JohnnyCrypto

Becoming a Bitcoiner is like waking up in the Matrix. It starts so innocently. Someone in a group chat mentions Bitcoin. You roll your eyes. "That thing from 2017? Didn't that already crash?" You are so confident. You are so wrong. You are exactly 47 days away from spending $87 on a hardware wallet and reading the whitepaper in your car during lunch break like it's contraband. The rabbit hole doesn't ease you in. One day you're a normal person who thinks money is just... money. The next day you're pausing mid-bite of your Chipotle burrito, staring into the middle distance, having an existential crisis about fractional reserve banking. Your friend asks if you're okay. You're not okay. You've just realized what M2 money supply means. Nothing will ever be the same. You buy your first $100 worth and the transformation is instant. You can't call yourself an "investor" because that word feels too pedestrian now. You're "stacking sats." You've become the kind of person who says "stacking sats" without irony. Your grandmother asks what that means at dinner and you accidentally monologue for 15 minutes about scarcity and sound money while your mom mouths "I'm sorry" to everyone. The evangelical phase hits like a freight train. You NEED people to understand. You send your dad a podcast. He doesn't listen. You send three more. He leaves you on read. You consider an intervention but you're not sure who it's for anymore. Your college roommate texts you a meme about the stock market and you respond with a 4-part thread about why stocks are denominated in a depreciating asset. He stops texting you memes. You start orange-pilling your barber. Your Uber driver. The guy fixing your AC. Anyone who makes eye contact for more than 3 seconds. "Have you ever thought about Bitcoin?" you ask, and you can see their soul leave their body a little bit. They're trapped. You have a captive audience. You're going to explain the genesis block whether they like it or not. The lifestyle changes creep in. You're calculating every purchase in sats. That $6 latte? That's 14,000 sats. That's generational wealth in 2045. You start making coffee at home and feeling morally superior about it. There's a difference and you'll explain it to your unimpressed girlfriend who just wanted to go to Starbucks. You develop a parasocial relationship with Michael Saylor. You've never met him. He doesn't know you exist. You watch his interviews like they're episodes of your favorite show. When he says "Bitcoin is hope" you nod solemnly in your living room at 11pm, eating cereal. You are alone but you feel seen. The price becomes a biometric scanner for your nervous system. Bitcoin pumps 8% and you're walking around work like you just got promoted. Bitcoin dumps 12% and you're refreshing the chart every 4 minutes while pretending to work on that spreadsheet. You've memorized the shapes of every major pump and dump since 2013. You have opinions about which one "felt different." Then comes the bear market. The real one. Your portfolio is down 70%. Your wife's boyfriend, sorry, your wife's "friend", mentions he "almost bought Bitcoin at the top, dodged a bullet." This is your crucifixion. This is your dark night. You smile and say "yeah, wild." Inside you're screaming. Inside you're calculating how much more you can buy with this paycheck. You've transcended fear. Or you've broken your brain. The line is blurry. You stop trying to convince people. This is the final stage. This is enlightenment. When your coworker brings up "that crypto thing" at lunch, you just nod. "Yeah, crazy," you say, while internally you're a Buddhist monk watching the illusion of fiat dissolve. You're beyond argument. You're zen. You're also checking the price on your watch under the table but that's between you and God. You realize you can't see the old world anymore. Your friend complains about his 2% raise not keeping up with inflation and you have to physically bite your tongue. He doesn't want to know. He's not ready. You were him 18 months ago. You remember what it was like to live in the before-times, when money was just... there. When you didn't calculate the purchasing power decay of every dollar you held. Ignorance wasn't bliss, it was just ignorance. But you can't go back. Late at night, you lie in bed and think about Satoshi. Where is he? Why did he leave? Is he watching? Does he know what he's done to you? You've read every theory. You have a favorite candidate. You've changed your mind twice. This is what you think about instead of sleeping. Your identity has shifted. You're a Bitcoiner. There's a difference and it matters deeply to you and not at all to anyone else. You have laser eyes in your profile picture. Your email signature has your npub. You say "GM" to strangers on the internet. This is your life now. And the strangest part? You wouldn't go back. You can't go back. You've seen the code. You understand the game. Every day the fiat world looks more like a LARPING session and Bitcoin looks more like the only honest thing humans ever built. So you stack. You hold. You zoom out. You meme. You wait. And somewhere, right now, someone is Googling "what is Bitcoin" for the first time. They have no idea what's about to happen to them. The signal is everywhere once you learn to see it. HFSP. But also, welcome home.