Really just being my own bank. Having full ownership of my funds, being able to route and send payments anywhere in the world instantly, privately, and basically for free. And then just being a part of this global network of noderunners that are all building towards a better system/future. It still feels like magic today.

My Bitcoin origin story 🤙 Thanks for having me

Lightning really helped everything click for me and solidified my conviction. Sending my first Lightning payment from my node was magical. ⚡️

Thanks for having me 🤙🧡

The ideal outcome is people study Bitcoin, hold their own keys, run nodes, support the Bitcoin ecosystem etc. With that said, I hope STRC becomes a gateway drug to real Bitcoin education. The next wave of bitcoiners may need a different entry point to finally get it.

Pre 2020, I would run into someone maybe once every few weeks where I thought, “Wow, how have they made it this far in life?” Now it's a daily occurrence.

Maybe we’ll unite and come together under one mission 😂 One can dream…

I turned my random thought tonight into an article: https://www.erinemalone.com/post/what-if-america-loses-the-race-to-the-bitcoin-standard

Is this at Coppola?

The TV show For All Mankind is fascinating because it asks one simple question: What if the U.S. lost the race to the moon? In that alternate timeline, the Soviet Union gets there first. The U.S. is humiliated. The space race accelerates rapidly. By 1994, humanity is on Mars. By 2012, they’re heading to Titan. Competition changed the timeline. It makes me wonder if Bitcoin follows the same pattern. Maybe the U.S. adopting a Bitcoin standard first would be like the moon landing in our timeline. A huge symbolic victory, a burst of momentum, then complacency. The mission fades. The urgency disappears. Eventually, we come back to it, but only after losing decades. But what if a rival adopts a Bitcoin standard first? What if the country Americans fear most starts moving away from the dollar, accumulating Bitcoin, mining with stranded energy, settling trade outside the fiat system, and building a parallel sound money future? The game theory would heat up. Humans move faster when survival is on the line. The Soviet Union reaching the moon first would have forced America to compete harder, innovate faster, and push humanity further. Maybe the U.S. needs the same thing with Bitcoin. We’ll get there eventually, but immediate competition could compress the timeline. Competition forces everyone to wake up. The race is no longer to the moon. The race is to the Bitcoin standard. The country that figures it out first wins the future.