Beyond $70,000

Greetings,

Rizzo, the Bitcoin Historian here, coming to with another week of bullish quotes I staunchly stand by.

Coming off an extremely successful and well-rounded Bitcoin2024 conference in Nashville, it felt appropriate to carry on with quotes from Bitcoin legends who continue to build the network and its community up.

From David Bailey, the top honcho at Bitcoin Magazine and man who made Trump the headliner last week to Naval Ravikant, there are some real head spinners here.

But before we dive in, ask yourself, “Is my Bitcoin as secure as it should be?” If your answer is no or you doubt the yes, then you should be heading to Casa to remedy the situation.

Get 10% OFF with the promo code PETERIZZO10 to get your Bitcoin in safe hands.

Okay, now let’s dive in with 17 quotes on why we’re going higher than $70,000.

“Those who wait to convert to bitcoin will be impoverished by Bitcoin” – David Bailey

HFSP, or Have Fun Staying Poor, is a common adage in the Bitcoin space for those who fade it. 

David’s quote is right up that alley. Those who wait before stacking sats will ultimately be getting less BTC for more dollars. The math over a long enough time horizon checks out. 

David Bailey is the CEO of Bitcoin Magazine. He also calls himself an eternal optimist, a builder, backer, vagrant, evangelist, and nerd.

And we’d be remiss to forget his biggest tag: Bitcoin bull. 

David doesn’t hold back on his views about Bitcoin and the broader crypto space on Twitter. He’s been taken down by an irreverent Bitcoin artist who wasn’t interested in David’s 1 BTC bid, and he’s fought the good fight time and time again on X and beyond. 

I imagine the Bitcoin community would be lesser off without him. This quote sums up a lot of his views on Bitcoin quite beautifully, I’d say. 

“Bitcoin is a way to start and fight a political revolution without shooting any bullet and without casting any vote” – Giacomo Zucco

Giacomo touches on one of the core tenets of Bitcoin: it is the most peaceful revolution. 

Through a wild combination of computer code, and non-armed believers, Bitcoin is triggering a revolution without the need for deadly weapons or pandering populist politicians. What more do you want, when you realize that the world is unequivocally not right?

This quote by Giacomo sums up what I hold dearest about Bitcoin.

Not only is Giacomo a brilliant coder, but he also shoots by the hips, and has given some of the most hilarious Bitcoin talks in the history of our conferences. Now, you might not like him because he’s an Ordinals hatooor, but I believe he has Bitcoin’s best interests at heart–even if we disagree.

“Bitcoin is an insurance policy against politics” – Naval Ravikant

Politicians have access to the money printer. And let’s be real, they use and abuse it, to their every whim and the whims of those funding them.

Honestly, it’s BS.

But thankfully, we have Bitcoin. Our insurance policy, as Naval calls it, against these politicians and the little-to-no accountability they have when it comes to spending everyone’s dollars. 

Naval is one of the greatest Silicon Valley investors and an unequivocal 21st century philosopher. His book, the Almanack, is filled with nuggets of wisdom, and should be visited all the time by even the staunchest of rationalists—or skeptics—which abound in the Bitcoin space.

He has had words of praise for Bitcoin on many occasions, and always in his calm and collected demeanour. When Naval speaks, we should listen.

“Most people learn about Bitcoin because they want to stop the consequences of not learning about Bitcoin” – Pierre Rochard

Bitcoin waits for nobody. 

Either you get on or watch the train leave the station full steam. Sure, sometimes you might get lucky, and watch it roll back into the station again before kicking off again, but most likely you’re going to be staring down the reality of an asset worth more already. 

And in an odd way, that’s the only way for people to jump on board. Because let’s be honest, there’s nothing more frustrating than watching Bitcoin soar while you’re on the sidelines “watching everyone else get rich.”

Nevertheless, it’s important to keep in mind that Bitcoin is all about freedom, sovereignty, and the hope of a world with equal rules for all. But price drives sentiment, and that’s a reality.

Pierre Rochard knows about that reality a lot, as he does about the underlying principles of Bitcoin. 

He co-founded the Nakamoto Institute in 2014, which has become one of the most important repositories of information and primary source content in the Bitcoin space. You can find a deluge of his interviews and talks on YouTube (all of them are worth a watch), and nowadays he employs the role of VP of Research for Riot Platforms.

A true blue Bitcoiner. 

“Bitcoin’s economic function is to provide property rights to 8 billion people” – Michael Saylor

In a world where 1.5 billion people don’t have an official identity, the power of a software to offer them (and the remaining 6.5 billion) property rights is kind of hard to grasp. 

But at the same time, it’s incredibly powerful. 

You download a wallet, write down 12-24 words, receive some bitcoin, and immediately you have unconfiscatable wealth, no matter the computer or manpower they throw at you. That’s almost too much to consciously handle, even as a thought experiment.

Michael Saylor needs no introduction, middle, or conclusion. He’s the Bitcoin permabull par excellence, and has put his company’s money on the line, turning a software company into quite possibly the big corporate finance story of the 21st century.

“Gold is stone age tech. Bitcoin is gold for the next millenia” – Adam Back

Gold is nice. As a piece of jewelry, maybe.

For everything else, there’s Bitcoin. It shares the fundamental characteristics of gold and then some. It has a programmatically enforced limited supply–which gold does not–and can be universally audited by anyone anywhere. 

And then there’s the minor difference of it being able to be sent across the world nearly instantly nearly for free to anybody no matter their age, gender, sexual orientation, political inclination, place of origin, or background. 

Powerful, right? Don’t miss out on Adam’s thread, which dives into his life and background. He’s one of our top guns in Bitcoin and you’d be remiss to not learn more about his fascinating life.

“Bitcoin could be the TCP/IP of money” – Paul Buchheit

TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protcol/Internet Protocol and the internet runs on it. 

It was developed by the Department of Defense (DoD), and was the winner of what was called the Protocol Wars.

Much like the BItcoin wars in 2016-2017, there was once a mighty battle between computer scientists, engineers, and even nations over which protocol would become the bedrock of the digital space.

Thanks to its robustness, but more importantly, its simplicity, TCP/IP won.

And Paul Buchheit reminds us of that. You probably don’t know who he is, but he created one of the most widely used computer services known today: Gmail.

I highly recommend this interview where he talks on how he revolutionized the internet with Gmail. 

Stop whatever you're doing and ask yourself, “Is my Bitcoin as secure as it should be?” If your answer is no, or you doubt the yes, then you should be heading to Casa to remedy the situation.

They are the best in the business of security and safety, and I promise you their fees are worth every sat. Head over there, and get 10% OFF with the promo code PETERIZZO10 to get your Bitcoin in safe hands.

“As a society, I think we can do better than centralized monetary planning and debasing the currency” – Jon Matonis

There might have been a time when centralized money planning made sense.

The world wasn’t as interconnected as today, and to scale, some degree of centralization was needed, especially in the free flow of money, just because the free flow of information wasn’t here yet.

But those days are over, and now that we have this vast, eternal, and endless library of knowledge that flows through our WiFi waves, it makes no sense to have centralized money planning, also because everybody is waking up to the fact that debasing the currency only happens when there is centralized control.

Jon Matonis is a Founding director at the original Bitcoin Foundation, and the Chief Economist for Cypherpunk Holdings, a privacy protocol investment firm. He calls himself a monetary economist focused on expanding the circulation of nonpolitical digital currencies.

“Buying Bitcoin is like investing in Google early or Steve Jobs and Apple” – Paul Tudor Jones

Imagine buying Google or Apple in the early days of their existence when nobody really believed them.

Bitcoin is just like that except for one (actually several but I’ll only point one out) major difference: you don’t need to be an accredited investor to buy in. Anybody with an internet connection and a phone can now purchase the strongest and best performing financial asset of all time.

And when it comes to investing, Paul Tudor Jones knows what he is talking about. He is a billionaire hedge fund manager who hasn’t held back on his views on Bitcoin, beyond just being early.

He once said he put 1-2% of his portfolio into BTC, although after realizing its potential, said he want to up that number to 5%. For a man with his financial acumen that’s no small deal. 

“The internet needs a native currency, to me that’s Bitcoin because of its principles, creation story, and resilience” – Jack Dorsey

Bitcoin was born not just from the internet but from true believers in the internet and what it unleashed.

Freedom, the ability to connect with anyone anywhere, protection of privacy, decentralization, censorship resistance, immutability, open, transparent and public protocols. These are just some of what Jack is likely referring to.

If we add on the immaculate conception of how Bitcoin was created, and how it has become virtually unkillable, then we can consider it the perfect beast. 

After leaving Twitter last year, Jack has thrown himself fully into expanding the Bitcoin gospel, and has put his money where his mouth is. He created a Bitcoin fund in Africa and funded it with 500 BTC, and has not held back in his unequivocal backing of Satoshi’s creation. 

“When you have a disruptive technology, they call it a category killer. Bitcoin is a serial killer – it’s going to go through 40 or 50 different industries” – Dan Morehead

Now here’s a bullish quote. 

Bitcoin isn’t just going to upend money, but as we’ve seen since the appearance of Ordinals, it's going to upend data, storage, identity, and so much more. We’re talking about an entire internet age shaped by how Bitcoin stores and transmits information. 

The technology isn’t just about money, despite what the laser eyes want you to believe. It’s about a new way of understanding trust in the digital world. A unique and shared ledger of everything and anything online, free for all to use wherever they are in the world.

If you really believe all that’s going to unleash is a new way to send financial information to someone else, I’d ask you stop what your doing and have a serious look in the mirror.

A look that Dan Morehead, the CEO and founder of billion-dollar hedge fund Pantera Capital has likely made more than once. 

“If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry” – Satoshi Nakamoto

These are words I actually live by.

Once upon a time ago we all wanted to orange pill even our staunched nocoiner friend. But as time progresses you realize that everyone has to take their own path towards Bitcoin, and sometimes people won’t get there until years and years later.

Satoshi knew that, and he dropped this timeless quote for every bitcoiner out there.

Channel your energy into building products, services, or adding value to the network that doesn’t involve the punishing act of persuasion. You’ll be better off, and Bitcoin will be better off.

This is just one of Satoshi’s many brilliant ideas. Check out the rest of them here.

“The whole point of Bitcoin is that you don’t need to rely on any company to be able to use your own money” – Akin Fernandez

We live in a world where private companies like banks mingle with public companies like Central Banks to control the creation and distribution of money.

That control means you need to ask for permission every time you want to make a large withdrawal–and by large I mean sometimes even a couple of thousand dollars will raise eyebrows from your local teller. 

But now we have Bitcoin, the permissionless technology that allows you to send how ever much you want anywhere in the world. You can finally use your own money however you see fit. 

Beautyon, as Akin Fernandez is known online is the CEO of Azteco, a Bitcoin voucher company. Its aim is to expand the Bitcoin economy by allowing people to actually buy real world things with it through a simple, and over-the-counter voucher you can purchase. 

Akin is known for his no-bullshit approach to large philosophical debates that have money, state, and Bitcoin at the center. 

“Every day that goes by and Bitcoin hasn’t collapsed, that brings new information to the market. It increases the chance of Bitcoin’s eventual success and justifies a higher price” – Hal Finney

Surely you’ve heard the saying, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

It’s like they made that adage for Bitcoin. It has become an unkillable beast, that keeps on accumulating attacks and obituaries. And everytime it gets attacked and lives to die another day, it feeds us new ways to protect ourselves and the network.

As bitcoiners, we should be welcoming attacks, for it makes the network and its participants stronger–even though sometimes it can seem the other way around. 

And much like one of the canonical figures in Bitcoin’s history, Hal Finney, once said, it will justify a higher price with every attack. 

“Bitcoin reminds me of the early internet. They tried to stop it and now it’s a viable currency” – Joe Rogan 

Bitcoin has gone a long way since January 3, 2009, and it still has a long way to go.

That said, the fact that it has overcome so many attacks, both computationally as well as in the media, confirms this Joe Rogan quote. It is now a viable currency because it can’t be shut off.

What good would Bitcoin be if it could be shut off at a whim by whatever unelected bureacrat that lives side-by-side with the money printer. And it still has, in some pockets, that cypherpunk feeling of the early days of the world wide web. 

Joe Rogan knows it, and even though he’s been somewhat reluctant to come out and completely endorse the protocol, he still understand its underlying principle, and why he should hold some at least. 

Being the biggest podcaster in the world, and the ultimate fighter, it’s good to have him in our corner. 

“Bitcoin is a leap forward for humanity. It is going to work for humanity” – Nayib Bukele

This list wouldn’t be complete without the Bitcoin president, Nayib Bukele.

Bukele has made Bitcoin a central part of his country, and its working. Companies are flocking to El Salvador and investing in an array of different companies, from infrastructure to education. Bitcoiners are heading there just to see what it’s like to go to a small market and pay with BTC. 

And authorities from other nations are taking note on how this whole experiment goes. 

The advancements that Bukele has made in the country–it went from one of the most dangerous in the world to one of the safest–might not be directly linked to Bitcoin, but it has helped to the wellbeing of Salvadorans. 

Seeing it firsthand makes Bukele understand how Bitcoin does have an indirect impact on humanity, in a good way. 

I’d like to end this list with another quote: “One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say” — Will Durant

Have a great weekend,

Rizzo

P.S. Is your Bitcoin as secure as it should be? If your answer is no, or you doubt the yes, then you should be heading to Casa to remedy the situation.

Get 10% OFF with the promo code PETERIZZO10 to get your Bitcoin in safe hands.