T.T. 60: art of the deal with it (winning + adapting)
The past month's major moves for myself and the world. Focused on the pros
Hola amigos,
Greetings from DC… after back-to-back work trips: up north to New Jersey, a quick break back home in DC, and then down to Tampa Bay!
The past month has been a whirlwind for me. More on that later. A lot has also happened in the world since my last post on January 13th… one week before Inauguration Day.
Let’s dive in.
Topic list:
New P.O.T.U.S.
Free Ross
Freeing political prisoners
D.O.G.E.
Audit the Fed and Fort Knox
Negotiating with tariffs
Foreign policy
Cabinet appointments
Crypto Czar + Sovereign Wealth Fund
Shitcoin distractions
Trump and Melania memecoins
World Liberty Financial
Argentina, Bermuda, and C.A.R.
Ripple… the worst of them all?
El Salvador
Marco Rubio visit
Prison-for-profit?
Plan B Conference
IMF Deal
Legal Tender Law undermined?
Tether and Rumble
Berlín leading the way
My whirlwind month
New Jersey trip
DC on Inauguration Day
Tampa Bay trip
Enjoying the Super Bowl
Home selling in D.C.
New P.O.T.U.S.
Looking back now, it’s hard to believe that Inauguration Day was only 4 weeks ago. It feels like President Trump has already made more big moves than Biden did in his entire 4 years.
He’s liberated thousands of politically persecuted prisoners… fought and won two trade wars… exposed the biggest story of media corruption in American history… reduced federal expenses by over $100 billion already… and more.
I can’t possibly cover everything in detail without writing a full book. I’ll try to briefly (this post ended up at 3186 words lol) highlight the developments that I find most noteworthy:
Free Ross
When I saw President Trump speak at the Libertarian National Convention, he promised that if we voted for him, he would free Ross Ulbricht.
My first instinct was skepticism… not only about his willingness to follow through, but also the implication.
In the speech just before Trump’s, Senator Mike Lee said some great things — including a desire to End the Federal Reserve — but also mentioned how his son is Republican and his younger daughter is libertarian. People who aren’t versed in D.C. speak might have missed how the wording of it was an implied insult (that libertarians who don’t vote Republican are naive emotional idealists).
Similarly, I worried that Trump’s promise to free Ross Ulbricht — instead of Edward Snowden, for example — might send a bad message. Most normies probably don’t understand why libertarians and Bitcoiners care about the guy who created an infamous black market website.
Fortunately, Trump followed through on his promise, and the news cycle was so busy that most people barely noticed anyway.
The entrepreneur who got a double life sentence for being a white male libertarian (yes, the judge openly criticized him for those qualities) and starting an e-commerce website — which, regardless of how you feel about drugs, objectively made a notoriously dangerous market much safer for everyone involved — is now free!
Angela McArdle — the Libertarian Party Chair (who recently resigned to accept a position in the Trump Administration) who negotiated Ross’ release — explained the whole story three weeks ago on the Tom Woods Show:
This was also a big deal for Bitcoiners.
Silk Road was one of the very first marketplaces that proved Bitcoin can be a viable Medium Of Exchange. Regardless of how you feel about the drugs being sold on the site, it’s undeniably a significant part of economic history now.
President Trump reiterated his promise to Free Ross when I saw him speak for the second time last year at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville.
Coincidentally, I was wearing my Free Ross shirt when I met TJ Miller — a standup comedian with a hilarious role in the HBO hit show “Silicon Valley” who also happens to be a Bitcoiner — so I’ll share that picture as well here:
Freeing political prisoners
I didn’t vote for Trump in 2020 (lockdowns, Operation Warpspeed, etc), and I didn’t attend the January 6th rally/protest despite being in the DC area that day.
That being said, the leftist hysteria afterward was ridiculous. Most of the people arrested for January 6th didn’t even commit any real crimes. Many were treated horribly and even forced into solitary confinement.
When I decided to move to El Salvador, one of my family members expressed concerns about how President Bukele had locked up so many people. What if it happened to me?
My reply at the time was to point out how the Biden Administration had imprisoned thousands of innocent people, purely for political reasons. I wouldn’t be any safer here in “the land of the free” under that radical leftist regime.
Thank goodness President Trump finally restored some justice.
D.O.G.E.
This one is absolutely surreal.
The inertia in D.C. for decades has been unsustainable growth in Big Government. To quote Milton Friedman (as Elon Musk often does on X nowadays), “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
I’ll probably cover D.O.G.E. more in future posts. For now, I’ll just say thank goodness it exists.
This is an existential threat to the U.S. economy.
And the USAID revelations showed that it’s not just about economics… among other corrupt initiatives, the money stolen from taxpayers was being used to fund far left propaganda with “independent” media companies like Reuters and Politico.
It’s one of the biggest scandals in the history of American media. The government was using our own money to spread propaganda through “private” companies.
It’s about time a Presidential Administration is finally taking all of this seriously.
Audit the Fed and Fort Knox
Speaking of Elon auditing things…
I won’t say too much about these points until they actually happen. I don’t want to get my hopes up too much.
But Elon has publicly agreed with viral posts on X suggesting that DOGE audits the Federal Reserve AND the gold supply in Fort Knox.
Both of those should be audited yearly.
The entire world economy runs under the assumption that both are solvent… yet the central bank has NEVER been independently audited, and Fort Knox hasn’t shown credible proof of their gold reserves since before Nixon took us off the Gold Standard in 1971.
Libertarians have been calling B.S. on both of those for decades. We might finally be proven correct — beyond any doubt — about monetary policy very soon.
Negotiating with tariffs
This is one Trump policy that libertarians (and anyone well versed in economics) would typically oppose.
Tariffs are sold to voters as protection for domestic production, but in practice, they’re primarily just a tax that domestic consumers end up paying.
My favorite economist Murray Rothbard also wrote an entire book about the Great Depression, debunking the narrative that it was caused by free markets. In reality, it started 16 years after the creation of the Federal Reserve led to an artificial boom… and then the bust went from bad to extremely bad after ostensibly laissez-faire President Hoover signed the Smoot Hawley TARIFFS in 1930.
That being said… even though tariffs are bad policy, it turns out that they can be a brilliant negotiating tool. To quote Harvey Specter from the TV show Suits (in Season 1 when it was still really good), “threat of sanctions is better than filing for sanctions.”
President Trump got major concessions from both Mexico and Canada within a couple days of threatening trade wars against each neighbor. It’s hard to argue with the results.
Foreign policy
Speaking of foreign policy… it’s the area where I have the most disagreements with President Trump. To be fair, he’s MUCH less of a neocon than Bush-era Republicans, but he does still have some concerning imperialist tendencies.
That being said, I’m withholding judgment for now. I have a lot to say about the things that he’s said, but I’ll wait to see how much of it is just negotiation tactics.
For now, I’ll just enjoy the most libertarian domestic policy of my entire life so far.
Cabinet appointments
RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard are both libertarian-leaning Bitcoiners. Both of their appointments have now been confirmed.
I saw RFK speak in person three times last year: the Libertarian Convention (where I was also given a copy of his book exposing Fauci), the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, and Bret Weinstein’s “Rescue the Republic” rally.
I also saw Tulsi speak at that Rescue the Republic rally.
Trump’s alliance with RFK is the closest thing we’ll get to an apology for the tyranny in 2020.
Tulsi went from being persecuted by the “intelligence community” to now being in charge of it.
Gotta love the poetic justice!
And that’s before I even mention the other Bitcoiners in Trump’s cabinet…
Crypto Czar + Sovereign Wealth Fund
This is another huge topic.
It’s the reason why I chose the header photo for this post.
Howard Lutnick — soon to be the Secretary of Commerce — owns hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin.
Scott Bessent — soon to be the Secretary of Treasury — also likes Bitcoin.
Both of them are going to be in charge of the new Sovereign Wealth Fund that President Trump recently established via executive order.
And the new “crypto czar” David Sacks said in his first press conference that Trump’s first priority for him is to evaluate the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
Speaking of which… Abu Dhabi’s own Sovereign Wealth Fund just bought half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin a few days ago.
And further to the east, the Kingdom of Bhutan has also accumulated over a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin by now.
Over a billion dollars!!!
Not bad for a small country.
The fact that the fiat price of BTC remains under $100k shows that most people still aren’t paying attention.
Just wait until the big countries get involved… Eric Trump’s prediction of Bitcoin reaching a fiat price over a million (10x the current price) looks increasingly inevitable.
Shitcoin distractions
It hasn’t all been good news, of course.
Right before Inauguration Day, the Trump family launched two memecoins.
In the past couple of weeks, multiple other Heads of State have followed… Bermuda, the Central African Republic, and even the beloved libertarian Javier Milei in Argentina all disgraced themselves.
All of their coins turned out to be pump-and-dumps. Whether or not they were intended as scams, that’s the fate of 99.99999% of cryptocurrencies.
By contrast, El Salvador’s President Bukele remains the most notable world leader with the humility to focus purely on Bitcoin: the ONLY digital asset that was fairly launched, with a truly decentralized network, and a legitimate value prop as a verifiably scarce and immutable “measuring stick” for all of the world’s economic value.
At best — assuming no intent of scamming — Milei and Trump made rookie mistakes. Their followers paid the price.
By contrast, El Salvador has profited significantly from Bukele’s wisdom.
Speaking of shitcoins…
Ripple is one of the older cryptocurrency scams, and it continues to be much more insidious than the newer generation. At least these Solana-era memecoins don’t pretend to be anything more than pump-and-dump gambling.
Ripple’s token (XRP) was 100% premined — they literally gave the entire supply to themselves — but it’s a more sophisticated scam. Hiding behind the veneer of a respectable fintech company, they pay for banking partnerships and a huge marketing budget to raise XRP’s value before dumping the token (which Ripple only sells, never buys) on retail investors… and then they use the profits to lobby against Bitcoin.
Now they’re trying to undermine the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. A couple days ago, while driving through downtown D.C., I saw a big banner advertising Ripple.
Of course, their ad conveniently left out the fact that they’re scammers and left wing climate cultists who donated heavily to Kamala’s campaign… but somehow, they’ve bought enough influence to be taken seriously.
If this delays the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, it’s bad for the country… especially if that delay gives rival superpowers like China the chance to frontrun us.
That’s not just hypothetical. Abu Dhabi just bought a lot of Bitcoin, and Hong Kong is reportedly considering their own Bitcoin reserve as well, after already approving their own Bitcoin ETF launches.
But looking on the bright side… at least Ripple’s shamelessly evil meddling gives me more time to maximize my own Bitcoin reserve at a discount.
El Salvador news
I intended to say a lot more here, but this post is already almost 2000 words, so I’ll keep it short.
Here’s the list of subtopics again:
Marco Rubio visit
Prison-for-profit?
Plan B Conference
IMF Deal
Legal Tender Law undermined?
Tether and Rumble
Berlín leading the way
I’ll save most of those subtopics for another post. For now I’ll just highlight the first two:
Marco Rubio’s first international visit as Trump’s new Secretary of State wasn’t to England… it wasn’t to Germany… or Japan, or any of the other major U.S. allies.
Instead, the most powerful cabinet member prioritized El Salvador for his very first visit!
Not bad for the former murder capital of the world. At the same time as Trump launched a trade war with Mexico, his Administration extended a hand of friendship to Latin America’s fastest growing economy.
President Bukele’s offer in return didn’t exactly thrill me. Instead of Bitcoin advice, he offered a deal to arbitrage the cost of sending our criminals to El Salvador’s mega prison instead of paying more to imprison them domestically.
Regardless, it’s nice to see them getting along. As much as I would prefer for El Salvador to be fully sovereign, it simply isn’t wealthy and powerful enough yet to remain truly independent geopolitically… so if they have to pick a superpower ally, I’d prefer they choose the U.S. instead of the Chinese Communist Party.
As for the other subtopics…
The IMF deal and the relationship with Tether are additional signs of El Salvador’s economic alliance with the U.S. in ways that I don’t exactly love. But I won’t get into all of that now.
The changes to their Bitcoin Legal Tender Law at the same time as Tether/Bitfinex’s recent Plan B conference were also noteworthy. But I’ll save all of that for another post once we have more details.
For now, I’ll just emphasize that Bitcoin transcends any government. Its adoption shouldn’t rely on politicians… and regardless of the extent to which the IMF forces El Salvador’s government to be less actively supportive of Bitcoin, it remains passively legal there, so grassroots adoption initiatives are more important than ever.
Speaking of which, it made me very happy to see so many Bitcoiners who visited El Salvador for the Plan B conference also make their way to Berlín!
My whirlwind month
New Jersey trip
DC on Inauguration Day
Tampa Bay trip
Enjoying the Super Bowl
Home selling in D.C.
Before I even start elaborating on this section, the word count is already 2198… so I’ll keep it short.
One of my favorite things about my new job is that it gives me the opportunity to visit sales offices in other parts of the country.
In four months, I’ve already had the opportunity to visit five other offices. That’s an uncommonly high rate, but my boss thinks I have a lot of potential to manage my own office, so she’s invested in my development to experience some of the top performing offices throughout the east coast.
In my previous post on January 13th, I mentioned that I was about to go up north to New Jersey. The theme in that post was resilience: learning to be a top performer even in difficult circumstances.
My theme this time is adaptability: learning to be a top performer even in rapidly changing circumstances.
First I went from cold D.C. to even colder New Jersey. Then I was rewarded for the physical adversity with a trip the very next week to warm sunny Tampa Bay, Florida.
Both of those offices’ managers earned over $2 million each last year. I learned a ton from meeting them and seeing firsthand how they operate so successfully.
The back-to-back trips also gave me more experience managing the logistics of traveling with a team. A month ago, I had never rented a car… now I’ve done it twice. I also learned more about balancing egos, strengths, and weaknesses of team members to get where we need to go on time and collectively produce to our full potential.
There’s more I could say about the reason why my office manager sent us on these back-to-back trips — it’s big news for my sales job — but I’ll save that update for my next post.
For now, I’ll wrap this one up with two more topics:
Enjoying the Super Bowl
I caught the flu at the end of the Tampa trip, so I was bedridden for a week when I got back, and couldn’t go to any Super Bowl parties.
That being said, I still enjoyed the game for the first time in a long time.
I had stopped watching the NFL a few years ago… the obnoxious amount of wokeness was off-putting, then the “bread and circuses” just felt pointless as the U.S. descended into Covid tyranny.
But now? With Trump 2.0 making all of these positive changes? It finally feels like America is back baby! And I intend to enjoy it.
When society is healthy, sports contribute to it. They’re a positive outlet for humanity’s tribalist instincts, and they represent important values like meritocracy, teamwork, ambition, and hard work.
The college I went to also had the best football team in the country at the time. I’ve experienced major championships firsthand. As long as they’re not distracting from the stuff that actually matters, sports are entertaining and great for the culture.
Plus, the team that won this Super Bowl has a Bitcoiner as their star running back:
That’s all for this post.
3000 words was already more than I intended… there was too much interesting news, and I still ended up leaving out a LOT of details.
I’m so busy with my job that I can’t post every single week anymore with the level of quality that I expect from myself. However, I’ll try not to wait a full month between posts again.
My main priority is stacking sats and developing my business skillset. But I’ll try to keep you all updated.
2025 is off to an incredible start!!!