I took ALL the pills

My journey to the white pill

Life is a roller coaster. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. Sometimes you’re enthusiastic and hopeful about the world and the future, other times you can’t help but look around and wonder what shit you did in a past life to deserve the punishment of being surrounded by so many lemmings, clowns and NPCs. 

At least that’s been my experience. Maybe for others it’s always up or always down. But for those who can relate… trust me… I get it, and this essay is for you.

The roller coaster is both the best thing and the most frustrating thing about life: it produces movement and makes it dynamic; it creates action and, without it, there would be no ‘life.’ But it tests you. It can, as Rocky Balboa said, “beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.”

You, me… nobody is getting out of this game alive. We’re all here to play, until our respective times are up. The question is: which game are you going to play? And more importantly, how are you going to play it?

I’ve learned that the latter is the magic question.

Which game you play is obviously important and, often, the answer to many of your problems lies in finding a new game. Join a new team, find a new mountain to climb. Stop wasting time trying to fit your square ass into a circular hole. But more often than not, it’s how you play the game, and your approach, that matters more.

Psychology trumps strategy 80% of the time. Or in other words, knowing what to do is easy, especially in the age of free, infinite information: the hard part is doing it. That’s why fat people have bookshelves full of health, diet and fitness books or programs and courses that they signed up for but never followed through on. The hardest part is always the psychology and your outlook.

This is really what the white pill is all about.

Throughout my life, I have tried all the pills. To be clear, I’m not talking about drugs. I’m a bit of a drug skeptic. In fact, I quit alcohol at 18 years old (18yrs ago),  only tried cannabis for the first time at 30, and mushrooms at 32. I’m not convinced the benefits outweigh the costs, especially if you’re young and not yet grounded enough. But that’s another discussion…

The pills I am talking about here are the belief system & psychological outlook on life that you’ve ‘taken’ or ‘taken on’ - and thus how you approach the game of life.

The blue pill

This will come as a surprise to many but, in my younger years, I was a bit of a blue pill guy. Well… maybe not entirely. But I had certainly ingested whatever blue they’ve been polluting the water with in Australia (where everyone is basically a leftoid at this point). In my early to mid-20s, I had bought into climate catastrophism. I thought that humans were damaging the planet, and that less humans might actually be a good idea in order to save the trees.

I also took the vegan pill around that time, thinking that it was both the solution to humanity’s destruction of nature and the fountain of youth. This was coupled with the Peter Pan pill, which had me convinced that I would live for 500 years, and that ‘death was a disease’ - a conclusion I had confidently come to because, of course, I was 22 years old and nothing could stop me. (Sorry Bryan Johnson, I was on that train long before you were.)

At about the same time, I had also taken the nerd pill. I was quite the ace at math and physics and, having dropped out of University to chase riches on the stock market, I found myself as one of the early participants at a Singularity University pilot program, where I had the chance at my then-quite-impressionable-age (24) to meet Kurzweil and Peter Diamantis. What I heard then reinforced my fantasies of “reaching life escape velocity” and that I would never die.

Ah… the memories.

What perhaps saved me was that, at the same time, I had also taken a bunch of other pills. I lost everything trading derivatives between 2007 and 2009, and found my way to gold and silver via Kiyosaki, Mike Malone, Doug Casey & Max Keiser. In 2010, I became a raging goldbug and was convinced the world would end, so I took the prepper pill and, over the next few years, I started stockpiling canned foods, Silver Eagles, batteries and solar panels. Somewhat in contradiction to this behavior, I had also taken the entrepreneurial pill and begun to build businesses, starting with door to door sales, and working my way up to making my first million dollars in the solar industry by the age of 25. (Unfortunately for me, I ignored Max Keiser’s calls to buy Bitcoin at $10 and missed the Orange Pill during my goldbug days… alas, ignorance is expensive).

Needless to say, my mid 20s truly were an interesting period. To an outside observer, including myself now, more than a decade later, this cocktail of pills is quite confusing. As it happens, it resulted in quite a confused life, which of course led to a bunch of things falling apart.

For example, after two years of being a strict vegan, trying to prove to everyone that it was the better way to eat and live, reality confronted me in the form of a 40% lighter maximum bench press and the libido of a corpse. I shifted gears and went down the Paul Chek & Weston Price rabbit hole; if you don’t know what that means, it’s about as un-vegan as it gets. I thus took the animal-based-eating pill and found my balls again. I still remember the week I went back to eggs and meat: I had the urge to either fuck or fight anything that moved (depending on the gender of course) for about three weeks. Testosterone is an incredible thing…

This experience, coupled with the ongoing battle that is “entrepreneurship” began to slowly cleanse me of the blue poison I had absorbed over the years. I guess that’s what reality does to a person. Leftism is all good and well in a fantasy land but, when you’re faced with reality, you very quickly find that everyone is quite conservative. This video is a classic case in point:

Needless to say, the seeds were planted to go from the blue pill to the red pill.
But I took a detour…

The orange pill

Fast forward to 2016, when I was lucky enough to find Bitcoin again; only this time, I actually took the “Orange Pill.” It happened via an unlikely source, to whom I’m grateful to this day, despite the headache that person caused in my life.

The Orange Pill (becoming a Bitcoiner) fundamentally transformed me. It gave me a direction. It gave me both an enemy and a reason for hope. It gave me something to fight for and something to fight against. It also provided me with a rock-solid praxeological foundation to build a world-view on. It led me to Austrian Economics, to Rothbard, Hoppe and Mises. It led me to better understand and articulate all of the things that were fundamentally broken, and tie them back to a root cause.

I ultimately came to understand money (deeply) and its central role in society and civilisation. The Orange Pill helped me grasp the concept of time preference and, perhaps most importantly of all, it gave me a reason to write publicly; which, over the years, forced me to sharpen my thinking and make my overall worldview more coherent.

For these reasons and many more, I am forever grateful I found it. Yet… while I thought for many years it was the Omega Pill, I have since come to realize it’s not the final state. It is not the end, after all, but a pathway to something higher…

After years of basically bleeding orange, talking about it on almost 500 podcasts, building a business around it and writing over TWO MILLION words on Bitcoin - across my own personal blogs and for publications like Bitcoin Magazine and Zero Hedge -, I slowly became disillusioned with things. Not because Bitcoin is wrong or flawed. IMO it is the soundest monetary substrate known to man, and perhaps the first time we've actually had “real money.” Considering you can’t build a civilization without a way to store, exchange or measure value, this piece of the puzzle is absolutely critical.

It was more that the thinking, the community and the energy had become stale.

Perhaps disillusioned is not the right word. Maybe it’s more that I was just in search of something… more. Something beyond just the “bitcoin fixes this” catch-all that traces all of society's problems back to the money printer. I’m not saying this is wrong - there remains a strong argument for this - but I yearned for something deeper, more human, and less economic. Something more visceral and primal, less abstract and theoretical.

The red pill

Around the same time, the world entered what seemed a one-way portal into Clown World. Starting with the CoronaScam and Lockdowns, we saw stupidity after stupidity, which really made me question humanity and reality. I slowly came to believe that there were basically zombies walking around sans agency, intellect or sentience. Literal Roomba machines bumbling around in human-shaped meat suits.

While Bitcoiners, generally, handled the response to Covid much better than most, the whole experience honestly just left me jaded. Even amongst Bitcoiners, I met far more people who talked the talk, but did not walk the walk. The LARPing was tiresome and I slowly felt increasingly estranged, seeking a new tribe.

The transition was not smooth.

The CoronaScam had already radicalized me sufficiently enough to be open to new, more so-called ‘extreme’ ideas. Then, the 2020 election showed me that most people, including Bitcoiners, were utterly retarded. There were people who genuinely thought that Biden and the Democrats winning was a good thing. 

Tired of it all, and somewhat demoralized, I took a bit of a sabbatical from Bitcoin Twitter and the Bitcoin community altogether in 2022. I focused on entrepreneurship, martial arts and the gym - all basic red pills. I dove deeper and deeper into history, historical fiction, and old, ‘forbidden’ books. Being already primed for the more radical version of the red pill, I found my way into the frog and dissident spheres, both on Twitter and on Substack. My search led me to new places, new dimensions and new ideas.

It took me on a new kind of roller coaster, from which The Bushido of Bitcoin eventually emerged…

The black pill

When you take the more radical red pill, you begin to really notice how fucked up things actually are. You begin to question everything and realize that maybe, just maybe, the cruel, evil and idiotic past wasn’t actually so cruel, evil or idiotic. You begin to realize that, in fact, the past was in many ways superior to the present. Sure, we have toilets, running water, refrigerators and airplanes; but we’re also fatter, dumber, sicker, lonelier, weaker and, some might argue, more slavish and obedient than we’ve ever been.

I used to be in the naive camp of the former, believing that the story of humanity has, besides a few troughs along the way, been one of “progress”; but I’ve come to reconsider this and cede mental territory to the latter arguments. While there has certainly been a general undercurrent of technological progress, the social, structural and moral fabric that binds us is undoubtedly more cyclical. Sure, we live in a technological golden age, but we also live in a moral, intellectual, emotional, and physiological dark age - a perspective that more people are beginning to agree with, not least because of the growing amount of supporting evidence.

Obesity rates in the most materially affluent countries have skyrocketed in the last fifty years, as have rates of anxiety, depression, drug addiction, autoimmune diseases, autism, sexual confusion, loneliness, and childlessness. Birth rates are floundering and the nuclear family is being actively attacked in an attempt to dissolve it. We’re told that “we live longer on average”, but this is primarily due to lower infant mortality. The actual human lifespan has not changed that much at all - but we are fatter, sicker and uglier than we’ve ever been, and there’s no averaging that can hide it. 

Aleksandar Svetski, The Bushido of Bitcoin

These discoveries inevitably lead you toward the black pill. You can’t help but think about the past as a time which was “so much better” and that if only we could “RVTURN” to a prior age, we could fix the fertility crisis, we could get rid of the woke zombies, we could produce beautiful art, music and architecture, and we could live meaningful lives.

While there is some truth in this, the fact that you cannot rewind the clock, and that you cannot go back, leaves you feeling a mix of anger, frustration and powerlessness - like there’s nothing you can really do about it. You really begin to understand why Ted Kazynscki arrived at his state of mind and did what he did.

Add to this experience the constant campaign of gaslighting and censorship coming at you from all angles, along with an incessant push to make you feel guilty for being a European male, and it’s very hard not to get black pilled. 

In 2023, everywhere I looked, I saw darkness and stupidity. Bitcoiners themselves were no better. They were all stuck in a leftoid Overton window, parroting the same run-of-the-mill platitudes, like “power corrupts,” “banking the unbanked” or “saving the Global South,” all while telling themselves “they are all Satoshi” and self-describing as “plebs;” as if aristocracy and nobility were something to be ashamed of.

Witnessing this unrelenting destruction of society truly led me to a dark place. I sensed it in my writing. The first few versions of The Bushido of Bitcoin weighed heavy with a longing for the past, a yearning for a return to the age of the Samurai and a marked distaste for the modern world.

BUT…

The White Pill

Things started to change as I went from draft to draft. Writing is a discovery process, and the search for a congruent message to convey forced me to take off the tinted glasses and ask a better set of questions. 

I went on to write a fifth and sixth draft, at which point the book took on a new energy. Compared to the early drafts (which I may one day publish) there was an ascendant tone in my words. There was a sense of power coming through the pages. The earlier drafts focused a lot on what was wrong with the modern world, and how the warrior past was morally superior, while the new drafts took hold of the lessons from these great men and, like a shield and sword, thrust them into the belly of the nihilistic present and made way for a grand vision of the future. This transformation brought the book to life and increased its quality tenfold. 

Aleksandar Svetski, The Bushido of Bitcoin

It very clearly dawned on me that the present and the future are precisely what we make them, and no matter the odds, there is always a way. The human spirit is indomitable and God - whatever definition you have of him - is real.

I look forward to the future. Writing the book changed me. I was in a place of relative darkness and disillusionment when I wrote the first three drafts. My wife would continually tell me “You live in another world” and “you were born in the wrong century.” And she was right - I felt that. But as the book transformed from a ‘dark red-pill’ into a white pill, and ultimately became a clear pill, so did my outlook on life, my hope for the future and my determination to not only talk about it, but to go on and build. 

In the end, that’s my hope for you, in reading this book. Ross Stevens very kindly called it a modern day Declaration of Independence, which is very humbling. While I’m not sure I deserve such a comparison, I do hope that it inspires modern young men, in the same way the words written by the Founding Fathers of America inspired the young men of their time. The duty sits with you, to make the future better. Life is not going to be all sunshine and rainbows. As Rocky Balboa said: “it’s a mean and nasty place, and it will beat you to your knees permanently if you let it.” The key is that you do not let it, the key is that you get up, and keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other. The future can only be what we make it. So make it beautiful, glorious and ascendant. Leave the bugmen behind. 

The Bushido of Bitcoin

This year I found my stride again. I was revived, in a sort of spiritual way. I was near exhausted: busier than I’ve ever been, building a new company, moving to a new country, writing a never ending series of drafts for the book and getting married. Still, I felt energized. And this has carried through.

Much about this year reminds me of the thawing of winter. While it is certainly still winter, the ice is starting to melt. The temperature is slowly rising. The cracks are starting to appear in what seemed an impenetrable web of woke nonsense.

Elon purchased Twitter and, after a hard slog, turned the ship around. Trump, after being robbed of his reelection in 2020, and despite not being very convincing at the outset, began to build up momentum. Then, of course, July 13th happened; and I believe something in the fabric of the cosmos fundamentally shifted. Whether some nuclear particle from a Hadron Collider ported us into a new dimension, or God sent Shinzo Abe to nudge that bullet, or whether it was just luck - we will never know. All I do know is that a bullet was literally, metaphorically, societally and economically dodged. Who needs Neo and the Matrix, when you have Trump?

And here we are, at the tail end of 2024: with Trump as the leader of the mightiest nation to ever be established on Earth; with Musk running the most important internet company and discussion forum in the world (not to even mention Mars and everything else); with Ron Paul having a shot at taking down the Fed; with RFK Jr. going after Big Pharma and the industrial sludge factories; and a whole line-up of other A players. To top it off, Bitcoin is pumping hard, and what many of us have been predicting for over a decade now, is slowly coming to fruition. I can’t help but watch the following and laugh:

We truly are winning. I even wrote about this for

John Carter

a few months back after The Shot That Missed:

So we’re winning. Now what?

This doesn’t mean that “we’ve won.” Claiming back positions of power is only step 2 (step 1 is actually noticing). What lies ahead is step 3: stemming the rot, and the subsequent steps up toward the stars, which will demand a lot of work, a lot of building and a lot of time.

This is no time to rest on our laurels. It’s fine to take a victory lap, but the next race awaits. And ultimately that race, that game, that mission, is what I wrote The Bushido of Bitcoin for.

It’s not just some “Bitcoin book” - although you will learn why Bitcoin matters and why it’s nothing like any Crypto or Blockchain nonsense. This is a book about the character required to construct a culture of excellence, power and beauty. One that reaches higher, farther and wider than anything that came before it. One that truly has the potential to become a Type 1 civilization, and go where no man has gone before.

This is possible. It always has been - we’ve just had idiots at the helm and in the way for too long.If we can couple traditional values with warrior virtues, entrepreneurial zeal and modern technological prowess, we can and will build something new and incredible.

The Bushido of Bitcoin is a playbook for those who choose to not only lead in such a future, but for those who are called to actually construct it - starting from today.

I am happy to have finally released it on Amazon this Monday 11/11. If you would like to pick up a copy and support me, you can do so here: (definitely get the hardcover).

All I can do now is assure you that it will be the most impactful and inspiring thing you have ever read. 

So with that, thank you for reading this today, and thank you in advance for supporting the book!

Aleksandar Svetski

Order the book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DM9PGD57

Get a free introductory chapter here: BushidoOfBitcoin.com

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