BodhiSATtva

GM. There is resilient beauty in this world despite the cold and the darkness. #photography

Did you hear the one about the fungi and the algae? They took a lichen to each other....

GM #dogstr

GM. Happy Fall Y'all

GM

GM frens

Hey Bitcoin family, I need some help. I need advice. I need anything that makes sense. My wife has cancer. My post from this morning blew up and got more engagement than anything I've ever posted. I appreciate the genuine care and support that people have offered. I am falling apart, and I have to make some really hard decisions. If you're a real one, please read through this and offer any advice you have. I'm just a normal guy, and I really want to hear what you have to say. So my wife and I have known each other since early high school. We were good friends. I left my hometown and did seasonal chef work and traveled for most of my twenties. We got together about six years ago, and my wife was battling with alcohol addiction. I was the main breadwinner-- supported her through her alcoholism, getting a DUI, and being completely dependent on me. After a few years of spiraling alcoholism, COVID hit. We tried to live out of a pop up camper and work on the Oregon coast, but it was too much with a Husky and a Manx Cat. We moved to the city. I got a corporate job that crushed my soul and paid more than I've ever made. Her drinking got so bad that I was picking her up from bars at 1:30am because she was seizing and someone found me in her phone and called me. It finally got to the point where I had decided to leave. I gave her an ultimatum-- get sober, or you're homeless with no job, no assets, and no property to your name. And then she did. She did a yoga sobriety program that transformed her life. She has been clean ever since. We took profits at the top of the 2021 market and bought a 1978 Toyota motorhome. I rebuilt it while we lived out of it, and we had many hardships. For a year we drifted up and down the West Coast of the United States, working when we needed to... and floating on when we had the money. We found ourselves in San Diego and I had a manic episode. It turned into a full blown psychotic episode that landed me in the hospital. It took months if not an entire year for me to get my mind back. We moved home, sold the RV, and started building a life in NC again. I got back into restaurants. I've been a chef my whole life, grinding hard for meager wages just chasing my passion for food and art. This time was different, I could no longer be a corporate line-dragger. Bitcoin had changed me too much. I worked for a plant nursery, but the owners and management were incompetent and kept shooting themselves in the feet. I couldn't work for someone that cared less about their business than I did, so I quit. Shortly after, I had another manic episode, and after two nights of not sleeping I admitted myself to the hospital to be medicated. After a week in a psych ward, I was finally released. I have since been on medication that seems to stabilize my brain imbalances, and haven't had these issues. My wife has Lupus, Sjogren's syndrome, and severe endometriosis. About a year and a half ago she got a surgery to address the endometriosis, and in the process we found out my she had the very early stages of mesothelioma forming on her colon. This is incredibly rare and maybe 1,000 cases at most have been documented. She healed from surgery, her chronic illness persisted, and we pushed forward. I have wanted to attempt to become an entrepreneur, so my wife agreed to be the main breadwinner for a bit so I could take a step back and try to start building a farm so that we have income separate from the fiat mines. I am worried the stress of going back into kitchens could push me into manic episodes, and the trade I have used to support myself my entire life now seems out of reach. I have been developing the property that we live on (that her family owns) to create a microfarm with the dream of having our own business. My wife's health continues to spiral. After a year and a half of waiting for a referral to SOMEONE who can help, her doctor said there are three people in the country qualified to operate on her. The Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and a private doctor that we absolutely cannot afford. I just got our garden planted, and I've spent a good bit of money trying to get the farm going. Last week we found out the mesothelioma cells are growing rapidly. She's on Myfembree (a hormone blocker) for the endometriosis and it's forcing her body into menopause at the age of 34 to hopefully slow down the endometriosis scar tissue buildup. Her first appointment with Mayo clinic is in early August... So we're going to have multiple flights halfway across the country to consult with doctors and hopefully get set up for her surgery. She needs endometriosis removed from her bowel, mesothelial cancer cells removed, and hopefully they won't have to take so much of her bowel that she'll be on a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. They'll also need to perform a partial hysterectomy to force her body into menopause so the Endometriosis will stop growing. Since I've been focused on building the farm, I only work two days a week. She's our main breadwinner, working full-time and also doing a yoga teacher training to follow her passions. She is pushing herself too hard, but she's not the type of woman I can tell anything. She has to find these things on her own. The cancer is starting to destroy her energy levels, she can barely eat, and she's unable to keep weight on. She's under 100 pounds at this point, but she's a very petite woman. I really want to make the farm work, and I also desperately need income. Once she starts taking trips to Mayo Clinic the bills are going to pile up. We live in a very rural area, and there are not many opportunities for jobs that pay anything worth my time. I have done nothing but grind and sacrifice for the last five years. I've saved up almost half a Bitcoin. So that's it. Our life savings. Almost half a Bitcoin. I have around $2,500 monthly income, and she makes bank waiting tables at a Relais & Châteaux Hôtel. But I don't know how much longer she can keep pushing herself this hard. I feel like a piece of shit because she agreed to take on being the main breadwinner so I could try to get us a business built to provide income... but that feels far off and not concrete. We need income NOW. If I push to get a corporate F&B management job, I might push myself into another manic episode. If I have another break, then I add to the stress instead of alleviate it. I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do. I feel like the only thing that makes sense is to sell most of our stack, and park it in MSTY. If I can save enough from dividends to cover our capital gains, then everything else can go into paying the bills and keeping us solvent... and anything leftover can go straight back into spot BTC. If we can beat the cancer, then I can sell the MSTY and put it back into spot BTC. I feel like if I wait until the bills are piling up, we're going to end up being forced to liquidate our BTC and pay for everything, and then I'm back in the fiat mines and our life savings is gone. If I plug it in MSTY, then at least we have a chance to keep the money flowing and retain some of the equity. What would you do in my shoes? Any advice is welcomed. I'm desperate. I've been self-made my entire life and never asked for handouts... But I really don't know what the fuck we're going to do. If this post strikes a chord with anyone and you're loaded and want to help a random pleb that's just trying to keep his wife alive: BTC: bc1q3l06t26jx7avlcns98vn0p6sj940egkk27h5p6 Lightning: BodhiSATtva@primal.net Paypal: micahfranz@gmail.com Venmo: @MicahFranz last four are 7943

If you're tagged in this, You probably have no idea who I am, but I want you to know that it's because I respect the fuck out of you. I’m a #Bitcoin #revolutionary, and I don’t give a damn if nation-states figure it out or choke on their own debt. In my lifetime, Bitcoin will be the global currency—full stop. It’s not just money; it’s the best shot we’ve got to smash the cartels of banks that’ve chained us to debt slavery for centuries. This is about unleashing human potential—art, creativity, love—shit we haven’t seen since the ancients dreamed big. It’s about flipping the script: freeing people from soul-crushing labor, handing power back to individuals, saving the planet from corporate leeches, and forcing society to think beyond next quarter’s profits. The math doesn’t lie, and it’s ugly. Debt interest? It’s a runaway freight train—$300 billion to $1.5 trillion in under five years. That’s a parabola from hell, and it’s coming for everyone. Stick to the status quo, and most people get obliterated. Fact. We’re teetering on the edge of a Bitcoin world order. The leader of the Free World just greenlit a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve—boom, there’s your new global reserve asset. This isn’t a drill; it’s a starting gun. Nations will claw over each other in a Bitcoin arms race—game theory doesn’t mess around. No one wants to be the last sucker holding a dying fiat bag. Markets haven’t clocked it yet. Maybe 1% of the world gets Bitcoin; 2% even heard the news. Do the math: 1% of 2% is a tiny tribe of us who see this tectonic shift coming. The post-WWII Bretton Woods house of cards? Crumbling. The rise of the sovereign individual, the sovereign corporation, permanent digital capital? Happening now. The fiat elite are still sipping champagne in their delusion, but their clock’s ticking. Bitcoin doesn’t care who gets wrecked. Insurance giants, pensions, fractional-reserve banks, central banks—adapt or die. It won’t shed a tear for collapsed currencies, starving masses, or societies imploding when ATMs run dry. Print more money? Bitcoin gets stronger. Adoption snowballs. People demand it. It is a currency—screw the US dollar’s feelings—and the writing’s on the wall. Sanctions? GFY. Censorship? GFY. Seize my wealth? GFY. People will pick Bitcoin because it’s the hardest money ever forged—the most secure network humanity’s built. It’s the economic singularity: infinity divided by 21 million. That’s not a tagline; it’s a reckoning. Fiat’s days of printing its way out are done. The more they inflate, the faster it dies. We’re staring down a black hole that’ll swallow the world, and we’d better get serious. No grifters, no proof-of-stake bullshit—we’ve already got that with the Fed. We need sharp minds, real talk, and no screwing around. Botch this, and we’re not just broke—we’re back in the Dark Ages. Math doesn’t negotiate. The fiat system’s a wobbly Jenga tower, and printing cash is their only move—screwing us all with every dollar they churn out. Bitcoin’s the lifeboat, the ultimate store of value. Lightning Network for biz and governments? Sure. E-cash for the plebs via Cashu or something slicker? Yep. But we’ve got to solve scaling now, because math’s a ruthless bastard, and it’s coming fast. This isn’t Max Payne—it’s Mad Max if we don’t wake up. Let’s build, or we’re all toast. @calle @jack mallers @nat brunell @npub1htv3...pkuq @Bram @Robert Breedlove @gladstein @Ioni Appelberg @Lyn Alden @npub1yezu...awc7 @CARLA⚡️ @Carl B Menger @npub1xr7t...2gqh @npub128tl...fadp @The Bitcoin Way @Marty Bent @Parman - Activate OP_GFY now!! @parachutesBTC @npub1qg8j...24kw @walker @npub15dql...lm5m

A free world needs private money. Period. The entire financial system we have today is permission-based, censorable, and has many single points of failure. In other words, it is built upon trust (which can be betrayed). Bitcoin provides a permission-less parallel system for any individual to build on top of, and Bitcoiners are making privacy in the digital age a reality. Cashu (currently being built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, and inter-operable with the Bitcoin Lightning network) is one of the most consequential technological developments of my lifetime. The revolution that is currently taking place thanks to Bitcoin is only possible because of over 40 years of brave individuals that believed in building freedom tools without permission even in the face of adversity. David Chaum is often celebrated as a pioneer in the realm of digital privacy, particularly through his invention of "blind signatures" in the 1980s. His work laid the groundwork for digital cash systems that could offer the privacy of physical currency. Chaum's concept of Chaumian mints was designed to allow for anonymous transactions where the identity of the payer is concealed from the issuer of the digital currency. This idea materialized into the eCash system through his company DigiCash, although it struggled with market adoption due to its centralized nature and the technological limitations of the time. In the 1990s, David Chaum's vision of Chaumian e-cash came close to becoming a widespread reality, particularly through his company DigiCash, which introduced eCash. The system was designed to mimic physical cash's privacy and security features, using cryptographic protocols like blind signatures to ensure anonymity in transactions. One of the most promising opportunities for eCash was a potential partnership with Microsoft. Bill Gates expressed interest in integrating eCash into every copy of Windows 95, which could have dramatically increased its adoption. Microsoft reportedly offered around $100 million for the technology, an offer that, if accepted, could have made eCash a standard digital payment method across a vast user base. However, the deal fell through because Chaum demanded $1 or $2 per sold copy of Windows 95, a condition Microsoft found too costly. This negotiation breakdown was a significant blow to eCash's prospects, as integration with Windows 95 could have provided the infrastructure and user base necessary for mainstream acceptance. Despite this and other potential partnerships with banks and companies like Visa and Netscape, DigiCash failed to secure the necessary traction. The absence of widespread merchant adoption and consumer usage, combined with Chaum's insistence on maintaining high privacy standards which might have limited commercial appeal, led to DigiCash's eventual bankruptcy in 1998. While Chaumian e-cash was previously on the brink of becoming a reality, the Microsoft partnership's failure was a critical juncture that significantly impacted its potential success in the 1990s. Today, Chaum's vision is being revitalized within the Bitcoin ecosystem through innovative projects like Cashu and Fedi. Cashu implements Chaumian e-cash on top of Bitcoin, using the Lightning Network for transactions. It enables users to transact with digital tokens that are backed by Bitcoin but maintain user privacy through blind signatures. Unlike traditional banking, where transactions can be traced, Cashu allows for mints to be run by anyone, ensuring no single entity controls the flow of money, thus preserving the privacy and immediacy of physical cash in a digital form. Meanwhile, Fedi leverages the Fedimint protocol to create a federated system of Chaumian mints, where a group of "Guardians" collectively manage the mint. This approach offers a community-based custody solution for Bitcoin, blending privacy with a form of decentralized governance. By using multi-signature wallets controlled by a federation, Fedimint reduces reliance on a single authority, enhancing security and privacy. Both Cashu and Fedi/Fedimint are bringing Chaum's dream of private, scalable digital cash into the modern era, integrating it with Bitcoin's blockchain technology to offer users the control, privacy, and accessibility akin to handling physical cash. Big thanks to @calle `and @Marty Bent for all the work they're doing to make anonymous digital cash a reality.