I Watched Money Die. Then I Found the Only Kind That Can't.
Why I hold my cash in Bitcoin — and why most people still won't
I was six years old when I learned what money really is.
It was 1992. Yugoslavia was falling apart. Before a single shot was fired, the dinar was already dead. I remember my grandmother counting stacks of bills — millions of dinars — just to buy bread. The paper meant nothing. The numbers meant nothing.
Then the war came.
Think about it. What do you want to own when the world falls apart? Most people never ask this question. They assume stability is permanent. I cannot afford that assumption. I have seen what happens when it breaks.
Gold? Try taking gold through an airport or across a checkpoint. They will stop you. They will take it.
Real estate? You cannot carry a house.
Cash? Which cash? The dinar became toilet paper. The same thing is happening right now with the Iranian rial.
"Poor returns in the old economy meant capital was redirected to the new economy. Investors favored Netflix over the Exxons of the world. You couldn't grow the supply base and you had supply shortages."
Jeff Currie
That single idea rewired how I think about everything.
Commodities and cyclical investments interest me most because if you catch the cycle early the returns can be spectacular. What matters in cyclical investing is understanding the relationship between supply and demand. Most people obsess over demand. But I obsess over supply.
Metallurgical coal, deep water oil rigs — I look for assets where supply cannot respond. Where years of underinvestment meet structural demand.
Now scale that logic up. Money is the biggest commodity of all.
I used to hate the idea of alternative money. I avoided it for years. I trusted the system more than I should have. I realized there exists a form of money that is absolutely limited. It cannot be printed. It cannot be scaled. It cannot be diluted. It disappears from the market instead of multiplying.
And despite all that, most people still don’t see it.
Your Cash Is Bleeding
Most investors obsess over demand. "Oil demand is rising, so prices must rise." But that is only half the equation. Supply is what determines price.
Look at this chart:
The dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power over the last century. Not because demand for dollars fell — demand has never been higher. The dollar lost value because supply expanded. The Federal Reserve can create unlimited dollars.
This is the fundamental problem with all state money. Supply is unlimited. Purchasing power decays.
The one asset I trust most is the one nobody can print.
The Hardest Cash on Earth
I hold my cash in Bitcoin. Not in dollars. Not in euros. Especially now because of the events in the Middle East, and due to the assumption that the euro could lose significant value this year. Why do I think the euro will lose value? If we just look at gas, the EU currently pays around 600% more than the USA. If this price stayed the same and did not increase, that means about 300 billion euros more would go only for gas every year. That money will simply be printed, which creates inflation and destroys the euro.
Bitcoin is not an investment in the traditional sense. I am not buying it for dividends, buybacks, or management execution.
Some people make Bitcoin their entire identity. That is not me. Some people avoid it completely. That is their right. I am somewhere in between — and I got here the hard way.
Strip it down to first principles. What is money?
Money is a claim on real things — food, shelter, energy. Printing more money does not create more food. It does not build more houses. It only dilutes every claim already in circulation. More money chasing the same goods means each unit buys less. Always.
Bitcoin is different. There will only ever be 21 million. That number cannot be changed by a politician, a central banker, or a crisis meeting on a Sunday night.
The euro is state money. State money is not capped. A central bank can expand supply whenever it wants. That is why purchasing power keeps leaking over time. Bitcoin has no central bank. Nobody controls it. That is the point. Yes, there are other cryptocurrencies. Most of them are not money. They are projects, companies, or marketing campaigns with a token attached. Many are controlled by insiders. That is just a central bank in a hoodie.
The Argument That Broke Me
Many people avoid Bitcoin because it is still relatively new and closely associated with speculation, scams, and hype. That was my view as well. After openly criticizing Bitcoin, I spent more than a year studying it seriously, and every single argument I had against it failed.
But what really changed my mind is that Bitcoin is the only asset I know that you can carry in your head. I remember during the war in the former Yugoslavia we had to flee and walk long distances. The first thing they took from us was everything we had. Our money, our savings, everything.
Your Bitcoin lives on the blockchain. All you need is your seed phrase — the 12 or 24 words. Memorize them, and you can flee any country with your entire net worth. No gold to confiscate. No bank to freeze. No border guard can find what exists only in your memory. You just need to cross into a country where there is internet. For someone who grew up watching money die, this matters more than any chart.
I could write an entire book about why Bitcoin matters. But you don't need a book. You need to answer one question:
What is Bitcoin worth?
