Transcription
There is one thing that nobody tells you when you buy Bitcoin. We talk about volatility, bull runs, crashes, lightning fortunes, but the real change, it is elsewhere. It is not economic and I promise you that this one, well, I did not see it coming. So, a small disclaimer before starting, what I say here, it is my lived experience. I have a very strong conviction around Bitcoin and I am sharing an experience here, not investment advice. Bitcoin is a risky and volatile asset, it is up to each person to do their own research and make their own decisions. So, where is this change I am talking about? It is not in your wealth, at least not right away. It is much deeper. When you buy Bitcoin, even a fraction, a small mechanism starts in your head and it doesn't stop. The click, it is mental. It is not your wallet that will change first, it is your mind. And it is an experience that little by little modifies your outlook. It is as if a veil falls. You start to see what you did not see before. Constant inflation, growing debt, states printing money without limit. When you take off the glasses of the dollar or the euro and put on those of Bitcoin, well, it's simple, you see the world as it is. A big, well-orchestrated deception. From there, you understand that you have not simply bought an asset with Bitcoin. You have gotten hold of a landmark, a compass to situate yourself in this ambient chaos. And with this landmark, you truly start to think differently. You understand that in this world of infinite money, what is finite becomes priceless. You understand that owning Bitcoin is owning a piece of absolute scarcity. A hundredth or even a thousandth of Bitcoin in your portfolio, well, it's not that anecdotal. In a system of scarcity, even crumbs of that scarcity are worth a lot. Especially when, on the other hand, money is printed infinitely. These satoshis, that is to say, dust of Bitcoin, then appear for what they are. Your participation in a historic shift that almost no one perceives yet. It is not a question of wealth or ego, it is an alignment with a system that is silently replacing the very foundations of money. Little by little, you realize that the essential is not how much these bitcoins are worth, but what owning them will allow you to achieve and understand. That is to say, your way of working, saving, planning. All of this will evolve. Your habits too, your relationship with time will evolve. You enter another temporality, slower, calmer, more solid. You no longer think in months but in decades. Bitcoin becomes a mental discipline, a school of patience in a world of dopamine. Put together, all of this produces a simple and very concrete effect. You sleep much better. This is what I will try to tell you in this video. This power of Bitcoin, how it changes your outlook, how it refocuses you on the essential and makes you not a passive consumer, but a sovereign and free thinker. I will explain to you why in this unstable world, Bitcoin ultimately makes you sleep better. I'll take a few seconds for those who are discovering the channel. Here, we will often talk about Bitcoin and this from all angles, namely economic, monetary, but also ethical and philosophical, as today. So, subscribe by activating the bell so you don't miss anything. I did not arrive at Bitcoin to speculate or try to make a big score. I came to it because little by little and for a long time already, well, something had cracked around me slowly, a bit like a crack in a wall that at first, uh, seemed perfectly solid. And to understand well, you have to go back to the origins of this break. Well, it all started for me in the early 2000s when I was still a young entrepreneur. I was interested in gold as a store of value and a way to secure my first financial successes. So I had bought, uh, a few bars and decided to have them kept in a bank vault in Luxembourg. Everything went well until the moment I expatriated to Eastern European countries for professional reasons. This new situation put me in a risk profile incompatible with the bank, which, in short, declared me persona non grata and ceased all relations with me. So when I asked to retrieve my gold bars, I even received a refusal. In reality, I no longer even had the right to physically enter the bank, and therefore the bank refused to return them to me. The only option available, uh, was to sell my bars for euros and have them transferred to, well, a new bank. So, well, that day, in reality, I understood that I had made a major misjudgment by entrusting the custody of my bars to a bank. I had let myself be comfortably lulled into the illusion that I owned my gold. Whereas in reality, well, I only had a claim. I could only recover my gold if I was given permission to recover it. So, of course, my confidence in the system began to waver. But it's not over. After these misadventures, I had to open a new bank account, and I found a new bank located in Riga, Latvia. At the time, it already offered hyper-efficient online services, far ahead of other institutions. And so, it was for this reason that I chose it, and I put all my savings there, including the proceeds from the sale, well, of the metal gold that I had recovered from the other bank. And everything did not go as planned. Far from it. Following financial irregularities at the bank, probably linked to, uh, mafia activities, the bank simply went bankrupt, and I found myself ruined, unable to access my funds which were blocked by the judicial liquidator. From one day to the next, well, I had nothing left. So, well, I managed well because I had other resources, notably, uh, companies that provided me with a salary. It's not like I was on the street, but I assure you, the shock was brutal. I had lost all my assets. Well, in the end, uh, I paid dearly to learn a priceless lesson. In the current system, you do not actually own your money or your assets. You think you have prepared and secured your financial future, well, only to find yourself potentially at the most critical moment with nothing. Subsequently, when I started listening to economists in the media who kept telling us that the euro was a great solution, that it protected us against inflation, that inflation was normal, that the debt, yes, it was large but entirely sustainable, that central banks controlled the situation, that everything was under control. I can assure you that at that time, I was very far from feeling fully confident. So when I crossed paths with Bitcoin in 2013, I was in a good position to understand and embrace its revolution, which was both technological and monetary. So, I had already, uh, well understood that the everyday currency was neither neutral nor stable. The euro, the dollar is controlled, manipulated, falsified at will by those who manage it. And the most disturbing thing is that the system, well, it doesn't need to steal from you directly. It doesn't send you a bill. It doesn't come knocking on your door to claim its due. No, it just needs to calmly print more and more money, and with each print, it dilutes your money, your work, and your future. All this through inflation. So, what I discovered with Bitcoin is not a promise of gain, it is the exposure of a total betrayal of the system. A break with blind faith in the euro, the dollar, fiat currencies, interest rates, and stimulus plans. Bitcoin did not sell me a dream. It offered me a real shock of lucidity. It was not Bitcoin that was the risk, it was everything else. This realization shook me more than any financial crash. So, this realization affected my wallet, of course, because Bitcoin protects against monetary erosion. But as I already told you, this realization has above all helped to refocus my mental load. By holding even a fraction of Bitcoin, you hold a fraction of truth in a world of lies. The Fiat system is not only financially broken, it is psychologically toxic. It leads you to save in a currency that melts like snow in the sun, to trust politicians rather than mathematicians, to feel safe while you are being plundered little by little, and this in the greatest silence. Ah, the day you hold Bitcoin, you start to detoxify yourself from the lie. You no longer wait for politics to fix the economy. You take your destiny into your own hands. You stop entrusting your security to institutions. You start building your own system with an asset that you truly own and that depends on no trust. Let's now focus on March 17, 2020. We are at war. It's the first lockdown. Markets are panicking and Bitcoin collapses to $3800. In a few hours, I lose 50% of the value of my liquid assets and a loss of almost 90% since the beginning of the year. Catastrophe. At the time, I assure you, there's reason to question things. Uh, I won't tell you otherwise. But after observing the drop, well, I went to watch a Netflix series with my family, and it didn't worry me that much. So, it's not because I'm reckless, but because I've completely changed my time scale. I think in Bitcoin time. And when you think in Bitcoin time, you zoom out, you stop living at the pace of days, weeks, at least from a financial point of view. You start reasoning in long cycles, in decades, sometimes even in generations. You no longer buy an asset to sell it tomorrow. You keep it because you know what it represents. A store of value in a world of monetary perdition. You no longer look at stock prices daily, it's useless. You no longer react to the slightest price dip. You don't frantically update your app to see how much you've gained or lost today. No. Because that has no grip or meaning in Bitcoin. You look at history. You place yourself in a long timeframe. And once you understand the nature of Bitcoin, that is to say its limited supply, its resilience, its independence, you realize that the real game is not short-term profit. The real game is long-term sovereignty. Holding Bitcoin then becomes a marker. Not a marker of how rich you are, but a marker of how far you are willing to think ahead. Bitcoin is here to last, and this duration transforms you. You become more and more patient, more and more strategic, and less and less nervous. And above all, you are aligned with reality, not with the illusions of the system. This change in temporality is an inner shift, a metamorphosis. You become a bit like an oak tree that grows slowly, stably, rooted, patient, and that won't fall at the first gust of wind. When I started transferring my liquid assets to Bitcoin, I was looked at like a madman. "No, Eric, are you crazy? You can't invest all your money in Bitcoin. If everything collapses, if you lose everything, it's a scam, it's a fraud, it's a Ponzi, etc." What they didn't understand is that I had already done the math. The real risk was not having Bitcoin, it was not having it. I experienced this shift as a return to myself. This is also what Bitcoin allows, a return to oneself. Let me explain, the money you have in the bank, well, it's not really yours. It's a line in a database, a promise that the bank makes to you, and a promise that it can block, delete, or reclassify with a single click. The misadventures I shared with you previously are clear proof of this. This is not paranoia, it is reality. With Bitcoin, we move from debt money, from a claim, to value money, to an asset that we hold directly. From there, no more permission needed, no more dependence on a centralized and controlled system. With Bitcoin, I am no longer a tenant of my own savings. I finally become its full owner. This sovereignty is not only financial, it is mental. It is the moment when you realize that you no longer need to ask for permission to act. You have planted your flag on a territory of digital sovereignty. A space where no bank, no government, no company, no third party can move it without your consent. You are the sole master on board. And here, I'm not talking about a fantasy of omnipotence, I'm talking about a rare and precious feeling. Being able to count on yourself, feeling that you will always remain standing because you have built something indelible. Bitcoin gives you back this power, but on one condition: that you live up to it. So, it will protect you from monetary chaos, yes, but it won't do it for you. Concretely, what does that mean? It means taking responsibility for securing your Bitcoins. It means accepting volatility without panic. And finally, it means resisting greed, fear, and the temptation of the short term. Bitcoin is not a price game, it is a psychological game. It does not test your financial knowledge, it tests your patience, your discipline, and your clarity of mind. It gives you the tool but forces you to work on yourself. And this work, believe me, is perhaps the most beautiful I have ever done on myself. Today, I own 100% of my liquid assets in Bitcoin, and I sleep very well at night. I even sleep much better than when my account was in euros in banks or insurance companies, when I lived with the constant feeling of depending on decisions that were beyond my control. When every speech from the ECB or the Fed could invalidate my savings, when a ministerial decree or that of a bank could freeze my assets overnight. Today, that is over. All the fruit of my labor is secured in full sovereignty and sent into the future via a sound monetary standard that advocates a return to true value. This is true luxury. The fact of being able to lay your head on the pillow without wondering what tomorrow will be worth for what you have already managed to earn. Without wondering if, in case of a major problem, I would still have the right or the possibility to access my assets. And also a simple fact, over 18 months, 5 years, 10 years, Bitcoin has performed better than everything else. Putting your money into the most performing asset of the century, well, that also helps you sleep. So yes, I put everything into Bitcoin, but it is not necessary to put all your money into it to sleep better. And that is certainly not the advice I am giving you. Be careful, what matters is to take the first step, to start your Bitcoin strategy with regular savings, even small ones. By doing so, by taking action, you will find yourself with Bitcoin glasses on your nose, and you will see the rest of the world as you had never seen it before. A world obsessed with returns, addicted to control, terrified by volatility, market shocks. But when you think Bitcoin, well, these shocks are background noise. You no longer react to waves, you follow the tide, but from afar, you follow the big cycles. Your heart and your mind align with scarcity and long time. This is where this clarity of mind arises, this invisible backbone that Bitcoin gives you, this silent peace of someone who knows that what they own is real. Solid, incorruptible, that it cannot be taken from you because this time, you have not delegated your future to a system that constantly changes the rules. You have stored a part of your monetary energy in something that does not change. And the only real change, in reality, is you. You are not richer on paper, you have not changed neighborhoods, but you have a strong conviction. You are no longer anxious. You have confidence in the future. You no longer struggle to beat inflation. You are simply aligned with something else. In a world unstable, saturated with noise and fury, this alignment is priceless. I often present Bitcoin as a double technological and monetary revolution, but there is a third revolution, that of thought. Before transforming the world, Bitcoin transforms man. It changes the mind. It forces you to slow down, to anticipate, to make yourself worthy of your future. And one day, without even realizing it, you realize that you not only have more robust wealth, you have a calmer mind, a more stable outlook, a freer life, a more peaceful mental load. Bitcoin has offered me a freedom and an inner calm that nothing and no one else had ever been able to bring me. Thank you for watching this video with me. To not miss future videos, subscribe to my channel. I talk about Bitcoin, of course, but also about personal sovereignty, entrepreneurship, and freedom. See you very soon. [Music]