“You were the first person I ever heard mention Bitcoin. I had no clue what it was at the time, but I was fascinated.” Today I’m talking to Patrick Flanagan from The Simple Life Podcast about how I “introduced” him to Bitcoin, and how I first heard about it at Doug Casey’s ranch in Argentina from Trace Mayer, who was a very well-known Bitcoin figure at the time. He’s since disappeared pretty smartly, he’s a billionaire now and very outspoken, so stepping back made sense. He told me about Bitcoin when it was $3. I had no idea what it was. He sent me my first three bitcoins just to show me how it worked. Then he made me buy one of his gold eBooks for those same three bitcoins – which were worth $9 at the time. In hindsight, I wish he’d let me keep them. That would be about $250,000 today. But it was still an incredible introduction. I got deeply involved after that and even tried to start the world’s first Bitcoin ATM around 2015. That partnership fell apart, but back then, Bitcoin felt different. It was mostly anarcho-capitalists, voluntarists… people who believed transactions should be voluntary, without force or violence. We genuinely believed Bitcoin would take down central banks and governments. Over time, it became clear Bitcoin wasn’t what we thought. We believed it was private. It isn’t. Blockchain analytics, governments, and companies like Palantir can track ownership far more easily than people realise. Then came the Bitcoin civil war in 2017. My partner Raphael was involved. One side wanted Bitcoin to remain peer-to-peer cash. The other wanted to restrict it through small block sizes. The restricted side won, backed by Wall Street, Mastercard, and global power structures. Roger Ver’s book Hijacking Bitcoin explains this well. After he exposed it, he was jailed again. At that point, Bitcoin was effectively co-opted. So the question became: what was I actually looking for? The answer turned out to be Monero. It’s been around for about 10 years. It’s a true privacy coin. It’s been one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies recently because people are only now discovering it. For those saying, “I wish I knew about Bitcoin in 2011,” I’ll say this clearly: Monero is that opportunity now. Bitcoin is no longer private. Monero is. That’s the difference. I sold my last Bitcoin around $100,000. The only Bitcoin I still own is a physical Casascius coin, a collector’s item. Beyond that, I don’t care about Bitcoin anymore. In today’s video, Patrick and I discuss everything Bitcoin including how it was co-opted by people involved with Jeffrey Epstein, which leads us to control, conditioning, and the traps that keep people stuck.  Money is one layer of the matrix, but it is far from the only one. Patrick and I both speak candidly about how alcohol played a role in our unfulfilling periods of life. And, how by removing alcohol, everything changed.  Honestly? No system, no currency, and no technology is going to save you. The real work is internal. For me, that meant meditation, hypnotherapy, confronting childhood trauma, and taking responsibility for my own mental and emotional state. It meant improving my health, my habits, and my awareness. The system thrives on distraction and avoidance. When you remove the distractions, the conditioning becomes obvious. You are not broken. You are conditioned. Bitcoin was not the revolution many of us hoped for. It was absorbed by the same power structures it was meant to disrupt. But that does not mean the search for freedom is over. Because freedom starts with self-awareness. If this conversation helps even one person question the systems they are