A Father’s Day Letter On Bitcoin

This is an opinion editorial by Will Schoellkopf, author of “The Bitcoin Dog” and a soon-to-be father.

I was a computer science student at UCLA when I first heard about Bitcoin in 2013. Skeptical of this new magic internet money, it wasn’t long before the Mt. Gox exchange implosion would confirm that skepticism, illustrating just how important it is to have self custody of your bitcoin. At the time, however, easy-to-use cold storage hardware wallet solutions were not yet available, so I made the mistake of giving up, deciding then and there that it was not worth the work to learn more about Bitcoin.

I was wrong.

While you have yet to be born, my heart is already warm with your love. As I reflect about this upcoming Father’s Day, my first as a soon-to-be father, I can already picture myself holding you in my arms. You’re swaddled in a cute, little onesie and a floppy-eared hat, and as I rock you side to side, I nudge your nose with my nose.

“Who’s daddy’s girl?” I whisper in your ear. “You are!” My eyes swell with pride. A smile beams across my face when — to my surprise — you struggle to reach your hand out and grab my nose! Your tiny little fingers are barely able to grab on.

Today, as I sit in our rocking chair, the one in which we will rock back and forth, you in my arms, I look out your nursery window and ponder the world I want to bring you into: a world where cold storage hardware wallet solutions are readily available. I think about the goals you will set, your dreams, your ambitions! But I don’t want you to have it all — not too easily, anyway. While I do want the best for you, I do not plan to hand it to you on a silver platter.

As your father, I will raise you to be a young woman who works hard for what she wants. I want you to have control over your destiny. To have the opportunity to succeed. To chart a path so engaging, so enthralling, so “I can’t believe this is really happening” that you gladly give blood, sweat and tears to your passions without blinking an eye. As it stands, however, you lack the financial freedom to do so.

While I so keenly wish you could be born free, your career choices (as is the same for most young men and women in our society) remain locked in a cage by inflation. I fear that the knowledge of a net income handicapped by soaring rates of inflation will lead you to purposefully limit yourself — that, in turn, you will handicap your own capacity to develop your creativity, refusing the forms of self-expression that reflect the fire of your inner spirit. Out of necessity to overcome inflation via a high-paying role, you may feel impelled to trade in your passion for ruthlessness, to sacrifice your life dream for the life of a beast of burden — one who needs to let out a mighty roar to break free of the cage of inflation!

Bitcoin fixes this.

Bitcoin is the key that lets you calmly unlock the door to walk peacefully out of the cage. While the pennies in your piggy bank will never stand a chance against inflation, you will be able to stack sats, and these simply can’t be inflated away. You will be free to pursue the life you want, whatever that life may be, and save for your future, too.

My beloved daughter, you are your own person. You can float like a butterfly, or sting like a bee — the choice is yours. By living on a fiat standard, a unit of account that’s controlled by a central bank with a money supply artificially increased as desired, your wings will be fighting a headwind of inflation. But if you opt in to the Bitcoin standard, you will fly free. Through Bitcoin, you are free to choose the career that best suits you and your lifestyle, with the confidence that you are now equipped with a savings technology capable of holding the value of your work in the long term.

Since you are my daughter, I’m sure you will share the same critical thinking skills as your father. (Though, in all honesty, hopefully you take after your mother in this department; she is the real critical thinker in this family!) Innately, you know not to blindly trust me, but instead to verify my Bitcoin claims for yourself. Even Daddy, despite his computer science background, first approached Bitcoin as little more than an unproven software algorithm, swiftly dismissing it. It took another eight years, but I did finally lean in for another look — more than a cursory one, this time — and only then to appreciate Bitcoin for what it really is: a once-in-a-civilization monetary revolution.

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