Intro to Financial Fitness

Building your best self is about more than just physical fitness. It must take into consideration all aspects of your life. We believe that that physical fitness is just the beginning - the building block that everything else can be stacked on. When you start down the path of building your fitness, it allows you to gain the motivation and confidence to build other aspects of your life. You can start to see the limitless potential all around you. The next step, in our opinion, is to build yourself mentally and financially.

The Financial Fitness section of the blog is designed to help you on the financial side of the path. To be clear, many of the authors will not be financial advisors (although some of them will be). However, all of the articles and resources shared will be backed by evidence, both from researchable sources and personal experience. The topics will range broadly from retirement planning to real estate investing, and even to Bitcoin and digital currency. Our goal is not to tell you how to spend your money, handle your investments or how to become rich. Our goal is to get you to think about your finances and the world around you in a different, more thorough way that allows you to have the potential to gain an advantage in the financial realm. We want you to be financially secure, stress less about money, and live your life on your terms.

The financial world is a complex subject and only gets more convoluted as time goes on. We hope to break it down into digestible pieces and leave you wanting to do your own research into different topics so that you can master as much of the information as possible. This is a long process that no one could hope to master quickly. As with physical fitness, think of it as a marathon- not a sprint. True knowledge and mastery takes time. We urge you to start the process as early as possible and take it just as seriously as you would your health.

As noted, the subjects discussed will sometimes delve into some very complex topics. If you have any questions about any of the content or would like references to other material that we recommend, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We do not charge for these discussions and welcome them at all times. We are happy to schedule a call or meeting to discuss any and all questions you may have. While many of the authors are not financial advisors, open discussion with like-minded individuals with a deep interest in the topics is one of the best ways to learn about and understand different concepts. We look forward to going down the financial fitness path with you!

The Basics, containing chaos, and personal responsibility

 Some thoughts to consider this week:

Start with the Basics

“Sometimes the best way forward is the most basic path.”

People who find an interest in fitness will almost always be inundated with new ideas and routines that seem to get more complex as time goes on. This can be confusing and overwhelming. If you ever find yourself overwhelmed, get back to the basics. It doesn’t have to be complicated - it just has to work. Some of the most fit people on the planet have the most basic exercise routines.

Containing Chaos

“Before you start blaming your problems on the world around you, make sure your own house is in order.”

Everyone has their own share of problems that could easily be attributed to something outside themselves. Those who find their way past obstacles faced have a lot in common with how they did it. One of those things is that they always make sure their own house is in order first. Eat right, exercise regularly, learn daily, keep your house and workspace clean, etc. By getting your own house in order, the chaos that surrounds you will begin to calm down and allow you to look for opportunities. This is a hard but worthwhile process.

Personal Responsibility

An ancient Greek saying that captures the power of personal responsibility:

"If your doorstep is clean, then your city will be clean.”
Source: unknown

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

If you like the ideas here, consider joining our newsletter where we regularly send out tips for in the gym and in life. Our goal is to help people live better lives and we hope you gain value from the blog and our newsletter.

Intro to Bitcoin (Part 1)

*I am not a financial advisor. These articles are meant as educational material only and reflect my own personal views.

Anyone who has shown even a fleeting interest in Bitcoin, and even for those who have completely written it off as a scam or something not worth paying attention to, I invite you to join me on this series of short articles delving into this asset, its potential, how it could reshape the world, and why everyone should, at the very least, conduct some research to understand the financial environment we are currently in.

I want to be upfront with you right away; I am biased toward Bitcoin because I have been reading and listening to any information I can get my hands on for the past five years. Some of my convictions about it differ from others due to the time I have spent studying how it works and how it can largely affect the economy. Bitcoin can be somewhat daunting to understand as it has many facets, and frankly, the world has never seen an asset like it in human history. I am not trying to convince you to buy Bitcoin. My goal is to pique your interest enough to explore it. If you were to simply buy it with no knowledge or interest in it, the chances of you holding onto it long enough to be effective for you and your portfolio are slim because of the volatility. But once you have studied it, experimented with it, and know that if you buy, you are buying for the long term, I believe you will be more at peace with your investment and see its true world-changing potential. Even if you decide it isn’t the right investment for you, the knowledge you will gain during the research will be invaluable to understanding money and how the economy works.

A man named Jason Maier recently released a new book called “The Progressive Case for Bitcoin”. At the very end of the book, he stated that he believes no one who has ever studied Bitcoin for 100 hours has ever walked away thinking it was a bad investment. I tend to believe this statement and want to attempt to prove it to you in these articles. In order to provide a basic understanding of Bitcoin, I will be covering multiple topics including, but not limited to, the gold standard, inflation, time preference and Bitcoin itself.

Common Questions

Throughout this series of articles, we will be answering common questions about Bitcoin. You will find some of these common questions below with direct links to the articles that answer them.

What was the Gold Standard? - Article 2

What is the National Debt? - Article 2

What is inflation and what issues does it cause? - Article 3

What is the Cantillon Effect? - Article 3

What is proof-of-work? - Article 4

What is the difficulty adjustment? - Article 4

How many Bitcoin are there? - Article 4

What is the halving? - Article 4

What is the Stock-to-Flow ratio? - Article 4

Explanation of time preference - Article 5

What keeps bitcoin safe from government control? - Article 6

What impact does Bitcoin have on the environment? - Article 6

How do I buy Bitcoin? - Article 7

What do I do once I buy Bitcoin? - Article 7

How can I learn more? - Article 8

Glossary

Below are the definitions of some terms that will come up in the articles that may be new to many readers. It will help to understand these terms as you make your way through the articles.

Fiat Currency - All currencies issued by government (Dollar, Yen, Ruble, etc.) The definition of fiat is “a decree.” In the case of currencies, this means a fiat currency has value because an authority, such as a government, declares it has value.

Bitcoin Protocol - The internet is a protocol that everyone uses and continues to be built on top of. Email is also a good example of a protocol. There are few people that understand the underlying protocol of these technologies, yet we all use these same protocols to build websites, companies, applications, and even send messages. The protocols underpin everything built on top of it and rarely changes. The Bitcoin protocol is similar. It is a set of codes that Bitcoin runs on. Many services, applications and new technologies are built on top of this protocol, but the underlying protocol doesn’t change and acts as the foundation of the network.

Lighting Network - If the Bitcoin protocol is layer one of the network, the lighting network is layer two. Lighting has been built on top of the Bitcoin protocol in order to solve the issue of faster and cheaper payments. While layer one only handles so many transactions at a time to focus on security, this makes payments for coffee and other small transactions tedious. The lighting network makes these small transactions instant and cheap. Think of layer one as the place to make large secure payments while layer two is for small day-to-day transactions.

Digital Bearer Asset - A bearer asset is an asset that does not require the redeemer to register ownership, meaning the person who holds the asset is the owner. This can include a bond, checks, and cash. Bitcoin is the first digital bearer asset ever created. Meaning if you hold your own private keys no one can claim your Bitcoin unless you spend the Bitcoin or give up your keys.

Hardware Wallet - a device that holds the private keys to your Bitcoin. While the device does not actually hold Bitcoin, it allows you to access your address on the blockchain that proves you own your Bitcoin (Bitcoin never actually leave the blockchain). This device is not connected to the internet unless making a transaction (some are never connected to the internet at all). The device will also create addresses that allow you to receive Bitcoin.

Private Keys - Think of this as the password to your bank vault of Bitcoin. These “keys” are encrypted into a 12-24 word seed phrase that allows you to access your Bitcoin. Keeping your keys safe and protected gives you ownership and allows you to be your own bank of Bitcoin. Private keys prove you are the owner of this digital bearer asset. “Not your Keys, Not your Coins!”

Public Keys - A public key is created from a private key. Public keys can be shared with the public to receive Bitcoin from others. While a private key gives access to a public key, encryption makes it impossible for a public key to give access to a private key. Therefore it is safe to give out your public key, but you should never give out your private key.

Block - A block in Bitcoin is mined every 10 minutes on average. Miners all around the world compete in a sort of lottery competition to mine blocks. Included in the block is the Block Subsidy or reward for mining the new block, which at the time of writing is currently 6.25 Bitcoins. This is how new Bitcoin is introduced to the world. The block also contains transactions from the Bitcoin protocol and all the fees included with those transactions.

Blockchain - You can think of the blockchain as the entire ledger of Bitcoin’s history. Every transaction inside of every block is available to see in the blockchain and anyone can view it. This includes every block since the genesis block (the first block ever mined), back in 2009. These blocks are “chained”’ together as each proceeding block references the block before it in order to keep a legitimate ledger of truth of every transaction over time.

Node - A node is a computer that runs the bitcoin software and validates new blocks. Anyone can run a node. These nodes are what keep the protocol functioning and working honestly. Nodes also keep the network decentralized and secure. Bitcoin cannot be shut off because nodes are scattered throughout the world and as long as one person is still operating a node, the Bitcoin network will keep plugging along. Nodes interact with each other by validating transactions on the network. Any transaction that does not align with the protocol immediately gets discarded by nodes in the network which keep the system secure.

Miner - Miners are specialized computers that “mine” Bitcoin. These computers function by trying to win the lottery of finding new Bitcoin. This is done by making trillions of mathematical guesses if you will. The miner who guesses the correct number first “mines” the next block and is rewarded with newly minted Bitcoin. With this they get to place the new block into the blockchain and also receive all the fees from the transactions in that new block.

Proof of Work - this the name for the mining process of Bitcoin. It is called Proof of Work, because in order to mine the Bitcoin, real world energy (electricity) has to be used in order to mine Bitcoin. This energy takes capital, from buying the miner, paying the electricity cost to run the miner and in larger mining operations, building the infrastructure to house support and cool the miners. This can even include infrastructure to transport energy from hydroelectric, solar, wind, and other energy sources in order to run the mining rigs. This global competition keeps Bitcoin decentralized and acts more as a free market where everyone is competing and no one has control over the network

Proof of Stake - This is the mining process for most other cryptocurrencies and could even be compared to how fiat currencies work. Miners do not use real world energy to mine in this circumstance. Mining is produced by a computer algorithm and is distributed to the highest stakers in the network. In order to receive proof of stake coins, outside of buying, you must stake your coins in the network. The more coins you stake, the more coins you receive. While most claim it is better for the environment, the drawbacks are that the rich tend to get richer, which creates a centralizing problem in the network. The more coins you have the more you get, and the more power and control the top few have in the system. Since no real work or energy is being put in to protect the network, the top holders could in fact change the rules if they so choose.

Part 2 of the series can be found here.

The Dollar and The Gold Standard (Part 2)

Let’s start with a few surprising facts about currencies that you may not be aware of.

• The Dollar is not backed by anything. The US officially came off the Gold Standard (where the dollar was backed by gold) in 1971, although temporary breaks between the dollar and gold happened several times in previous decades. When the dollar permanently broke away from gold is when the dollar officially became a fiat currency. A fiat currency is a currency issued by the government and backed by the trust that it is worth what the government says it is. The definition of fiat is “by decree.”

• The dollar has been losing purchasing power consistently since its inception.

• Fiat Currencies have an average lifespan of 27 years.

• World reserve currencies have an average lifespan of 80-110 years, and the dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for about 103 years depending on which resource you use.

As you can see from these few examples, currencies that are issued by governments do not have the best track record. Fiat currencies all end up collapsing at some point in time because of centralized authority over the money supply. This has been happening for hundreds of years, dating back to when cultures used seashells for exchange. For example, wampum shells used to be used as currency in parts of the Americas, Africa, and Asia in the 1600s. These shells were fairly rare to these cultures and were difficult to come by, so they worked well for retaining value. This type of currency works in small societies, but eventually the New England colonists arrived with greater technology that allowed them to drill for more shells at a much faster pace than the more primitive societies they encountered. They used these mass-produced shells to purchase furs and items from these indigenous populations until the market was flooded with new shells. The mass production and centralized authority that New England brought to this economy devalued the shell currency and the colonists were able to buy most of the goods the indigenous population had worked to create. This more primitive form of hyperinflation lead to the collapse of the shell currency and had to reset to a more sound or “hard” money that newer technology couldn’t mass produce. This refers to money like gold, which is hard to create and extremely difficult to replicate. Gold makes for much better or sounder money than seashells, salt, or cattle, which were all used as currency at some point in history.

During the Gold Standard era, the dollar was backed by gold, meaning you could take your cash into a bank and redeem it for its value in gold. With the dollar pegged to the value of gold, governments were held to a certain level of spending as they could not print more money than they had gold in reserves. In today’s economy, the dollar, along with every other global currency, is fiat money, as it is no longer backed by gold or any other real commodity. This allows governments to print money on a whim, which dilutes the purchasing power of everyone’s money. The dollar began to come off the gold standard in part to finance both world wars (and all the wars since) along with new technology such as the telegraph which made moving money much simpler and faster than sending and verifying gold for each transaction. So, the US, and eventually the world, broke away from a dollar pegged to gold system and we now have 160+ fiat currencies around the world. This allowed transactions to happen much more seamlessly, but it also changed the way countries worked around budgets. The world started to operate on credit and easy money instead of money limited by a commodity. This drastically changed the way governments financed everything including wars, company bailouts and financial crisis. We used to vote on wars and buy war bonds or raise taxes to support a war, but now we endlessly finance them because the money is created with no taxes being taken. Instead, money is printed without the knowledge of the public. It is much easier to get the public on board with these expensive endeavors when we don’t directly get taxed for them. What we fail to understand is that there is a tax being taken, and that is the tax of inflation.

With no asset to peg our money to, the government of any country prints money whenever they are in a pinch, or even when politicians need to win an election. For instance, when faced with a possible recession, it is a much easier decision to print money to “save” the economy in the short term in order to get reelected, while leaving the mess to fall on another leader in the future. It is very difficult to win an election by cutting spending and letting the economy correct itself. For hundreds of years, history has repeated this mistake, until the game eventually ends, and a new money is introduced.

I believe we may be nearing the end of the dollar as a world reserve currency. However, to estimate the time frame for the collapse of the dollar is impossible. It could be 5, 10, or 50 years away, but every time we print more money, we bring that timeline closer. We printed over 700 billion dollars in 2008 during the Great Financial Crash and over 6 trillion dollars in the Covid-19 response. If we have another shock to the system, how much money will need to be printed to avoid disaster, and how much more fragile will that ultimately make the system and economy? There is a point in time when the national debt created by this money printing becomes impossible to pay back because just the interest rates alone on the debt are too high to pay back. According to https://www.usdebtclock.org/, we are currently at $34 trillion dollars in debt. This is not something that can go on forever.

Why should you care about the debt of the US and how does money printing affect you? To be brief, it steals your time and money by way of inflation. In the next article, we will dive into inflation, which is what money printing creates. I promise that this is not to be doom and gloom, as I know it sounds that way. This is meant to be more of a realistic look at what is happening in the world and how this new asset, Bitcoin, may be stepping in to help solve some of these large global issues. We need to know the problems we face in order to start looking for a solution. Although there is a lot of bad, there is also a lot of hope in the near future too. It comes from people seeing potential future problems and building new ways to mitigate or solve them.

You can find Part 3 of the series about Inflation here.

Inflation and The Cantillon Effect (Part 3)

A Corrosive and Divided World

Have you looked at the world lately and felt that things are different? Perhaps more divided, chaotic, filled with anger, or even hopeless? Maybe you haven’t had the time to look at the world because you’re too busy trying to keep up with everything in your own life. It can feel like you’re on a hamster wheel. For me, this moment came when I started calculating my future retirement funds. The realization that I either had to find a way to make a lot more money or I might never retire set in, and things began to feel a little hopeless. The dollar doesn’t buy as much as it used to, but I believe that is pretty common knowledge. The big question is why is this happening?

Much of this frustration and disconnect comes from our global monetary system breaking down. This may sound like a stretch, but when you consider what money touches in our lives, you begin to realize that if money is broken or corrupted, it cascades through all of society and begins to break down everything else. The reason this is true is that money is essentially a language of value upon which society is built. Without some form of money, we wouldn’t have the societal structures we have today. However, when money becomes corrupted, such as the ability to print money at will, society itself begins to corrupt.

Inflation

As an example, let’s consider the scenario of inflation and how it corrupts business decisions, using the production of wine as an illustration. When inflation sets in, the supplies, production, and shipping of wine become more expensive. So, what does the producer do? Well, they have three options, each with different consequences.

1.) Option one is to keep the price the same to remain consistent for their customers, but this poses the risk of reduced margins or operating at a loss. This could lead to job cuts, resulting in a weaker product, lower production, or potentially delayed deliveries.

2.) Option two is to raise prices. Doing so risks losing business at those higher prices, as people often become upset or perceive it as price gouging.

3.) Option three is to dilute the wine, perhaps with water, to reduce costs while sacrificing product quality.

Most producers tend to choose option two or three. If option three is chosen, they risk bad publicity if someone finds out, potentially leading to lost business. The worst scenario occurs when other wine producers follow suit, resulting in an inferior product across the entire economy. Now, imagine this scenario applied to the global marketplace, affecting all the products and services you enjoy or need. It has a cascading effect, and everyone suffers. Most of the time, consumers are frustrated with higher prices or lower quality products, attacking businesses without fully understanding the reasons behind these changes, often blaming the businesses instead of recognizing the role inflation plays.

From an individual perspective, inflation is even more insidious. Most people work 40 hours a week to cover the essentials of daily life, but when inflation sets in, they are forced to work longer hours- say 42, 45, or even 50+ hours, just to maintain the same standard of living. Inflation effectively steals your time, time that could be spent with family, pursuing hobbies, or creating something new. You might even need to pay for more childcare due to increased work hours, potentially falling further behind. Can you see how insidious this is?

This is the root of societal frustration. Money is breaking down right before our eyes, but it’s difficult to grasp the full picture. That is why people are upset and looking for someone to blame yet don’t fully understand the reason. Many people have to live with roommates or their parents because they can’t afford their own place. Fast food becomes the best meal option for some because it is cheaper, leading to health issues and increased medical costs. Education costs continue to rise, forcing people to either accumulate more debt or abandon their education thus limiting their access to higher-paying jobs and exacerbating their struggles. Even politics is stuck in a loop, with politicians unable to cut spending and welfare programs without losing their chance of being reelected. Instead, promising to give money to everyone and blaming the other side for societal problems has become the winning strategy. In reality, they are more concerned with their ability to be elected than actually helping the people they serve. This is where the division comes from. This is the vicious cycle of inflation.

None of this helps people build a better version of themselves or their communities because we are all pushed into survival mode. I can’t fully grasp what will happen as more and more money is printed to sustain this, but let’s be clear; they cannot stop printing money, or the system will completely collapse, a scenario for which virtually no one is prepared.

Cantillon Effect

Inflation in the money supply also creates a scenario called the Cantillon effect. The Cantillon effect refers to the idea that changes in the money supply in an economy cause the redistribution of purchasing power among people, disturb the relative prices of goods and services, and lead to the misallocation of scarce resources, as first described by the 18th-century economist Richard Cantillon.

For example, let's outline a situation in which a company, supported by government subsidies paid for with printed money, impacts the housing market to demonstrate the Cantillon effect. When the government prints money to subsidize a company, there are a lot of unseen effects that take place. The free market is disrupted and prices are dislodged from reality. When a company is subsidized, the company now makes money no matter how well it performs. The incentive to provide high quality goods or services declines compared to a company who has to survive on its own in a free market. The subsidized company may even lack the incentive to perform ethically as they know they will be funded no matter what. This company can now beat out competition without having to provide better goods and services than its competitors. If this happens in areas all across the economy, then there becomes several companies that hold all the wealth and they become “too big to fail.” The government will bail them out and provide them with more money in order to keep them afloat. This makes beating out competition rather easy. With no competition left, these companies become incredibly wealthy and are able to influence policy. These wealthy and well-connected companies, and individuals who run them, become first in line to the newly printed money. This gives them the ability to buy assets before the inflation sets in. This new demand begins to push up asset prices before the newly printed money gets to the hands of the middle and lower class. Those who have hard and scarce assets such as houses have an advantage when the money supply is increased. As we discussed with inflation, the more money they print, the higher prices become including asset prices. So, wealthy individuals and companies who already have assets see the value of their assets increase because of the increase in the money supply, which starts to price out the middle and lower class from being able to purchase and own assets for themselves. When the value of the dollar is decreasing and asset prices continue to climb, the incentive align to own more assets such as a second or third home to continue to save or even increase wealth. This increases the wealth gap without anyone actually adding any true value to the economy.

The Cantillon Effect and inflation become a hidden tax that hits the middle and lower class much harder than higher earners. Since the middle and lower class don’t have as many hard assets, the 2% inflation (or more as we have seen since 2020) consistently steals wealth from these people. The higher income earners who have assets see their value increase well over the 2% inflation mark, so they are actually increasing their net wealth without providing any extra value, while everyone else is having their wealth stolen from them. This is where the wealth gap gets even larger and where civil unrest begins to set in due to a bigger divide in society. This unrest leads to populist leaders who pit one side against the other and it is happening all over the world.

So, why are we told that a 2% inflation target is necessary for an economy to function? Or, even better, why is stealing 2% of everyone’s wealth considered good for society? I have not found a good answer to this question. We are led to believe that this is what needs to happen in a functioning economy, but I would argue that the problems we are seeing in society are because we have inflation.

This is not a call to hate the wealthy, as most of us would like to be wealthy, and if we were, we would do the same thing to preserve our wealth. This is to bring awareness to a deeper problem that money printing creates. This problem cannot be fixed from the system; the system is the problem. We need a new set of rules to play by. A fair set of rules where everyone knows the rules and a small group of government officials can’t change them on a whim. Thankfully, for the first time in human history, there is another system to opt into. One with fair rules that levels the playing field. A set of rules that does not favor any one person over another no matter how much money they have. This system is Bitcoin.

In the next article, we will discuss Bitcoin, what it is, and how it differs from any other money that the world has ever seen before. If this has piqued your interest so far or even if you’re still skeptical, I highly recommend two resources. The first is a one-hour podcast that provides a different perspective on inflation and its societal effects. The second is a website featuring charts focused on the year 1971, when we officially abandoned the gold standard, marking the beginning of accelerated money printing. These resources offer eye-opening insights, and once you start exploring this topic, it is challenging to look away.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5nHUtzovz1jjJn7uK31K76?si=72c88928ccb54bf4

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Part 4 of the series can be found here.

What is Bitcoin? (Part 4)

Definition from Oxford Dictionary: Bitcoin is a type of digital currency in which a record of transactions is maintained, and new units of currency are generated by the computational solution of mathematical problems. It operates independently of a central bank.

Definition from Google: Bitcoin is a digital currency that operates free of any central control or oversight from banks or governments. Instead, it relies on peer-to-peer software and cryptography. A public ledger records all bitcoin transactions, and copies are held on servers around the world.

Definition from CoinDesk: Bitcoin is the world’s first successful decentralized cryptocurrency and payment system, launched in 2009 by a mysterious creator known only as Satoshi Nakamoto. The word “cryptocurrency” refers to a group of digital assets where transactions are secured and verified using cryptography—a scientific practice of encoding and decoding data. Those transactions are often stored on computers distributed all over the world via a distributed ledger technology called blockchain.

I have included three separate definitions of Bitcoin because it can be a bit difficult to define since it means something different to different people. For some, it is a speculative investment; for others, it is freedom technology and represents hope for a better future. Some already use it as a currency, while some use it purely as a savings technology for the time being, and still, others are focused on building businesses and new technology on the network of Bitcoin, from banking services to social media protocols and applications. What is clear in these definitions is that it is a peer-to-peer, censorship-resistant network of transacting value without a third party. Bitcoin is a digital bearer asset backed by real world energy and cryptography. This real-world energy includes electricity and capital to buy the asset as well as the miners and even the infrastructure to support the mining equipment which can include conversion of hydroelectric, solar, wind and other types of energy production. Bitcoin cannot just simply be created out of thin air like fiat currency or a digital picture. It is the first time in history that true digital scarcity has been achieved.

What does this mean?

Bitcoin solved a major issue in the digital realm that people have been trying to solve for decades. Everything digital can be infinitely copied at no cost whatsoever. Think of all the cat pictures and videos online that make their rounds. This is a huge problem when addressing digital currency. Bitcoin was not the first try at creating scarce digital money. Bitcoin was just the first one that worked. There have been attempts at creating decentralized money online since the 1980s, and Bitcoin used several of the inventions of other attempts and bootstrapped them together to harness real-world energy to create digital scarcity. This means that although Bitcoin is digital, it cannot be replicated or spent in two places at the same time. Bitcoin is truly the first digital bearer asset.

There are five aspects of Bitcoin that we are going to cover to get a better idea of what this thing is and how it is different than the fiat currencies that dominate the world.

• 21 million Hard Cap

• Proof-of-Work

• Difficulty Adjustment

• The Halving

• Stock-to-Flow

21 Million Hard Cap

The most important part of Bitcoin is that there will only ever be 21 million coins available (each Bitcoin can be divided into 100 million units known as Satoshis). The halving cycles and difficulty adjustment work in tandem to give us a good sense of when the last Bitcoin will be mined, which will occur in the year 2140. There is no other asset that has this precise of a supply issuance. That is a big deal because Bitcoin is solving one of the most important problems in the world today.

That problem is that there can be an infinite amount of fiat currency printed. There is no cap to fiat currencies and the people making the decisions to make more are easily influenced to do so. As we discussed in earlier articles, this devalues everyone's money and sets up extremely poor incentives in business, politics, trade, and personal life. Money touches almost everything in our lives and Bitcoin is the first money we have ever had that has a fixed supply cap. This will level the playing field for everyone on the planet and the system is completely voluntary. You can choose to use it or not unlike most all fiat currencies that you are forced to use depending on which country you are born in. With Bitcoin, everyone knows how much wealth they have relative to the entire system. In fiat, the equation when thinking about your wealth equals your dollars divided by potentially infinite dollars, but in Bitcoin your wealth equals your amount of Bitcoin divided by 21 million. By holding Bitcoin, you cannot have your wealth devalued. It is the ultimate savings technology over the long run.

Proof-of-Work

It does help to think of Bitcoin as digital gold. The analogy works well because, like gold, Bitcoin uses a Proof-of-Work mechanism to "mine" new coins. Much like gold miners use physical labor (energy) and capital to extract the metal from the earth, Bitcoin miners use real-world energy and capital to mine bitcoin. Although it is mined in the digital realm, it still takes real-world resources to mine the asset. This is much different than fiat currencies and other cryptocurrencies that are digitally printed with no work or value added. This Proof-of-Work mining process links bitcoin to the real world because there is no free Bitcoin, and no one can simply create more on their own at no cost.

Difficulty Adjustment

Keeping the gold comparison in mind, bitcoin has a key feature built into the protocol that separates the two assets. This feature is called the difficulty adjustment. To understand this feature, we need to discuss the mining process. Miners in bitcoin network are simply computers making guesses to solve a mathematical puzzle or lottery (this is a very simplified explanation, but it will help us understand the process). When a miner solves the puzzle by guessing correctly, a new "block" is mined and put into the blockchain. In this block is the reward subsidy which, at the time of writing, is 6.25 bitcoin along with a batch of transactions waiting to be broadcast to the network and all the fees included with these transactions. Bitcoin blocks are mined roughly every ten minutes. This gives the protocol enough time to verify the blocks without getting bogged down.

Knowing this information, we can again compare Bitcoin miners to gold miners. As the price of either asset goes up, it incentivizes more miners to come into the space. In gold, more miners mean more gold being extracted from the earth. This rush will last until the supply catches up to the price where it then falls back into a stable range and the frenzy dies down. In Bitcoin, more miners come in and can actually find blocks at a faster pace. Just as in gold, this will increase the supply, but unlike gold, Bitcoin's protocol readjusts its difficulty to mine blocks every 2016 blocks or about every two weeks (2016 x 10 minutes = roughly 2 weeks). This mechanism is known as the difficulty adjustment and what it helps foster is a predictable supply of Bitcoin. This means no matter how many miners there are, whether it is 10 or 10 million, the protocol will always readjust the difficulty to mine blocks roughly every ten minutes. This allows us to know within a very accurate window how much supply of Bitcoin will be available. Unlike gold and other commodities, there is always a steady flow of Bitcoin being mined, and no amount of miners can change this supply in the long run. This ensures that no miners can cheat the system or unfairly distribute coins, and it gives the users of the system near-perfect predictability of the supply no matter the demand, which is unlike any other asset we have ever known.

The Halving

Another protocol feature in Bitcoin that no other asset on the planet has is called the Halving. This occurs every 210,000 blocks or roughly every 4 years. When Bitcoin first began producing blocks in 2009, the miner who mined the block was rewarded with 50 Bitcoin. So, every 10 minutes, a new 50 Bitcoins entered the market. Every four years, this 10-minute reward gets cut in half. We have been through 3 having cycles, and the Bitcoin block reward is currently 6.25 Bitcoin. The next halving is in April of 2024, where the reward will be cut to 3.125 Bitcoin. This feature of the protocol creates a huge supply shock every four years, which is about when the price begins to accelerate before cooling back off in later months. This not only creates a ton of price action and hype, but it also brings in a new wave of people that become interested in the asset, and with more interest comes more people who buy and hold for the long term. This creates even more of a supply reduction over time. Every halving cycle creates a higher stock-to-flow ratio for Bitcoin, and the asset becomes more and more scarce.

Stock-to-Flow

The difficulty adjustment and the halving play a large role in the Stock-to-Flow of Bitcoin. The Stock-to-Flow ratio is a way to analyze commodities by assuming scarcity drives value.

• Stock: Refers to the existing quantity or supply of the commodity.

• Flow: Refers to the annual production or newly mined quantity of the commodity.

The formula for the stock-to-flow ratio is: Stock divided by flow.

A higher stock-to-flow ratio indicates a lower annual production relative to the existing supply, suggesting a higher level of scarcity.

Gold’s stock-to-flow ratio is about 59, which is very high compared to most other commodities. Stock-to-flow of gold = 190,000 tons of stock divided by about 3,200 tons per year = 59. Meanwhile, silver's ratio is about 22, which is one of the main reasons gold has beaten silver out for its monetary use as it holds value better. This ratio works well for commodities but is not useful for fiat currencies that can be printed out of thin air at different amounts. Bitcoin's current Stock to flow ratio is 58.3, which about matches gold; however, Bitcoin’s Halving feature will eventually make Bitcoin's stock to flow infinite because there will be a time when there will no longer be any new Bitcoin to mine.

In Conclusion

For the first time in history, we have a global, digital bearer asset that people can voluntarily opt into. The rules cannot be changed, and the issuance is predictable. If gold was the best money humans have ever had, Bitcoin is the next step up from that. Like gold, it is scarce, and connected to real-world energy and resources, but Bitcoin outperforms gold in divisibility as it is hard to divide gold for small payments, verifiability, and speed of transaction. Bitcoin can be sent around the world at the speed of light, which is something gold fails to do. Bitcoin combines the successes of gold and the speed of fiat digital transactions of today's world but cuts out the middle man of banks and government to provide humanity with what could possibly be the best form of money we have ever known.

If you find this interesting and you are looking for more resources on Bitcoin, I personally recommend these books and podcasts below.

Books

The Bitcoin Standard - by Saifadean Ammous

Broken Money - by Lyn Alden

Layered Money - By Nik Bhatia

Podcasts

We Study Billionaires - The Bitcoin episodes come out every Wednesday

What Bitcoin Did

Blue Collar Bitcoin

Part 5 of the series can be found here.

Time Preference (Part 5)

In the preceding articles, we discussed the inflationary monetary system in which we operate and highlighted how Bitcoin differs from any fiat currency in existence today. Now, we will delve into how these two distinct currencies influence decision-making for individuals and societies by examining the concept of time preference.

Time Preference

Time preference refers to how far into the future people tend to look when making decisions, as they constantly weigh choices that trade present value against future outcomes. This concept applies to both individuals and society at large. A high time preference indicates that a person makes decisions favoring immediate benefits, potentially sacrificing future value. Conversely, a low time preference reflects a more long-term focus, involving sacrifices in the present for future gains.

To illustrate, consider a simple scenario: someone offers you a donut. In deciding whether to accept it, you weigh the immediate pleasure against the potential impact on your future health. Taking the donut signifies a high time preference, while declining it, considering future health, indicates a low time preference. Similar considerations apply to significant choices, such as starting a 401k or saving for a child’s college fund, where delaying gratification in the present promises greater benefits in the future. Lowering time preference is generally desirable for personal well-being and societal progress. Think about your health, your family, and your career and what sacrifices in the present you are willing to make in order to add value to these areas in the future. What situations in your life have you lowered your time preference for?

Fiat vs Bitcoin

Different types of money play a large role in individual and society time preferences. The financial environment of debt and fiat money printing has increased everyone’s time preference without us being aware of it. Despite being told that a 2% inflation rate is necessary for economic growth, the implications on time preference are often overlooked. If your money is inflating away at 2% per year, then every year you have to work 2% longer (assuming your wages stay the same) just to continue to keep the same life you had. Over ten years, this adds up and most people’s wages aren’t going to keep pace. The unprecedented money printing in 2020, coupled with ongoing efforts, such as the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) that was set up in 2023 to backstop the banking sector when Silicon Valley Bank went under, and the funds being sent to support the war in Ukraine, exacerbates the situation, leading to higher inflation rates. Inflation reached 7-9% (true inflation was probably closer to 15-20% as you probably had a sense of this when you went to the grocery store, bought gas or tried to buy a house or car in the last couple years) which means that without any value being created in society, your money or purchasing power was diluted by that percentage. Now you have to work even more hours to get that back. Your time is essentially being stolen from you. How do you think this changes people’s time preference? This constant devaluation of currency forces people into faster and riskier financial decisions, exemplified by phenomena like the meme stock and NFT crazes (here are two brief articles explaining the meme stock hype and how people spent their stimulus checks from Covid-19: 1. Meme Stock Article 2. Stimulus Check Article). We go out to eat more because we have less time to cook, since we are working more hours, which in turn causes our health to decline. We get less time with our kids and feed them quick snacks which affects their health and well-being. We forget about saving for the future because it is hard enough just to pay rent. It is all linked together by the money. The more people struggle to get by, the more their time preference is raised. People cannot think about the future when we are just trying to get to the next paycheck.

It is no coincidence that consumer debt is at all-time highs and savings are trending lower and lower.

Now it is time to think about your financial health in a different way and potentially get a new perspective on a money that takes back all the time that has been stolen.

Bitcoin is arguably the soundest and best form of money that mankind has ever known. It brings with it the potential to restore time preference to society. Bitcoin is a money backed by energy and mathematics, not by a small group of people. It cannot be printed freely, and it is out of the control of any single entity. There is a fixed supply of 21 million coins which means that the price of everything against this asset will fall to its free market cost over time. Up until this point we have lived in a world where money was infinite, while all our resources are finite. In this environment prices have to rise in order to keep the system going, despite all the technological progress. A few questions to ask yourself in order to understand this are why is it so much easier to build a house, but yet all house prices and rent keep going up? Why is it more expensive to go to college even though all the same information is online? Why is food more expensive even though we can grow, harvest, and produce it more quickly and cheaply than ever before? The answer is because we inject more money into the system to keep it from collapsing and the more there is in the system the more the prices of goods and services must go up. We are creating money faster than we are producing goods and services. This also means assets are used to preserve wealth, such as houses, stocks, and artwork, instead of the currency. Society puts a monetary premium on assets because they are being used as a store of value as the currency is no longer providing us with the ability to save. Holding dollars or any other fiat currency is like holding a melting ice cube. It is no wonder why wealthy individuals and large corporations are buying up houses to preserve wealth, which continues to price the younger generation out of the housing market.

Bitcoin flips this on its head. The 21 million supply cap changes the equation to “everything divided by 21 million.” This paradigm shift takes away or at least significantly reduces government manipulation of markets, such as subsidies and bailouts because they cannot print more Bitcoin. This has the potential to bring back free market competition and technological progress which are naturally deflationary forces, meaning prices of everything will fall in terms of Bitcoin over the long run. In this sense Bitcoin can be used as the main way to preserve savings and purchasing power instead of all these other assets.

This can be tricky to wrap your head around because we have never lived in a world where that was possible but think what that would do for the individual and society. If prices were always falling in relation to the money we used, everyone’s time preference would change. It would naturally lower societies’ time preference as a whole. If we knew our purchasing power was appreciating in value, people would be more incentivized to save. This would allow us to allocate more capital to productive investments. It would give us the security to think 5, 10, 30 or even 100 years into the future instead of just worrying about next month’s rent. Imagine how homelessness, crime, and civil unrest would change as prices got cheaper. Think of the implications on citizens health when food becomes affordable again and how that would change the healthcare system over time. Architecture and artwork would be built to last instead of being thrown together as quickly as possible. People would have time in their lives again to spend with their family and loved ones instead of working two or three jobs which would drastically improve mental health.

Of course, this is a theory that would need decades to play out. However, with a small individual example, we can see how true this could become. If you had a gold coin and a thousand dollars, which one are you going to spend first (assuming you could spend the gold coin as freely as the cash)? The gold coin will most likely hold its value or even increase in value over the long term while we know the dollars are decreasing in value, so we are incentivized to hold on to the better store of value. If we do spend the gold coin, it will most likely be on something that is going to provide lasting value or has the potential to increase our overall wealth. As we play this out with a currency like Bitcoin, where it has the potential to grow exponentially, we already see people making the long term decisions to hold onto these coins for longer and longer periods, as shown by the chart here. People using hard money tend to prioritize saving over spending. This will never influence every individual, but it could potentially change the way society looks at money over the long run.

In imagining a world where currency appreciation is the norm, one can foresee positive changes in societal behavior. Lower time preference on a global scale could lead to increased savings, productive investments, and enhanced well-being. Bitcoin, with its unique properties, presents an opportunity to reverse the trend of rising time preferences and, consequently, offers a potential solution to societal challenges.

Final Thoughts

The belief that inflation is essential for economic growth holds true within our current system. However, an alternative system, anchored in Bitcoin, prioritizes savings and abundance for humanity. Contrary to the notion that saving money impedes economic progress, a Bitcoin-based system promotes a lower time preference, encouraging prudent spending, emergency preparedness, and support for meaningful causes. Bitcoin aligns with the deflationary aspects of technological progress, challenging the traditional narrative that inflation is indispensable. In this context, saving money becomes a strategy for acquiring higher quality goods, waiting for prices to drop, and fostering sustainable growth. While fiat incentivizes debt, inequality, and growth by any means necessary, Bitcoin incentivizes savings, abundance, and healthy growth—a potential pathway to a more equitable and prosperous future.

For further exploration of these concepts, the book “The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future” by Jeff Booth is recommended. The author argues that our current inflationary monetary policy conflicts with the natural deflationary trajectory of technological progress, emphasizing the need for a monetary system that aligns with these advancements to create a flourishing and healthy future. Fix the money, fix the world.

The next article in the series can be found here.

Bitcoin: Savings Technology, Freedom, Hope (Part 6)

Bitcoin can mean different things to different people. Most, especially in the developed world, first come into it for the investment as they don’t often think of it as a currency right away. The idea of getting rich quick is typically the reason people first show interest in Bitcoin. People treat it as they would a stock, where they buy in and hope to sell at higher prices in order to convert back to dollars. Although Bitcoin is the best performing asset of all time, people who jump in and out realize that it is difficult to make a lot of money in the short term, but over the long run it tends to continue to rise in price. As people learn more about Bitcoin, they begin to view it as a long-term savings technology instead of a short-term investment.

With more conviction, people often hold through the ups and downs and appreciate the technology side of Bitcoin and what it offers to humanity. For many in developing nations living under authoritarian rule, Bitcoin represents freedom as they can send and receive money without their government confiscating it.

Between the ability to preserve wealth over the long term and the freedom that the technology presents over authoritarian rule, Bitcoin becomes a sense of hope for the future. What you may also find surprising is that Bitcoin has the potential to reduce global conflict as well as help reduce environmental damage. This article will delve into Bitcoin as a long-term savings technology, as well as freedom and hope for billions of people around the world.

Savings Technology

Bitcoin’s price action can be a bit intimidating to newcomers in the space. On a linear chart, the price fluctuates up and down violently and critics have compared it to the Tulip Mania of the 17th century where Tulip prices skyrocketed and then dropped back down to basically zero when the supply caught up to demand. Critics have also declared Bitcoin dead over 450 times and yet the fundamentals are stronger than ever. (https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/)

The key to understanding this asset is to extend your time horizon to at least 4 years since that is how often the halving or supply shocks take place. If we look at Bitcoin on a log chart, the price action seems much more systematic. The first chart below shows the price of Bitcoin in log and linear graphs and the second chart plots the four-year halving cycles into the log graph.

The charts clearly show how the halving creates a supply shock every four years, which creates a rise in price, followed by some speculative investments to come in later in the cycle which subsequently leads to a greater spike in price before the bear market comes and the price comes back down and settles into a higher equilibrium than the previous cycle; before the halving starts the rise again. On a linear chart these swings seem drastic, but in a log sense we clearly see a gradual rise in dollar terms over time. These swings can still be drastic, and newcomers should be wary of 80% draw downs, but patience has continued to pay off for those who hold long-term. For more proof of Bitcoin’s long-term performance, strategy.com is a great website that shows the performance of Bitcoin compared to other currencies and every company in the S & P 500.

Over the years, these cycles have brought in more and more people who become convicted holders. This creates even more of a supply shock to the system which creates the higher floor for the price. Bitcoin is the fastest asset to ever reach a $1 trillion market cap and as Bitcoin becomes larger and more secure it brings with it the ability for large institutions and nation states to get involved with it. Currently Blackrock, the largest hedge fund in the world, recently got approval for a Bitcoin ETF, as well as ten other companies. Two countries have already made Bitcoin legal tender in their jurisdictions (El Salvador and Central African Republic). This is all happening just 15 years since Bitcoins inception. The smartest money in the world is starting to get involved, and with only 21 million coins (divisible by 8 decimals), Bitcoin begins to look even more scarce. To put the scarcity into context, if everyone in the world were to have an equal share, we would each get about .002625 Bitcoin.

For a deeper look into Bitcoin as a plan for long term savings or as a part of your investment portfolio, there is a great book by Andy Edstrom called “Why Buy Bitcoin.” Edstrom comes from the traditional finance world and in his book, he breaks down why having an allocation of Bitcoin in your portfolio is important.

Freedom

The idea of Bitcoin bringing freedom to people may not resonate with citizens in the US as quickly as it does for people living under an authoritarian government, but Bitcoin still presents some tools for democratic nations as well. The main superpower of Bitcoin is that it gives people the option to become their own bank. This may sound trivial, but becoming your own bank comes with a lot of freedoms that many people around the world do not have. Currently there are around 1.7 billion people in the world that are unbanked, meaning they don’t have access to a bank. With Bitcoin, people have the ability to be their own bank, meaning as long as they have an internet connection, they can send and receive Bitcoin without needing a third party’s permission. This could include earning Bitcoin, receiving remittances in Bitcoin or exchanging their local currency for Bitcoin at a Bitcoin ATM without the need for an actual bank. If you know how to properly store your Bitcoin, which we will discuss in detail in the next article, then someone living under an authoritarian government can leave the country with their entire net wealth just by memorizing the “seed phrase” or password. This is not possible with gold or paper money.

This ability is enhanced when individuals run their own Bitcoin node. Nodes are the validators of the Bitcoin blockchain. They audit the entire blockchain every ten minutes and keep the security of the network. Anyone in the world can run a node and the more nodes there are the more decentralized the network. The reason no government can stop Bitcoin is because there are tens of thousands of individuals running nodes around the world and even some in satellites orbiting the planet. Setting up and running a node is not in the scope of this article, but it takes freedom to another level. When you run a node, it means you can validate all of your own Bitcoin transactions as well as help secure and decentralize the network further. Governments may try to ban the purchasing or mining of Bitcoin, but they cannot shut down the network as long as there is at least one node running the Bitcoin protocol. Many governments have tried banning Bitcoin and none have successfully kept it out of their country. Today nodes come equipped with other freedom technology enhancements such as being able to run your own home server from your node, run ad blockers and VPN’s, self-host your own AI, and even allow you to host your own relays for decentralized social media applications such as Nostr. You can find more details about Nostr on the Bitcoin Resources page (part 8).

Remittances are another huge issue with today’s current system. Sending money from country to country can be a very cumbersome task. Wire transfers can be expensive to send after fees, require a lot of paperwork and can take several days or even weeks to get through. Depending on the country you are sending money too, it may not make it to the recipient if they live in a authoritarian government as dictators can simply seize the funds. With Bitcoin, money can be sent instantly using a QR code over a video call and does not have to pass through any intermediary. This can be done with 10 cents or $10 million. There is no other system in the world that allows this to happen at this speed.

Bitcoin has the potential to give people back their online privacy and financial freedom.

Hope

Bitcoin provides us with clear predictability in a money while we have 160 other fiat currencies in the world with zero predictability of issuance. The 21 million hard cap provides humanity with the ability to make true economic calculations unlike other currencies whose issuance and total supply fluctuate dramatically depending on governance and global events. When you do not know the issuance of future supply, making economic calculations it is like trying to build a house with a tape measure that is constantly changing lengths. With a hard capped supply, you can perform calculations much more efficiently as you always know how much of the total supply you have. Retirement calculations for example, become much more doable versus trying to guess how much inflation will reduce your savings in the next 30 years. We discussed in the last article how Bitcoin could pave the way to a more abundant future where people are incentivized to save money and the costs of most everything should fall to its free market value over time. This gives people hope in the future rather than worrying about being buried under a mountain of debt.

Bitcoin provides hope in many aspects of life that we didn’t know was possible. We have gone into detail on the potential for savings and abundance. Now we are going to touch on just two other areas where Bitcoin’s incentives provide hope for the future: the environment and global cooperation.

Environment

The environment is hot topic that people are losing hope over. We are always trying to “fix” the environment within a fiat system that is supposed to grow forever. That seems counterintuitive. It is with fiat money that we are incentivized to buy more and more things that are of lesser and lesser quality and yet we think we can fix the pollution of these products within the system that creates them.

Bitcoin is often thrown under the bus when it comes to its impact on the environment with many articles pointing to Bitcoin damaging an already fragile climate. However, much like many other topics on Bitcoin, most people have been misled on the impact it has on the environment. Bitcoin mining actually incentives renewable energy projects, can bring energy costs down, and uses mainly wasted or stranded energy.

We will keep these examples brief, but there will be links to look up companies working at the forefront of green bitcoin mining. Great American Mining is a Bitcoin mining company that takes the wasted methane of oil producers (methane is more harmful to the environment than CO2) and uses it to mine Bitcoin. The company does this by capping the pipes that flare methane into the atmosphere and convert that gas to energy to mine Bitcoin. This electricity is then fed to Bitcoin mining equipment that is brought right to the site of the oil producer since Bitcoin mining can be done from anywhere in the world as long as there is an internet connection. The entire process of connecting to mining pools and how mining works is out of the scope of this article, but essentially these powered up mining rigs can now participate in the global competition of mining Bitcoin (for more details on mining pools you can check out this article https://bitcoinmagazine.com/guides/what-are-bitcoin-mining-pools). So instead of releasing excess waste into the atmosphere the oil companies now make a small profit on their wasted gas, thus allowing them to provide reduced energy costs to their customers and while reducing pollution to the environment. A true win-win situation. The company was recently purchased by Crusoe who still continue to mine Bitcoin today. (https://crusoe.ai/blog/understanding-the-problem-crusoe-solves/index.html)

Vespene Energy (https://vespene.energy/) is a company who captures methane from landfills. Methane is released from materials decomposing in landfills and they capture the wasted methane and convert it into Bitcoin. Again, less pollution and cheaper costs as the landfill is now making a small profit on selling wasted methane to Bitcoin miners.

Bitcoin miners also incentivize more green energy infrastructure from wind, solar, hydro, and even nuclear. Most of these infrastructure projects have huge costs to them and the locations in which they are built are not in areas where there are a lot of towns and civilization. So even if they are constructed, there isn’t a demand for the energy they produce right away. The amount of energy they produce cannot simply be stored. Most is wasted if it doesn’t have a consumer to send it to as it is being produced. A majority of these projects don’t even make it to construction because the cost is so high with a risk of never being profitable. However, unlike towns and other energy consumers, Bitcoin miners can go right to the source. They will buy the energy cheap since no one else is using it, which gives the projects the ability to start making money years before they had a chance to otherwise. Bitcoin bootstraps the infrastructure project by purchasing power at very low costs until the project is fully constructed and towns are able to be built up around it. Then Bitcoin miners eventually get priced out of the market and go find another source of cheap energy.

The energy conversation is a complex and difficult one as most of us do not understand how energy grids work. Most of us still view energy consumption as a bad thing, but energy consumption is directly correlated with human flourishing. In other words, we do not need to use less energy, we actually need to use more energy to lift more people out of poverty around the world. We just need to learn to use that energy more efficiently with less pollutants. Bitcoin mining represents a way for us to use more stranded and wasted energy that we have not tapped into, as well as incentivizing a greener future with more stability in our energy grids around the world. This was a brief introduction to this topic and there are many more examples outside of the ones given above. Lyn Alden does a fantastic job delving deeper into this through a series of articles and videos if you would like to learn more. The series can be seen with this link.

Global Cooperation

Global cooperation is a tricky subject and there are no promises being made as full cooperation is something that will probably never happen. The world is severely divided at the moment and with so many competing countries running their own currency there is a constant battle to raise and lower the strength of individual currencies. Let’s look at China for example. How did China become the supplier to the majority of the world? One of the ways is that they actually kept their currency weaker than the dollar in order to provide cheaper labor prices to the global market. It is not a coincidence that the American labor force was hollowed out and we shipped all our production jobs to China. With a strong dollar, the production of goods gets expensive, and China was willing to keep their currency weak in order to become the supplier of goods to the world instead of the US. If the citizens of the world chose to use digitally native currency with a supply cap tied to real world energy and resources that no one could manipulate, how would the incentives change in the labor force. Prices would be competitive around the globe. This would still mean low prices as it would usher in a true global free market so countries would naturally compete to bring prices down in order to keep customers, but the pricing mechanism would be fair across the world and therefore wages would be competitive everywhere. If everyone used the same digitally native currency, countries and individuals could shop for items around the world with no friction and with the same global measuring stick. This single incentive could change how countries cooperate entirely. While nothing is a sure thing and we don’t know how individual countries will combat this potential, it does trend toward giving individual citizens more options to opt out of the system or country they are in if they feel they are being treated unfairly or want to see a change in their circumstances. Citizens have never truly had an alternative system to opt into until Bitcoin was invented.

Not only does global commerce get simplified, but using one global currency that cannot be manipulated drastically changes the global war landscape. No war since leaving the gold standard has been paid for with taxes. Instead, the money is printed to fund war and the citizens get stuck with the bill through future inflation. It is a sneaky way of governments getting the wars they want with no opposition from the public. Think of the endless wars we have been fighting just in the US such as “the war on drugs” or “the war on terror.” How long would these wars have lasted if the public was expected to pay for them in actual taxes? They may have not even started.

Bitcoin has the potential to end or at least drastically reduce war by making it too costly. If there is a supply cap to the money and a country does not have enough money to fight in a war and the citizens do not support it, then leaders of these countries will have to find another way to solve their issues. Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but there is something drastically wrong with this system and for the first time in history there is another system that people can opt into. Whether it all plays out like this or not, it seems to be a system worth fighting for and all people need to do is use a different money than the one being forced upon them.

Come for the money stay for the revolution.

The next article in the series can be found here.

How to Buy and Secure Bitcoin (Part 7)

If you have become interested in buying and holding Bitcoin in your portfolio, congratulations, you are earlier than most. The more you educate yourself the more confident you will be in the long run. This is very important as this asset has wild price swings and you shouldn’t invest more than you are willing to lose. Bitcoin is still very young so there is almost a guarantee of another 80% drawdown at some point in the future. You need to be secure enough with your investing decision to be able to sleep at night. If you feel confident and you would like to start buying and holding your own Bitcoin, we will go through the steps on how to do that.

*Reminder - I am not a financial advisor. These articles are intended as educational material only, not financial advice.

Find a Bitcoin Exchange

Personally, I like to send people to Swan Bitcoin as they are a Bitcoin only company who not only run an exchange, but also put out great learning content, offer a retirement fund and have great support to help you through the process if needed. I also recommend Cash App and Strike which utilize the lightning network for low fees, and they are both very user friendly. Once you have an account created for any of these exchanges, the process of buying is pretty straight forward. Simply connect a bank account and set an amount you would like to buy. I have put some referral links in the Bitcoin resource page if you would like to use them. With that being said, I am not looking to get anything from this other than providing education and resources for others.

I would recommend avoiding Coinbase and Binance who are large “Crypto” exchanges that will promote any coin out there, whether it is a known scam or not. They have been known to openly give your data to other entities and they do not promote self-custody. There are many other exchanges out there so please do your own research when it comes to choosing an exchange that suits you best.

Get a Hardware Wallet

One of the highest recommended hardware wallets on the market is the Coldcard from Coinkite. It is one of the most secure, and the difficulty of setting it up is moderate. There are others such as Fountain Passport, which is a bit more on the pricey side, as well as two of the most popular wallets Trezor and Ledger. These two are cheaper and easy to set up but have had a few privacy concerns as of late. More hardware wallet devices are coming out all the time so please do your own research on which one is best for you. Links to view these hardware wallets are also on the Bitcoin resource page (part 8).

Once you have a hardware wallet you will be ready to self-custody your Bitcoin. The device will come with a step-by-step guide on how to set up your wallet. The most important part is that the device will give you a “seed phrase.” This is a 12 to 24 word phrase that you need to write down and place somewhere secure. This seed phrase is the “key” to everything. Imagine it is the key to your bank vault and whoever has the key has access to the funds. If you self-custody correctly and you are the only one that knows the seed phrase, then no one can take your funds. However, if you type them into a computer, someone finds them, or you lose them, then your funds are in jeopardy.

This is also relevant when you buy from an exchange. When you purchase Bitcoin from an exchange, the exchange owns the keys to the Bitcoin until you send it to your own hardware wallet. The exchanges have been known to be hacked or use funds in ways they are not supposed to. Examples of this are FTX, Mt. Gox and Voyager. There is a saying in Bitcoin, “not your keys, not your coins” (keys meaning your seed phrase). This is a reminder that whenever you get to a point where you feel uncomfortable with an amount of money on an exchange that you wouldn’t want to lose, it is time to send it to your hardware wallet to make sure you own the keys. I recommend starting with a small amount of money, like $5, and sending that to a wallet that you own to get a feel for it before sending a larger amount. Sending and receiving Bitcoin is just one of those things you must do a couple times before being comfortable with it. It is like riding a bike, a little intimidating and difficult at first, but once you try it and get the hang of it, you realize how simple and powerful it is. You can now send money on your own to anyone in the world with no middleman and no permission from anyone else. No one can freeze, delay, or confiscate your funds as long as you know the seed phrase. You can even recover your funds if your device is lost or broken, by entering your seed phrase into a new device. The seed phrase is the most important piece.

BTC sessions is a fantastic resource for step-by-step instructions on just about anything in this space. If you visit https://www.youtube.com/c/btcsessions, you can simply type in the name of your hardware wallet in the search bar and several how-to videos will come up showing you how to set them up.

Important

I know some of this can seem daunting or intimidating, and you will come across options such as an ETF, where companies will tell you that they will custody your coins for you. Please do not trust such options and learn how to self-custody. If you do not own the keys, there is a risk that that company will lose your coins. Again “NOT YOUR KEYS, NOT YOUR COINS.”

Multi-Signature Storage

There are ways to set up multi-signature storage which includes multiple keys. This can be done in ways such as a 2 of 3 multi-sig where you hold a key, a company such as a wallet provider holds a key, and maybe your spouse holds a key and all you need is 2 of the 3 to access the funds. This takes some of the fear of losing a key away. I would recommend doing your own research with companies such as Unchained Capital who make this very simple if that is something you want to do in the future. Sparrow Wallet and Specter Desktop also offer multi-sig solutions that you can set up on your own for free without a company holding a key. Mult-sig does add a level of security to holding your coins, but it may not be what you want to start off with in the beginning of your journey, especially with a smaller amount of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin vs Crypto

I hope these articles helped you get a better understanding of Bitcoin and money in general. The rabbit hole is endless, and I still learn something new about Bitcoin almost every day. With all that information you may have noticed that I never touched on any other “crypto” coins. This is my own personal opinion, but I believe there is no reason to look at the other coins as none of them are trying to compete to potentially be the global monetary network that underpins society. For full disclosure, I did buy altcoins before learning about Bitcoin and making the switch.

Most altcoins are scams and all are trending to zero against Bitcoin. You will hear the Proof-of-Work vs Proof-of-Stake argument if you are in the space long enough and the Proof-of-Stake coins will claim that they are faster or better for the environment, but what they will not touch on is that we have had proof of stake for hundreds of years. Our fiat currencies all run on proof of stake. This means the more coins or wealth you hold the more powerful you become in the system. This is akin to lobbyists and large corporations swaying politicians. The larger holders of coins in these Proof-of-Stake ecosystems can bend and change the rules to what they prefer. It ends up being a very centralized feature in the long run as more power and more coins consolidate to the top holders. Proof-of-Work is about undoing that and giving the world a system built on fair rules that no one can change. In Bitcoin, just because you have a lot of coins, does not mean you have any more power over the protocol than anyone else.

All the other coins promise something faster, cooler, or full of features, but they all make tradeoffs to security, privacy or scarcity when they make these claims. I personally view Bitcoin as a path to a better future for humanity by giving the world a monetary network that gives everyone in the system an equal chance. While I see Bitcoin as allowing humanity to save which can provide a more abundant future, I see the rest of the crypto market as a casino, where you might get lucky in the short term, but will have difficulty timing the market trying to pick the next winner in the long run. If you do want to look at altcoins, please ask; What value do they bring to society that Bitcoin doesn’t?

Unlike Bitcoin, which has been recognized as a commodity by the SEC, most coins have been viewed as unregistered securities. These other coins have a centralizing feature, single points of failure or lack a network effect. There is a lot of “smart money” (institutions and hedge funds) beginning to pile into the newly approved Bitcoin ETF which should be telling. Before buying any other coins, I would highly suggest Jeff Booth’s article that delves into Bitcoin vs Crypto called, “The Greatest Game” if you would like to learn more.

Please do your own research with whatever you are investing in and know that nothing is guaranteed, not even Bitcoin.

The final article, Bitcoin Resources can be found here.

Bitcoin Resources (Part 8)

Here is a full list of books, articles, podcasts, exchanges, and apps that I recommend. There are many more out there which you will most likely find as you go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. I am also available for questions and recommendations if you would like to discuss anything in more detail at brady@factoryfitnesscenter.com.

Books

The Bitcoin Standard - by Saifedean Ammous

Broken Money - by Lyn Alden

Layered Money - by Nik Bhatia

The Fiat Standard - by Saifedean Ammous

Why Buy Bitcoin - by Andy Edstrom

Bitcoin is Venice - by Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers

The Progressive Case for Bitcoin - Jason Maier

The 7th Property - by Eric Yakes

The Book of Satoshi - by Phil Champagne

The Blocksize Wars - by Jonathan Bier

The Price of Tomorrow - by Jeff Booth

Check Your Financial Privilege - by Alex Gladstein

B is for Bitcoin - by Seb Bunney

The Hidden Cost of Money - Seb Bunney

Podcasts

We Study Billionaires - Bitcoin Fundamentals - Preston Pysh

What Bitcoin Did - Peter McCormack

Blue Collar Bitcoin - Josh and Dan

Bitcoin Audible - Guy Swann

Stephan Livera Podcast - Stephan Livera

TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - Marty Bent

The “What is Money” Show - Robert Breedlove

Bitcoin Rapid-Fire - John Vallis

The Bitcoin Standard Podcast - Saifedean Ammous

Articles

“The Greatest Game” - by Jeff Booth

“The Number Zero and Bitcoin” - by Robert Breedlove

“The Bullish Case for Bitcoin” by Vijay Boyapati

“Schelling Out” - by Nick Szabo

“7 Misconceptions about Bitcoin” - by Lyn Alden

“The Masters and Slaves of Money” - by Robert Breedlove

“Gradually then Suddenly” - by Parker Lewis

Bitcoin Exchanges

Swan Bitcoin - referral code - for $10 in Bitcoin - https://www.swanbitcoin.com/bsteig

River - https://river.com/

Cash App - referral code to get $5 - http://cash.app/app/LQGMPKC

Strike - referral code to get $5 once you make a deposit - https://invite.strike.me/YOJ778

Bitcoin Wallets

Coldcard - https://coldcard.com/

Foundation Passport - https://foundationdevices.com/

Trezor - https://trezor.io/ (phishing email concerns as of Jan 2024)

Ledger - https://www.ledger.com/ (installed a recover feature that is a bit controversial on the privacy side in 2023)

Apps and Others

Fold - a debit card that gives you bitcoin back on every purchase - referral code for 20,000 sats -use.foldapp.com/r/lz0LuG90

Lolli - Get bitcoin back for online and in store purchases - referral code for $5 - https://lolli.com/share/9F24DG

Yzer - like Duolingo for Bitcoin - referral code for 50 sats once you reach level 2 - SteigerBTC

Orange Pill App - find other Bitcoiners and meetups - referral code for 10,000 sats -

https://signup.theorangepillapp.com/opa/steigs

Bitcoin Magazine - Find the newest articles in the Bitcoin space and get paid in sats to read them.

Fountain - A podcast app that allows you to get paid in Bitcoin for listening.

BTC Sessions on Youtube– How-to videos on just about anything you want to do in the space.

Nostr - A decentralized social media platform (akin to Twitter) with many different clients such as Amethyst, Damus, Primal, Iris, Snort, Plebstr and Yakihonne which can be found on the IOS and Google Play Stores. Bitcoin is the native currency of this platform and can be sent to anyone else in the world using the platform instantly. You can use private keys to take your information from one client to the next and take complete control of your data without risk of being de-platformed.

Website

https://bitcoin-resources.com/

https://bitcoin.org/en/

https://unchained.com/

Top 3 Supplements to Consider

In the fitness industry, supplements are a common topic. With what seems to be 1000s of option and different products, it can be overwhelming to know what is worth taking and what is a waste. It is of critical importance that you understand this fact: No supplement meant for improving physical fitness is worth taking if your diet or exercise plan isn’t effective. Only when used in combination with a good exercise routine and a diet plan that is structured correctly, can supplements be beneficial. It should also be noted that the vast majority of supplements are either untested or unproven. It is likely that many of the supplements on the market today provide no actual benefit. For today, we would like to highlight the 3 products that we recommend the most to beginners and advanced lifters alike.

1.) The Staple - Whey and Casein Protein Powder

Protein is an essential part of a diet geared towards muscle growth. However, most people don’t consume nearly enough protein each day. Protein powders make hitting your protein goals each day much simpler. Most powders have between 20 and 25 grams per scoop so that with just a few shakes per day, you are much closer to your goal. The typical recommended daily goal is 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight. A 200-pound person would be aiming for 200 grams of protein on a daily basis. It is possible to consume all of it from other sources, but a protein powder will make it much easier and reduce the amount of meat eaten daily. We recommend whey protein for post workout shakes and casein protein for a pre-bed snack or as a meal replacement.

2.) The King - Creatine Monohydrate

Creatine monohydrate is the king of supplements. Its effects have been studied longer than almost every other supplement on the market for assisting with strength and fitness goals. It is also relatively cheap making it affordable for most of the population. Without going into too much detail- its effects are proven, it is completely safe, and is one of the most cost-effective options on the market. There is no need to try the different forms of creatine that always hit the market. Just get creatine monohydrate and enjoy the benefits.

3.) The “When in Need” - Pre-Workout

Pre workout is by no means essential, but it is effective. The ingredients in them have proven to increase strength and endurance compared to placebos in clinical trials and the caffeine in them is a great way to get a boost for your workouts. With that being said, our recommendation is to use them sparingly if they are caffeinated versions which tend to work best. We advise this because caffeine does cause addiction. Not the same level of addiction as drugs and alcohol but it is addicting, nonetheless. By consuming them too often, you run the risk of becoming reliant to the point that you can only have good workouts when you drink a pre-workout beforehand, and your workouts are much worse when you don’t. By limiting usage to only when you need a boost, you can ensure that you get the benefits when needed as well as not becoming reliant on them as a stimulant. Also, good to remember is that more is not always better. Find one that is dosed correctly for your tolerance level. If you have a low tolerance to caffeine, something with 100 mg may be plenty. While most people have a high tolerance and can handle 300mg or more, it should not be forgotten that too much caffeine can lead to heart issues and even death. If taking 300mg of caffeine doesn’t give you the boost you need, it is probably time to stop taking it for a few months to let your body return to normal.

While there are other supplements on the market that we recommend, this is a great place to start for most people. If you have a great exercise routine and diet, you will get great results. If you have those and add these in, you will get better results. By that point you will be advanced enough to understand the dynamics of supplements and how they interact with diet and exercise which will help you make more informed decisions on whether to take anything else.

*As always, speak with your doctor before starting any exercise, diet, or supplement routine. Although all of the supplements listed here are safe for the majority of people, each case is unique and should be looked at on a case-by-case basis. We are not dieticians or doctors and are only providing information based on our experience in the industry.

Gordon the Guided Missile

Gordon the guided missile sets off in pursuit of its target. It immediately sends out signals to discover if it is on the right course to hit that target. Signals come back: “No, you are not on course. So, change it up a bit and slightly to the left.”

And Gordon changes course as instructed and then, rational little fellow that he is, sends out another signal. “Am I on course now?” Back comes the answer, “No, but if you adjust your present course a bit further up and a bit further to the left, then you will be.” He adjusts his course again and sends out another request for information. Back comes the answer, “No, Gordon, you’ve still got it wrong. Now you must come down a bit and a foot to the right.”

And the guided missile goes on and on making mistakes, and on and on listening to feedback and on and on correcting its behavior until it blows up the nasty enemy thing. And we applaud the missile for its skill.

If, however some critic says, “Well, it certainly made a lot of mistakes on the way”, we reply, “Yes, but that didn’t matter, did it? It got there in the end.” All its mistakes were little ones, in the sense that they could be immediately corrected. And as a result of making many hundreds of mistakes, eventually the missile succeeded in avoiding the one mistake which really would have mattered: missing the target.

The story of Gordon the Guided missile is a great analogy to many of the endeavors we will pursue in life. If we are unwilling to make mistakes and adjust course, we are less likely to achieve what we set out to do. The key is to get started and allow the little mistakes you make along the way inform you of what changes you need to make to ensure a better future. Too many people are too afraid to get started in the first place for fear of making mistakes. Another group is willing to get started but then unwilling to make course corrections when necessary due to stubbornness or ego. You can find tremendous success if you are willing to be in the third group. The group that is willing to get started no matter how scared they are. The group that is willing to make adjustments to make sure they stay on track and aren’t too stubborn to change. This is the group that hits the eventual target.

Barbell Basics

All barbells are the same right? Wrong. At least if you want to get the most out of the equipment available to you. In the world of barbells, there are many different factors that influence the type of barbell best suited to your use and these differences, believe it or not, can impact the progress you make. I’m not saying you can’t make progress using the “wrong” bar, I am saying that the fitness game is one of small percentages and that every percentage that goes in your favor is one you should take seriously. After all, even if your barbell choice only improves your results by one percent- that is one percent better than you would have had otherwise. There is no set number as far as how much a barbell can improve your results, but that improvement does exist, nonetheless.

In this article, I will be covering the basic elements of barbell construction and purpose to provide a base level of knowledge for you to use. By no means will it be a comprehensive guide because that would be unnecessarily lengthy. For our purposes, a top-level view of the basics will be enough.

Some important vocabulary before we get started:

• Shaft - The part of the bar that you hold.

• Sleeve - The ends of the barbell where weight is loaded.

• Knurl - a small projecting knob or ridge, especially in a series around the edge of something. This is what gives barbells their grip.

• Knurl Marks - These are rings on the barbell shaft where there is no knurl. They are meant to provide a guide as to where to place your hands.

• Bearings/Bushings - What gives barbell sleeves the ability to spin around the shaft.

There are hundreds of ways to build a barbell using different variations of the above options. Over time, various standards have come into play due to some options being superior to others for specific reasons as well as organizations placing limits as to what can be used in their competitions. Currently, there are three standard barbell types that are the most common, but even these have many variations within each category. Once you understand the purpose of each barbell type, personal preference can play a much bigger role in choosing the right bar for you.

1.) The Power Bar

The Power Bar is the most common of the three standard variants. This is due to how well they perform in a commercial setting as well as their use in the most common lifts: The squat, bench, and deadlift. For all three lifts you want something that won’t bend too much under load, won’t allow the weight to spin too much, and that gives a lot of grip. For these purposes, the power bar is ideal. Standard features include:

• 28.5- or 29-mm diameter shaft. This is slightly thicker than the other types which provides more rigidity of the steel to prevent bending while not being so thick to affect the grip for deadlifts. There are thicker options, but that usually means the steel is not as high quality and thus requires the extra thickness to not bend. These bars will work fine for squat and bench press but will underperform on deadlifts.

• More aggressive knurl and single knurl marks. An aggressive knurl pattern will give you better grip on the barbell. Many people will call this style of knurl “sharp” due to the way it digs into your hands. While this may be uncomfortable at first, most people will get used to it over time and end up preferring increasingly aggressive patterns. It is not essential to use the most aggressive patterns available, but it is essential to use one that provides enough grip. On these bars, there will be single knurl marks on the shaft for a reference point on where to place your hands.

• Bushings instead of bearings. Power bars typically use bushings inside the sleeves. This provides the sleeves the ability to spin just enough to be useful. Bearings tend to provide a much better spin; however, it is unnecessary and can even be dangerous if the sleeves spin too much. Bushings also tend to be sturdier with less risk of breaking under load. While bearings aren’t “frail”, they are more prone to damage than their counterparts.

• Higher strength steel. Power bars tend to use higher strength steel to prevent bending under heavy loads. When squatting a lot of weight, the last thing you want is the end of the bars to be bouncing up and down because the steel is too weak to handle it. Steel strength is measured in tensile strength and expressed as pounds per square inch or psi. The standard range for bars in this class is 190,000 psi - 250,000 psi.

• Always has center knurl. Power bars will always have a small knurl section on the center of the bar. This is especially important for squats because that section helps keep the barbell on your back and not slide down as easily.

2.) The Olympic Bar

The Olympic Bar used to be the second most common barbell used but is now probable the least common of the three due to the rise of CrossFit (The last bar on our list is the main barbell used in the CrossFit world). This style bar is the most likely one to be misused and broken or deformed in some way due to its specific purpose and its construction. Some gyms have even taken to placing locks on them in order to prevent their misuse. While that may seem extreme, it may seem less so when you take into account that they typically cost $500-$1000. The precision and components that go into their construction result in much higher prices than other bars. It is also the most specialized bar of the group and is designed for only two lifts: the squat and the clean and jerk.

• 25mm shaft for women or 28mm for men. Due to the necessity to hook grip when doing the Olympic lifts, the bar shaft is the thinnest of the three bars. The Womens’ variant especially so to account for the difference in hand size between men and women. While a millimeter or two doesn’t seem like a big difference, it is definitely noticeable when you grab them.

• Knurl aggressiveness depends on usage. A unique aspect of these bars is that they are classified as “training” bars or “competition” bars. The training bars have less aggressive knurl patterns to allow for higher rep training protocols to be followed without risking damage to the hands. Due to the nature of the lifts done, high rep work done with aggressive knurl would result in tears in the skin of the palms and hinder training. Competition variants, on the other hand, keep the aggressive knurl to provide as much grip as possible for a single rep since these bars are not meant for training and only for a single rep done in a competition.

• Typically has “passive” center knurl. Olympic bars typically have “passive” center knurl opposed to the aggressive center knurl found on power bars. Passive just means that it is there but that it is much lighter and less abrasive than what it found on the grip portion of the bar. This helps to provide some grip in the front rack position of the clean without damaging the collar bone area too much. Some training bars opt to have no center knurl at all for the same reason they have a less aggressive outer knurl - prevent skin damage as much as possible.

• Bearings instead of bushings. Bushings may be less prone to breaking, but bearings provide a far superior spin. In lifts that require taking the barbell from the floor to overhead, the more spin the better. Bearings spin so much better that you can almost always tell by simply spinning the weight on the bar while its racked. If it spins a couple times and stops then it is probably bushings and if it spins forever, then it is probable bearings. Due to the way they are constructed, barbells made with bearings should never be stored vertically. Horizontal storage will help ensure the bearings stay in good condition and will lessen the chances of breakage.

• High quality steel but less tensile strength. With power bars you don’t want them to bend at all. Olympic bars, on the other hand, you do. This is typically referred to as “whip” and can actually be beneficial in lifting more weight when doing Olympic lifts. In order to create this “whip” manufacturers use extremely high-quality steel but keep the tensile strength lower to allow it to bend more freely. This is ok because these bars are not typically put under the same types of stress as power bars. However, if they are misused (or abused as some would say) they are much more likely to bend permanently. For example, if someone performed rack pulls with one, the chance of it bending permanently is almost certain whereas a good quality power bar would be likely to escape unscathed.

• Single knurl marks. Like power bars, Olympic bars will only have one set of knurl marks. They will be placed slightly further out on the bar to account for the fact that the grip widths done are significantly wider than with the power lifts.

3.) The Multi-Use Bar

The multi-use bar has become a very popular option with the rise of CrossFit but its usefulness isn’t constrained to just CrossFit. It has become more popular over the years because it takes aspects of the previous two bars and blends them into a bar that is decent for all of the lifts. While the other two bars are very good for what they are intended, the multi-use bars are the “jack of all trades, master of none”. They are good at everything but great at nothing.

• 28.5mm diameter shaft. Most power bars are 29mm and Olympic lifting bars are 28mm, so these have settled exactly in the middle. For the most part, 28.5 mm is a good diameter for grip strength and steel strength, so it is a good compromise.

• Knurl tends to be more passive. Due to the nature of the bar and that it is designed to do all lifts well, the knurling has to be made more passive for the same reason the training variants of Olympic bars are- to prevent your skin being ripped up. This is great for anyone who is doing both the Olympic and Power lifts, but it isn’t great for anyone who focuses on the main three power lifts. Passive knurl won’t provide the same level of grip and thus make grip strength a potential weak point.

• No center knurl. Again, this is a must have feature in order to make it useful for as many lifts as possible. However, the center knurl is such a nice aspect to have for squats that anyone who squats a lot will take issue with it.

• Dual ring marks. These bars will have dual knurl marks for both Olympic and Power lifts. This isn’t incredibly important and won’t sway too many people one way or another. I find single knurl marks more aesthetically pleasing personally, but function-wise it doesn’t really matter.

• Lower strength steel. In general, the steel strength found in these bars will be lower. This makes sense because you won’t find many generalists using as much weight in single lifts as you will when someone specializes in just a few lifts. Therefore, including really strong steel would result in higher prices that wouldn’t be necessary for the vast majority of people using them. This isn’t to say the steel is “weak” only to say that it won’t serve you as well if your focus is on the squat, bench, and deadlift. Not only will it be more prone to bending permanently, but it will have more “whip” than you will want.

• Bushings or bushing/bearing combination. Most multi-use bars will use bushings for their spin because they work well and hold up to high use environments. Some use a combo of bushings and bearings to provide the reliability of bushings and the spin of bearings. I prefer bushing only setups for these for two reasons. One, bearings are more expensive which adds to the cost unnecessarily. Two, you get more spin that may or may not help you at all, but you add in parts that are more unreliable - more risk of breaking without any guaranteed benefit. It is always best to try out both to see which you prefer, but if you don’t, I recommend sticking with bushing only setups.

Conclusion

The best barbell choice will come down purely to what you will be doing with that barbell. It pays to know the differences so that you can make the best decision possible and have the right tool to use in your training. In an ideal world, you will have access to a variety of bars that serve each purpose. This will allow you to explore new training styles as well as provide you with the right tools as your training evolves. It is not uncommon for people to start training in one area and move to others as they progress. For example, starting with Powerlifting and switching to Olympic lifting later. Training in a gym that has a good barbell selection solves that problem easily. If you are buying a personal barbell, I would recommend buying the bar that suits your training now.

No Olympic Lifting = Power Bar

Mostly Olympic Lifting = Olympic Bar

Some of Both = Multi-Use Bar or One of Each

Home Gym Must-Haves

Although we are firm believers in training in a gym setting that allows you to have access to a much broader range of equipment as well as a like-minded community of people, there will be times when having a home gym becomes a great option. Two specific examples would be when you can’t find a gym that provides the necessary atmosphere, and when the home gym is available as a backup plan due to weather or a hectic schedule. The most important part of a training program is the ability to follow through with it and home gyms can sometimes become beneficial in that pursuit. In this article I will show you some of the best pieces of equipment to have and how to prioritize their importance. As noted earlier, a home gym is almost always a downgrade from a commercial gym in both available equipment and the atmosphere to make the most progress. Our recommendation is to prioritize finding a good gym first and only resort to a home gym as a last resort.

1.) The Squat Rack

Without question, the squat rack is the most important aspect of a gym including home gyms and commercial gyms alike. Their utility is unmatched and the movements they allow you to perform are the foundation of any good exercise routine. Having a gym without a good squat rack is like having a bakery without an oven. There are a ton of options out there to choose from and we highly recommend not skimping on this one due to it being the main piece of your gym. A good quality squat rack from a good brand will last forever and retain its value over time. Brands such as Rogue Fitness and Rep Fitness will have better resale value down the road so that if the day comes when you need to sell, you will have a better chance of recouping more of the original investment. As the saying goes, buy nice so you don’t have to buy twice.

2.) Barbell

Having a good quality barbell in addition to the squat rack is essential. Squats, deadlifts, lunges, etc. can all be done with these two pieces of equipment and are foundational movements to most training routines. Buying the correct barbell is almost as important as the quality of the bar. If you will be using it for mostly squat, bench, deadlift type movements, a good power bar is the way to go. Key features of power bars include:

• More aggressive knurling

• Center knurl

• Slightly larger diameter and stronger steel to hold more weight without bending

• Bushings instead of bearings in the sleeves so they don’t spin as much

If you believe you would like to do or may dabble in Olympic lifts in addition to the power lifts, then a multi-use bar may be a better fit. They will have features such as:

• Slightly thinner diameter for better grip

• Knurling won’t be as aggressive

• Dual ring marks for power and Olympic lifts

• Either bushings or a combination of bushings and bearings for a slightly better spin

• No center knurl

Finally, if know you will mainly focus on the Olympic lifts, then a good Olympic lifting bar will be the best fit. These will have:

• Either no center knurl or a passive center knurl

• Bearings in the sleeves for great spin

• Slightly thinner diameter for better grip and easier hook grip

• Single knurl marks for the Olympic lifts

There is no wrong answer here, it truly depends on the style of training you want to do. The difference between the bars may seem negligible but when in use, the differences are very noticeable. In an ideal world, you would have a barbell for each discipline but that can be rather costly as most of these bars will be between $200 and $400 for a good quality barbell. As with squat racks, spending the extra money for quality is definitely worth it and you will notice the difference. Most of the higher end bars also come with a lifetime warranty against bending and breakage unless they are abused so you could potentially have the same bar forever. In our experience, power bars are the most popular and most people will want to pick up that style. Our recommendation is the Rogue Ohio Power Bar.

A more thorough discussion on barbells can be found here.

3.) Bench

Another must have is a high-quality bench. There are literally hundreds of options at this point so you will have plenty to choose from. If you have the space, we recommend having a dedicated flat bench and an adjustable bench. If space is an issue, then a good adjustable bench is the way to go. The best, most cost-effective benches in our opinion are from Rep Fitness and Titan Fitness where you can pick up really awesome benches that will last forever for less than $500. If cost is no object, then Rogue Fitness, Prime Fitness, Legend Fitness, and Arsenal Strength (among others) become viable options. However, those will run anywhere from $500 to $2000, and few people will find they are worth the upgrade for a home gym since they are built for commercial gyms with much higher usage rates.

4.) Weight Plates

While not as glamorous as the others, the plates are what bring everything else together. About 300lbs is a good place to start for most people since you can add as you get stronger. Once again, our recommendation is to buy high quality plates. Not only do they hold their value better than cheaper plates, but they also have more strict tolerances. What this means is that a 45lb plate is more likely to weigh exactly 45lbs. We have seen plates weigh anywhere from 40 to 50 pounds in cheaper sets which can cause some serious issues as more weight is added. Imagine doing a squat that has two plates weighing 50 pounds on one side and two plates weighing 42 pounds on the other side. Not good. To be fair, the weight differences are rarely that extreme and can be remedied by weighing the plates before using them, but it adds a lot of effort for something that shouldn’t be complicated. Spend the extra on the good plates and thank yourself later. Another thing to look for is the plate diameter of the 45lb plates. 17.7” is considered standard. We would avoid anything more or less than that as it will change the height of the bar when pulling from the ground. If you won’t be doing deadlifts of any kind, this won’t affect you as much but still something to consider for if you ever need to resell them down the road. There are too many good plates available on the market to name them all, but Rep Fitness, Rogue Fitness, and Giant Lifting all have very good offerings at decent prices.

That is it!

Seriously, that is basically everything you need to have a home gym worthy of using when needed. Of course, it doesn’t have everything you could ever want or need, but a lot of progress could be made in that small footprint. Replacing everything that a commercial gym can provide won’t be economically viable most of the time due to the amount of money it would take or the amount of space. It can be surprising how much space some equipment will take up and people are usually shocked with how little they can fit into the space they picked out.

Runners Up

If you have the extra space, there are a few options that can add a lot to your home gym experience. They are by no means essential, but a nice luxury to have either way.

1.) Dumbbells

Full dumbbell sets take up quite a bit of space and cost a lot but are amazing to have. They will allow to do almost everything that you can do with a bar, just in a different way and provide a unique training stimulus and more variety. They even have adjustable dumbbells now that go above 100 pounds and take up very little space. We don’t like using them as much as standard commercial dumbbell sets but having a full set of dumbbells in just a few square feet is awesome. Just make sure not to ditch your barbell movements.

2.) Cable Crossover

There are cable crossover units that are available in more space friendly setups for home gyms. They still take up a lot of space but can be a viable option. The higher end ones can get fairly close to commercial gym quality and open your home gym to hundreds of new exercises that would be impossible to replicate without a cable machine. Keep in mind though that these machines will typically cost $2000+ minimum if you want it to be as close as possible to the ones you find at commercial gyms.

3.) Cardio

Doing cardio is incredibly important for overall health but we left off any cardio equipment because most of it takes up a lot of room and can be done outside. Would it be nice to have a treadmill, elliptical, bike, stair stepper, rower, etc. at home? Absolutely. Is it essential? No. If you have the space and the money, then absolutely add cardio pieces to make it more convenient in your routine. If not, take it outside or find other creative ways to get moving and sweating. You can still get cardio in without a treadmill, but you won’t be able to do heavy enough squats and bench presses without a squat rack.

The Obstacle is The Way

When is the last time you did something truly challenging? Something that made you uncomfortable and stretched your abilities as a human? How happy are you currently? Are you living the life of your dreams? If you are like most of the population, your answers are probably along the lines of “A long time ago” (if not “never”) and that you are “trying to find happiness but not there yet”.

If you were able to answer differently, then that is amazing, and I am truly happy for you! Unfortunately, that isn’t the case for a huge percentage of the people you share the planet with. Depression rates are at an all-time high and most people are running from one thing to the next- certain that the “next thing” is what will bring them happiness. The problem is that more people than ever are also searching for a life of pure comfort. They want to live in the big house, with the fancy car and they want it right now. They want to be lean and muscular without having to exercise and eat right. When that doesn’t happen, they resign themselves to a life of being overweight and being unhappy with how they look and feel because working hard to achieve what they want is too much work.

Too many people have decided that happiness lies in the comforts in life. While the comforts are nice to have, it should be known that if you can’t find happiness in what you have now, you won’t find happiness in material things or comfort either. I blame a lot of these issues on social media (although there are plenty of other sources). Social media has created a false online world in which it seems like the grass is always greener somewhere else, doing what someone else is doing, living someone else’s life. Overnight success stories are all too common as well as posts from people who will show you how they made their millions overnight doing almost no work. Of course, they want to charge you for this knowledge and people that fall for the trap pay gladly. Little do they know that these people are actually making their millions preying on desperate people who believe the road to happiness and riches is ever an easy one that can be bought for $99 and distilled into an hour-long seminar. The chance of gaining riches that quickly and easily is almost nonexistent unless you have a hefty trust fund. Gaining happiness is even more elusive because even a trust fund alone won’t provide that without the proper mentality to accompany it. The good news is that material success and happiness can be found at the end of the same road. A difficult road, but a fulfilling one.

That road is the one paved with obstacles. Challenges that build skills. Situations that are so uncomfortable that you have no choice but to grow and adapt. It is scientifically proven that your brain releases more sustained happiness chemicals while pursuing an end goal and that the achievement of that pursuit results in a much shorter spike of happiness that leaves just as fast as it came. You can probably think of examples in your own life when you achieved something you set out to do and the happiness you felt was short lived after you reached it. You may have even thought to yourself “Wow, I thought I would be happier at this point”. Some of your best and happiest memories are most likely from the time leading up to the achievement. We get so caught up in the accomplishment that we don’t always truly appreciate the fun we had overcoming the obstacles along the way.

I’m still figuring this all out and I am by no means an expert. But I have learned a lot in my 34 years. And one of the most important things that I have learned is that the way to happiness can be found through the obstacles that we face, whether we choose them or not. Intermittent success is important to maintain the motivation to keep pushing forward, but each success needs to be followed by another obstacle to work through and overcome. Don’t ever settle for simple comfort. Don’t ever settle for complacency. It is easy to get caught up in it and forget what it is like to be challenged, face adversity, and come out on the other side a stronger and more confident person.

The best news is a lot of us live a life that allows us to choose our obstacles. Not everyone has that luxury. Some have obstacles forced upon them. If you are not in that boat, and it has been a long time since you truly challenged yourself, now is the time to start. Struggle with exercising regularly? Challenge yourself to set goals that will require dedication and persistence. Struggle with sticking to a diet? Challenge yourself to maintain a diet for “x” number of days without breaking it to test your willpower and prove to yourself you can do anything you set your mind to. Want to be more financially free? Challenge yourself to save more than you think possible or start that business that you have always dreamed about. These are challenging things. They will test you and make you questions yourself. But in the end, you will thank yourself. You will have found something that many people will go their whole lives never understanding. You will have found purpose and a path to happiness as well as material success if you choose to set your sights on that.

Everything you want is out there, you just have to be willing to do what others won’t to get it. You have to be willing to do what is hard while others choose what is easy. You have to learn and truly believe that the obstacle is the way.

“I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.” ― Vince Lombardi

*Looking for a good challenge and don’t know where to start? Look into the 75 Hard Program. Your first thought will most likely be “Hell no, I can’t do that”. That response is an even more sure sign you should do it. My wife Kendall and I completed it a couple of years ago and thought it was a great experience that resulted in a lot of self-confidence and pride in knowing we did it. A lot of people have even started doing it once every year.

**Obviously consult your doctor to get clearance before starting any challenging routines. Don’t use it an excuse to do nothing if you have health issues that limit you but use it as a way to find something that is challenging FOR YOU. It isn’t a competition with anyone else. This is about you and what you are capable of.

Warning: Absolutely No Brown M&Ms

There is a very important lesson to be learned from Van Halen; one of the most well-known rock bands in the last 50 years. Despite their fame, there is something about their shows that is less well known and the source of the lesson. One of the requirements to have them perform at a venue was that, along with their other requests, there needed to be a bowl of M&Ms backstage for them but there couldn’t be any brown ones. Their contracts were decently long so this one line could be easy to miss. The problem with the venue’s show coordinators missing this line? Van Halen would refuse to perform if they showed up and found brown M&Ms in that bowl. A hefty price to pay over something so trivial. Or is it a more important issue than it seems?

Most who heard about the infamous brown M&M rule attributed it to the ego of the band, assuming they had developed a self-important attitude that caused them to overreact to minor slights. The real cause was divulged later by David Lee Roth, the bands lead singer. It turns out, the brown M&M clause was a test to ensure that the event coordinators had a high level of attention to detail.

At the time, the band traveled with 9 semi-trucks full of gear and stage equipment. The weight of the equipment combined with the precision required to ensure it was all staged correctly was unfamiliar territory for many venues. Van Halen was also one of the only bands traveling with such an extensive setup. The band needed to know that the people leading the engineering of the stage had the attention to detail to do it correctly with zero mistakes. If they showed up and they saw brown M&Ms in the bowl it was clear that those in charge had not thoroughly read the band’s requirements and thus were likely to have serious issues with the setup of the equipment. For them, it could have been a matter of life and death. If any of the heavy equipment wasn’t secured properly, all or part of it could come crashing down during the show resulting in potential injury or death to the band, crew or audience. If the coordinators couldn’t get something as simple as not having brown M&Ms in the bowl, how could they have had the attention to detail necessary to set the stage correctly. There was no way of knowing, so instead of taking the risk the band would cancel gigs at the last minute.

The lesson here is that details, big or small, always matter. Those who pay attention and get them right all the time have an immediate advantage over those around them because so few people will do the same. Here at The Factory, we harp on the details A LOT. We care about getting them right A LOT. If we pay to have something printed and later find a typo, no matter how small or unnoticeable, we will immediately throw them away and order new ones. * We want it to be a part of who we are. It is so important that it is even one of our 10 Factory Directives for every person who works here. Never let yourself miss small details and think it doesn’t matter. It will come back to hurt you over the long run. Start being more present. Start being more observant. Start setting your own standards so high that you won’t allow yourself to settle for less than excellence. It will change your life. It will give you the best chance of becoming legendary, just like Van Halen.

*When we started the Factory Library, we ordered bookmarks to be used with the books. They were awesome. They looked slick and we paid good money to make sure they made an impact whenever anyone used them. We pulled the trigger on ordering them after multiple proofs with multiple people. It wasn’t until we received them that we noticed it… a typo. So small that at least 5 people had read them multiple times without noticing it. It didn’t matter that most people would never notice, it was there, and we couldn’t unsee it. They never went into circulation, and we paid to have new ones made with the typo fixed. We ended up keeping them as a keepsake instead of throwing them away. Now they are just a reminder of how much we care about the details.

Why Baseball Players Shouldn't Barbell Bench

The Bench Press is a staple exercise in the vast majority of programs including those of athletes. For good reason. It is one of the most effective upper body exercises for developing strength. Obviously, this is something that most people will want to do and should be doing. Like always, there is an exception to this rule that isn’t all that well-known. The fact that it isn’t well known is a problem that needs to be corrected as far too many athletes are not living up to their potential and having their careers cut short because of it. The exception to the rule is baseball players, or more specifically, throwing athletes.

Risk vs. Reward

If the Bench Press is such an important exercise, why is it bad for throwing athletes? Glad you asked. It has to do with risk vs. reward calculations. You do this all the time in everyday scenarios. The risk of driving your car is worth it for the reward of getting essential food that you need to survive. The same calculations must be performed during exercise selection. The question of whether an exercise will provide enough benefit to warrant the risk involved must come back with a resounding yes. It is much more typical for an exercise to be worth doing than not due to risk because most exercises when done correctly are perfectly safe. That is why weight room injuries are very rare compared to injuries sustained in every other area of life. The Bench Press risk/reward calculation provides so much reward for the majority of the population that it should be a staple in most programs due to the hefty benefit involved. The same isn’t true when you add the throwing dynamic to the mix.

The Throwing Movement

Overhand throwing is already an unnatural movement to begin with. The shoulder joint is not designed to move well the way it is used when throwing overhand. It is much more natural to throw underhand, which is why softball pitchers can throw significantly more pitches and pitch on consecutive days while pitchers in baseball are very limited on how many pitches they throw consecutively and how often they can throw without enough rest. Every time a throw is made, and the more wear the shoulder joint receives, the more likely something is going to go wrong.

The Bench Press

Although safe, for the most part, the Barbell Bench Press is also quite hard on the shoulder joints. Anyone who has benched long enough or heavy enough can attest to the wear and tear their shoulders receive. Can it be done long-term without injury? Yes. However, it takes a lot of time and experience to develop perfect form, recovery techniques and a whole host of other adaptations to achieve, and even then, only a lucky few will make it without some form of problem with their shoulders. The difference between them and throwing athletes is that they don’t also have the wear and tear from another movement wreaking havoc on the joint already.

Putting it All Together

Throwing is hard on the shoulder joint. Barbell Bench Pressing is hard on the shoulder joint. Putting them together? Not a good idea. It is only asking for problems. Now to the most important part of all of this and why you should never bench press if you throw overhand in your sport: Not only is there a too high risk of injury, but the reward side of the equation is almost empty. There is basically no reward for bench pressing if you are an athlete that relies on throwing. It won’t make you throw harder; it won’t make you hit farther (for baseball and softball players); it won’t make you faster or more athletic. It may be cool to bench a lot, but it has no translation to the throwing sports in any way that would make it worth it. There are about 100 other exercises that will provide huge levels of benefit with significantly lower risk. If you play any other sport, especially football (unless you are a quarterback), then the reward for benching is high enough to be worth doing. So, if you don’t rely on throwing an object then have at it and reap the rewards! If you rely on throwing, on the other hand, it is best to put your focus on exercises that will actually help you with your sport.

Final Thoughts

• Just because you shouldn’t bench, doesn’t mean you should abandon all chest training. It is still important to develop the entire body. Just stick with weighted push-ups and dumbbell variant pressing. Using dumbbells is much easier on the shoulder joint, is great for gaining strength, and will also help develop joint stability.

• If a throwing athlete plays for a coach that insists on having them bench as part of their team training program, then we have our athletes bench press with a barbell as sparingly as possible. Just enough to perfect their form so that way they can do it with their team with as little risk as possible. Not our favorite situation but some coaches refuse to let some exercises go even though it would be better for the players and for their winning percentage.

• Focus on rotational movements. Bench press has very limited benefit for throwing because throwing is rotational, and bench is not. Spend that extra time developing explosiveness and rotational strength. There are so many movements to choose from that will have an immediate impact on your ability to throw harder and run faster.

• Theoretically, barbell benching could be done at younger ages (13-15ish) to help develop upper body strength while their shoulder isn’t under as much stress from the sports side. We have a hard time doing a blanket recommendation for this though as it will be specific to each player. Some need the additional development while others don’t. If you do add it during these building years, we just recommend slowly phasing it out as they get older and stronger and as the demands of the game increase. The benefit of the exercise will be fairly apparent at the beginning but will slowly fade away as they get older. The goal should be to get them using dumbbells for pressing movements as soon as possible.

The Best Post Workout Food: Gummy Bears?

Sugar has become a topic of many debates for as long as I can remember. Most of them end up coming to the same conclusion: sugar is almost always something that you want to avoid in your diet. A change as simple as removing sugar and calorie dense soda from your day can make a huge impact on your weight loss, mood, and health. Establishing that sugar, in general, is poor for your health is a simple argument to make because there is ample scientific literature to back up those claims. It is also becoming mainstream knowledge so very few people would dare argue in support of sugar. There is another topic that is just as well proven but not nearly as accepted or even known by the public: Some types of gummy bears are a great post workout snack.

Here’s why.

Your muscles store glycogen for energy and consume that glycogen during exercise. When those stores have been depleted, your body will then work to restore them during the recovery process. What is the easiest way to restore glycogen stores? By consuming dextrose, which is essentially the same chemical breakdown. What has dextrose as a main ingredient? You guessed it. Some brands of gummy bears! By consuming dextrose post workout, you are essentially jump starting the recovery process. The greatest part of this process is that, because your body is still using energy, the sugar is used immediately instead of being stored as fat. Talk about a good excuse for a fun snack!

A few considerations for implementation:

• Only some brands of gummy bears use actual dextrose. Make sure to check out the ingredients to be sure that dextrose is the sweetener used and nothing else.

• This is not an excuse to gorge yourself on gummy bears. The portion has to be in moderation, or you risk over-eating and causing the excess to be stored as fat.

• There are many different options to use other than gummy bears. Gummy bears are the most fun, but dextrose can also be found in powdered Gatorade (pre-bottled uses a different sweetener), and some post workout supplements. My favorite is Ignition by 1st Phorm. It is flavorless so it can be mixed with your post workout protein. This is great for two reasons. One, it makes all protein shakes taste better. Trust me. Two, if you take creatine, you can mix it all together and the dextrose will also help your body absorb the creatine more effectively.

Sugar is, for the most part, bad for your health and should be avoided in most scenarios. However, using dextrose as a post workout recovery snack/drink will not only not harm you, but will actually help you recover. So, grab some Ignition or gummy bears and enjoy a post-workout snack/drink within 60 minutes of training and enjoy the benefits of dextrose and a quicker recovery!

Healthy Island Breeze Smoothie

Ingredients

1. 1 cup frozen pineapple

2. 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk

3. 1 scoop Level-1 Vanilla Ice Cream Protein

Directions

1. Layer all ingredients in a blender from liquid to solid, then blend until smooth and think

*You can sub any similar protein for the Level-1 and we carry several other options that would work; however, we believe Level-1 is the best for this recipe for both flavor and consistency.

Healthy Berry Refresher

Ingredients:

• 1 cup frozen mixed organic blueberries

• 1 cup frozen wild blueberries

• 1 scoop Mixed Berries Micro-Factor

• 2 cups water

• 1 tsp honey

Directions

1. Add all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.