deeper into the land of humans to see why this special world is so important to her. This is the approach to the inmost cave. And when we get to the end of this area of the cave, we reach our greatest ordeal. And this is where we are really going to be tested and tried. Many people that come into Bitcoin leave and go back into crypto or go back to fiat because they can't survive stage eight. This is the big mano mano. Hi humble. This is when James Franco in the movie 127 Hours had to saw his arm when he got stuck between two boulders hiking. This is when uh Tom Hanks in Castaway had a failed rescue attempt, but the pain was that he lost his best friend Wilson the volleyball. This is when Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant saw his son die. He was mauled by a bear. His leg was broken. His throat was cut, but he eventually won the Oscar. For us, this is when a big crisis hit and our faith is gone. Many of us are were here during the centralized finance scams of 2022. This was the big one for me. Celsius, Voyager, I know Puncher was at Celsius, BlockFi, and that's because in the traditional world that we came from, we're taught to make money while you sleep. Put your money to work. Yield made sense to us. But we learned that with actual Bitcoin, there isn't any yield. And that if you're getting yield, puncher learned, you are the yield. Thank you, puncher. And then we have to watch out for all these social engineering scams, right? We're getting texts and emails of this all day long. They want our passwords. They want our seed phrase. And then maybe a G7 country collapses. The Bitcoin miners migrate. The hash rate plummets. And of course, it happens right before Thanksgiving. You go back to your family and you get those staires. And it's not their fault. They're listening to people like this who say, "Well, when it comes to Bitcoin, a computer nerd just flips a switch and the whole damn thing's gone." We're gonna forever sit in this ordeal stage until we allow the NGU that we came here to die. We must allow our number go up self to die. It's not about the Lambos. It's about the revolution. This is what Satoshi wanted. Bitcoin isn't about getting rich. It's about getting free forever. That's right. Otherwise, we will continue to measure the world with a growing and broken denominator. If I asked all of you in here how many dollars are on the world, you'd all give me a different number. This is why we need to change and switch worlds and switch our measuring stick to Bitcoin. This is the moment when we have another deep look at ourselves. and we cringe at who we were, maybe who we were married to, maybe who we were listening to, maybe what our career was, and we realize that a lot of it was fake. Until we can reconcile this with oursel, we are not going to be able to exit the ordeal stage. But on the opposite of this stage is our reward. And our reward is knowledge and clarity. We learned that this whole time, Bitcoin wasn't about getting more money. Bitcoin is the money. Bitcoin is proof of money. That's the big idea. And so we learn that with a private key, we can cross the bridge from tyranny to freedom because all that exists in Bitcoin is a private key. We can't touch the Bitcoin on the time chain. We know that. And that's why self-custody is so important. The big question for all of us is, do we want to be the self or do we want someone else to be the self? To each their own. But like Michael Sailor eloquently said, if you can remember 12 words, you become the money. And that's because with Bitcoin, knowing is owning. If you can keep a secret, you can keep your Bitcoin. Oh, hi Holly. In the movie Pulp Fiction, the reward was the briefcase. The entire movie, no one knew what was in the briefcase, but they're all chasing it. And that's because the reward is different things to different people. In Shaw Shank Redemption, Tim Robbins's character escaped from prison and found his private paradise. That was his reward. But that's not the end. There are more stages. >> Welcome to predict. The world is a [music] market. Everything is a market. Every headline moves the line. [music] Every moment is your market. Call the moves. Bet on your instinct. Your prediction. Your edge. Dual bits. Predict. Where everything is a market. Because we have to take the road back. You see, the 12 stages of the hero's journey isn't linear. It's circular. We do live in meat space. So, we have to go back to our friends and family. For Tim Robbins, his road back was telling his best friend in prison, "Here's the treasure map. Come join me in paradise." That was his road back. For us, we've got a bag of orange pills and we want to go back to our friends. But we have to be careful because that same treacherous road is filled with scams. And our conviction is always going to be tested. Just like this guy who in 2011 got tired of holding his Bitcoin at $14 a coin, so he sold it all. I don't think he's doing so well right now. And there's always new FUD. Like this has just surfaced within the last year. Jeffrey Epstein is Satoshi. There's a quantum risk. And now all these OGs sell, but we gain and grow a hardened orange shell. And so we're able to teach and educate those around us. This is when Barbie has now returned from the land of humans with her new knowledge to go back to Barbie land. This is when Jason Bourne leaves a life of being a spy back to the life of being a private citizen with his new skills. So this is the road back. And as soon as we get to the end of this road, we are reborn. Just like Kiana Reeves was in the Matrix, he was killed by agents. But when he resurrected as the one, he could stop bullets. Oh, hi Paula. And just like Robert Downey Jr. when Jeff Bridges, the villain, pulled out his arc reactor, he was reborn and declared, "I am Iron Man." For us Bitcoiners, this is a huge shift. But it's not just mental, it's physical. And that's because we've finally discovered real money. And when you find real money, you suddenly want the rest of your life to be real. You want real goods. You want real health, a real career, a real future. And you want to get as close as you can to Bitcoin. Many of us run a node. Many of us open up a lightning channel. We start to lottery mine. Hi, Tiffany. We uh consolidate our UTXOs or we at least learn the importance of coin control. And then we ask ourselves philosophically, is Bitcoin freedom money or is it a scarce database? Or maybe it's both. So we learn that since Bitcoin is generational wealth and it's going to be here and we want it to be here, we have to learn about multi- signature wallets. We have to learn about time locking, locking our money forward in time. And that's because Bitcoin is the only money ever in humanity to be mined in time. And since you can't print time and you can't alter time, you can't rug time. So, Bitcoin becomes the best money to represent your time, which is all money is. And so, thus, Bitcoin can honor your time and it gives you confidence of a future. This is your rebirth. And your rebirth leads to your final stage, the return with the elixir. And this is where, as a Bitcoiner, you reach your full potential. I find it really interesting that many people here in Bitcoin were not educators before, but suddenly we all feel compelled to educate. It's because we want everyone to know what we know and we're ready. We have the fundamentals. We understand the properties and we just want to tell everybody. Uh for me, I took two years off of Hollywood. I called my agents. I said no to everything. I sat down and I wrote a book and I got lucky to get it on a bunch of shows. This was the Keith McCulla show. I wanted to start going on a lot of podcasts. This was me on Breedlove. Puncher was on Breedlove. He was amazing. Uh this was me. I joined a bunch of other Bitcoiners. I don't know if any of them are here. We uh onboarded Santa Monica is the first city in the United States to form an official Bitcoin office. Uh this was a a little conference up in Portland. I got to MC last year. I'll do it again next month. And because of this and you share so many values with the same people, it doesn't matter where they come from. You want to find your tribe. You want to find your people. I see Lauren there. There's Steven. There's Puncher again. Gosh, Puncher, you're everywhere. But we find out there's actually just a lot of guys, which is why when I come to conferences like this, I try to find my ladies. Why is it that all the ladies are so beautiful in Bitcoin? There's something about that, right? Humble. I don't have a photo of you up here. We realize that we can be free. We realize that we can find our truth with Bitcoin. And we want to share that with everyone else. This is the final stage. And that's because Bitcoin ultimately captures our life force and it represents the most important trade that we will ever make in our lives and that's with our future self. We learn that this whole time we've been a hero. It's just that fiat has been our kryptonite and by going through the stages were able to shed the kryptonite from us and reveal the hero within. This is what Satoshi ultimately wanted for us and this was the magical elixir that Satoshi gave us. So we should be responsible with it and not squander it. Thank you very much. [music] >> Every year this community comes together to [music] celebrate, to debate, to build what comes next. [music] And every year the stage gets bigger. [music] Sound money center stage. So where do you [music] go to celebrate the next chapter in Bitcoin history? You come home. [music] Nashville. July 2027.