The Bitcoin Hero's Journey
Speakers/Moderators
Terence Michael
Terence Michael
This led him to writing "Proof of Money: The Big Idea Behind Bitcoin" and joining The Bitcoin Adviser to onboard HNWIs into collaborative custody and inheritance setups.
He currently hosts the daily show, "Bitcoin Today," is a consultant to Horizon's Bitcoin home equity program, is a contributor to the Santa Monica Bitcoin Office, and enjoys making loud Bitcoin videos while inexplicably skating along the beach.
Session
Overview
Terence Michael frames Bitcoin adoption through the classic hero's journey, drawing on his background in film and television to explain why people often experience Bitcoin as more than a financial discovery. He walks through stages such as the ordinary fiat world, the call to adventure, refusal, mentorship, tests, crisis, reward, and return.
The keynote connects familiar movie references with common Bitcoin experiences: first hearing about Bitcoin, dismissing it as a scam, finding trusted educators, navigating scams and altcoins, learning self custody, and confronting the weaknesses of fiat money. A central theme is the shift from chasing dollars to understanding Bitcoin as money and as a tool for personal responsibility.
The talk emphasizes Bitcoin as a path toward clarity, freedom, and long-term thinking. It also highlights the role of education and community, arguing that people who go through their own Bitcoin transformation often feel compelled to help others understand it.
All right. We're going to mix things up today. Today I want to talk about the hero in every Bitcoiner. These are some of the studios where I've produced movies and TV shows, and I had AI make the Bitcoin-only version just for fun. MGM, Warner Brothers, Universal.
After having produced 20 movies and TV shows, I realized that the formula we use in Hollywood is the same formula that we Bitcoiners should use to tell our story. This, of course, is the hero's journey. Many of you know it. You've studied it in literature. It goes all the way back to biblical times, Plato, cavemen sitting around a fire. And it has these 12 critical stages.
The reason it works is that it's built into our DNA. As humans, whenever we want to transform, we naturally go through a sequence. Whenever we want to optimize, improve, or grow, the hero's journey just puts 12 labels on that process. So I'm going to go through those with you today.
The first phase is the ordinary world. This is the world we know when we're sitting in the fiat world. We know this because prices rise. We seek higher wages. We're rewarded with credit scores, and for many, this means more debt. For a lot of us, it leads to more credit cards, more payment plans, and more payday loans.
But the thing is, we're motivated by an external scorecard. We're incentivized to get our name on the office door, to get the corner glass office, a better parking spot, a better suit, a better title. A lot of this stress and anxiety is quieted by social media and news. And if that doesn't work, there's a pill for that. Of course, they'll sell us those pills through those same outlets.
They want to keep us compliant and domesticated. It's simple in the fiat world: earn more dollars, because in the fiat world there is no difference between dollars and money. But deep down, we know something isn't right. We just can't quite put our finger on it. We remain somewhat comfortably numb, and we just trust the system.
We are in The Matrix. We're sitting in our fluorescent-lit cubicle office. We are Dorothy in Kansas, and we are Truman in The Truman Show, living a normal but manufactured life because it's all that we know. This is our ordinary world.
But then we get the call to adventure. We all hear that computer-sounding word, Bitcoin, for the first time. We all remember that. Maybe it was someone at a barbecue who told us, only back then we were the one who wanted to change the subject. Maybe it was a global event, like the Covid crisis or the Canadian trucker protest that followed. Maybe some of you lost a home in the great financial crisis, or your parents did. Regardless, we all felt the inflation that followed afterward.
This is your wake-up call. This is the tap on the shoulder that we can all cut the fiat puppet strings, and Bitcoin is offering us the scissors. This is your Mission: Impossible, should you choose to accept it. You are getting a call from a crazy professor, and I'm sure we'd all love to go back in time and smash-buy some bitcoin. This is the call to adventure, which we all remember.
And we all remember the refusal of the call. Every one of us refused Bitcoin the very first time we heard about it. Just like Ben Stiller did in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, he said no to the adventure of a lifetime. He liked the temperature-controlled offices, the coffee, his coworkers. Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit said, I do not need an adventure. I'm comfortable and happy at home.
We all do this. For us Bitcoiners, this is the FUD phase. We think it's a scam. Who the hell is Satoshi? And look at the price. When am I supposed to buy? It's so volatile. Many of us are also well educated, all the more reason to reject Bitcoin's alien properties. But only a fool or a liar would pretend that they're not scared. As humans, we want to survive. We want to mitigate risk. So we remain in the fiat world, and thus we refuse the call.
That is, until we meet our mentor. Just like the basketball players in Indiana needed Gene Hackman in Hoosiers. Just like the kid in Reseda, California needed Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid. And just like Will Hunting needed Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting to get past his ego and realize he had more potential than just getting into fights. Regardless, a guide cuts through the noise. Whether it's someone or something, we all need a mentor to help us along the way.
For me, it was Guy Swann's Bitcoin Audible. It's all I could find at the time, and this was my mentor. For you or others, it might be a Michael Saylor video. For still others, it might be a ridiculously sexy guy who floats along the beach with loud music and punky graphics.
This is the moment we all have to stare in the mirror and admit to ourselves, wow, all this time we don't even know what money is. With the mentor, we are able to advance to the next stage and cross the threshold.
But we're not going to cross the threshold unless we're willing to challenge our beliefs, because we can only enter with humility. As we take that first step, we shift from an observer to a participant. And the minute we land, we ask ourselves, what is Bitcoin? Is it a payment system? Is it a ledger? Is it a tech stock? It's different things to different people, and that's because it requires a new language. Think about these four words. When before Bitcoin did you ever use these four words? I never did.
Then we realize Bitcoin can fix the world. It's the great explosion. Just like when Dorothy left black-and-white Kansas for a Technicolor world in Oz. Just like when the humans went into Pandora in Avatar. And just like Roy Scheider got on that boat to go hunt Jaws, they crossed over into a new and foreign world. This is crossing the threshold.
The minute we get into this new world, we enter a very trying stage because it tests our conviction. This is the tests, allies, and enemies stage. Many of you know this is where we spend a lot of our time being tested. We have to find our allies to help avoid our enemies. Most multi-season TV shows could be retitled Tests, Allies, and Enemies. Game of Thrones, Succession, Billions, any of these could be retitled Tests, Allies, and Enemies.
For us Bitcoiners, this is the mouth of the rabbit hole. We get a glimpse of who we could be in this new, special world, but we immediately have to be wary because there are a lot of people who want our Bitcoin. They want to sell us other things. They wanted to sell me this NFT for $70,000, which, of course, I bought for $70,000. But don't worry, I sold it for $300. So it was a very expensive lesson, and I needed to find my allies.
They also tried to sell me these better bitcoins, and all these talking heads on CNBC said, you should diversify. Put $1,000 or $100 on each one, you don't know. But we learn very quickly that diversification means less Bitcoin. Shout out to Trey Sellers of Unchained, wherever he is. This is his quote.
This is because we know Bitcoin is a completely different world. It's a world of rules, and everything else, those NFTs, the altcoins, they all belong in the world of rulers. Because of that, Bitcoin is only going to go up over time against everything else.
So we need to find our Justice League. We need to find our Avengers. They went through the Mt. Gox hack. They went through the block size war. They lost bitcoin on a paper wallet. With our allies, they help us navigate all of the scams, because our enemies would rather we spend five years longer trading crypto than going straight up the road to success. This is our tests, allies, and enemies stage.
When we get to the end of this phase, we start to approach a deep cave down this rabbit hole. This is where our minds start to get blown even more. Many of you here know this, but the normies don't. What happened in 1971? We used to actually have real money, and we were robbed. It was pulled from us. They took our car at the valet stand, and now we just have to be convinced that the valet tickets are valuable and that's all we need.
Of course, they can make as many more valet tickets as they want and give them to themselves first, while we have to work harder for them on appreciating assets. But okay, it's nothing to worry about. We're going to get some free stuff. They'll keep us compliant and happy in the short term.
This is why even in Hollywood, it's very tough to sell a movie. Your TV show doesn't always get picked up. Duck Dynasty went for 11 seasons for me, but I did 20 other shows where the pilots never went anywhere, so I had to find my side hustle. Thankfully, I was really, really good at real estate. At least I thought I was really good at real estate.
This makes you question everything you own in fiat land, and how much of a slave you are to everything you were using just to try to chase inflation. It opens your eyes to all the interdisciplinary aspects of Bitcoin. I didn't really care a lot about game theory or mathematics or philosophy, but I started to once I learned what Bitcoin was.
We are going deeper into that dangerous desert, as they did in Dune. We are Margot Robbie going deeper into the land of humans to see why this special world is so important to her. This is the approach to the inmost cave.
When we get to the end of this area of the cave, we reach our greatest ordeal. This is where we are really going to be tested and tried. Many people who come into Bitcoin leave and go back into crypto or go back to fiat because they can't survive stage eight. This is the big moment.
This is when James Franco in 127 Hours had to cut off his arm when he got stuck between two boulders hiking. This is when Tom Hanks in Cast Away had a failed rescue attempt, but the pain was that he lost his best friend, Wilson the volleyball. This is when Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant saw his son die. He was mauled by a bear, his leg was broken, his throat was cut, but he eventually won the Oscar.
For us, this is when a big crisis hits and our faith is gone. Many of us were here during the centralized finance scam of 2022. This was the big one for me. Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi. That's because in the traditional world we came from, we're taught to make money while you sleep. Put your money to work. Yield makes sense to us. But we learned that with actual Bitcoin, there isn't any yield, and that if you're getting yield, you are the yield.
Then we have to watch out for all these social engineering scams. We're getting texts and emails all day long. They want our passwords. They want our seed phrase. Then maybe a country cracks down, the Bitcoin miners migrate, and the hash rate plummets. Of course, it happens right before Thanksgiving. You go back to your family and you get those stares. It's not their fault. They're listening to people say, when it comes to Bitcoin, the computer nerd just flips a switch and the whole damn thing is gone.
We're going to forever sit in this ordeal stage until we allow the us that came here to die. We must allow our number-go-up self to die. It's not about the Lambo. It's about the revolution. This is what Satoshi wanted. Bitcoin isn't about getting rich. It's about getting free forever. Otherwise, we will continue to measure the world with a growing and broken denominator. If I asked all of you in here how many dollars there are around the world, you'd all give me a different number.
This is why we need to change and switch worlds and switch our measuring stick to Bitcoin. This is the moment when we have another deep look at ourselves and question who we were, maybe who we were married to, maybe who we were listening to, maybe what our career was. And we realize that a lot of it was fake. Until we can reconcile this with ourselves, we are not going to be able to exit the ordeal stage.
But on the other side of this stage is our reward, and our reward is knowledge and clarity. We learn that this whole time, Bitcoin wasn't about getting more money. Bitcoin is the money. Bitcoin is proof of money. That's the big idea.
We learn that with a private key, we can cross the bridge from tyranny to freedom, because all that exists in Bitcoin is a private key. We can't touch the bitcoin on the timechain. We know that. That's why self custody is so important. The big question for all of us is, do we want to be the self, or do we want someone else to be the self? To each their own.
But like Michael Saylor eloquently said, if you can remember 12 words, you become the money. That's because with Bitcoin, knowing is owning. If you can keep a secret, you can keep your bitcoin.
In Pulp Fiction, the reward was the briefcase. The entire movie, no one knew what was in the briefcase, but they were all chasing it. That's because the reward is different things to different people. In The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins' character escaped from prison and found his private paradise. That was his reward.
But that's not the end, because we have to take the road back. The 12 stages of the hero's journey aren't linear, they're circular. We do live in each space, so we have to go back to our friends and family. For Tim Robbins, his road back was telling his best friend in prison, here's the treasure map, come join me in paradise. That was his road back.
For us, we've got a bag of orange pills and we want to go back to our friends. But we have to be careful, because that same treacherous road is filled with scams, and our conviction is always going to be tested. Just like this guy who in 2011 got tired of holding his bitcoin at $14 a coin, so he sold it all. I don't think he's doing so well right now.
There's always new FUD. This just surfaced within the last year: Jeffrey Epstein is Satoshi, there's quantum risk, and now all these OGs sell. But we gain and grow a hardened orange shell, so we're able to teach and educate those around us.
This is when Barbie has now returned from the land of humans with her new knowledge to go back to Barbie Land. This is when Jason Bourne leaves the life of being a spy and goes back to the life of being a private citizen with his new skills. This is the road back.
As soon as we get to the end of this road, we are reborn. Just like Keanu Reeves was in The Matrix. He was killed by agents, but when he resurrected as the One, he could stop bullets. And just like Robert Downey Jr. with Jeff Bridges, the villain pulled out his arc reactor. He was reborn and declared, I am Iron Man.
For us Bitcoiners, this is a huge shift. But it's not just mental, it's physical. That's because we finally discovered real money. When you find real money, you suddenly want the rest of your life to be real. You want real goods, real health, a real career, a real future, and you want to get as close as you can to Bitcoin.
Many of us run a node. Many of us open up a Lightning channel. We start to lottery mine. We consolidate our UTXOs, or we learn the importance of coin control. Then we ask ourselves philosophically, is Bitcoin freedom money or is it a scarce database? Maybe it's both.
We learn that since Bitcoin is generational wealth and it's going to be here, if we want it to be here, we have to learn about multisignature wallets. We have to learn about time locking, locking our money forward in time. That's because Bitcoin is the only money ever in humanity to be mined in time. Since you can't print time, and you can't alter time, and you can't rug time, Bitcoin becomes the best money to represent your time, which is all money is. Bitcoin can honor your time, and it gives you confidence in a future. This is your rebirth.
Your rebirth leads to your final stage: the return with the elixir. This is where, as a Bitcoiner, you reach your full potential. I find it really interesting that many people here in Bitcoin were not educators before, but suddenly we all feel compelled to educate. It's because we want everyone to know what we know. We're ready. We have the fundamentals, we understand the properties, and we just want to tell everybody.
For me, I took two years off of Hollywood. I called my agents and said no to everything. I sat down and wrote a book, and I got lucky to get it on a bunch of shows. I wanted to start going on a lot of podcasts. I joined a bunch of other Bitcoiners, and we onboarded Santa Monica as the first city in the United States to form an official Bitcoin office. There was a little conference up in Portland I got to MC last year, and I'll do it again next month.
Because of this, and because you share so many values with the same people, it doesn't matter where they come from. You want to find your tribe. You want to find your people. We find out there's actually just a lot of guys, which is why when I come to conferences like this, I try to find my ladies. Why is it that all the ladies are so beautiful in Bitcoin? There's something about that, right?
We realize that we can be free. We realize that we can find our truth with Bitcoin, and we want to share that with everyone else. This is the final stage. Bitcoin ultimately captures our life force for us, and it represents the most important trade that we will ever make in our lives, and that's with our future self.
We learn that this whole time we've been a hero. It's just that fiat has been our Kryptonite. By going through the stages, we're able to shed the Kryptonite from us and reveal the hero within. This is what Satoshi ultimately wanted for us. This was the magical elixir that Satoshi gave us, so we should be responsible with it and not squander it.
Thank you very much.
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Sessions
The Bitcoin Hero's Journey
Terence Michael
Terence Michael
This led him to writing "Proof of Money: The Big Idea Behind Bitcoin" and joining The Bitcoin Adviser to onboard HNWIs into collaborative custody and inheritance setups.
He currently hosts the daily show, "Bitcoin Today," is a consultant to Horizon's Bitcoin home equity program, is a contributor to the Santa Monica Bitcoin Office, and enjoys making loud Bitcoin videos while inexplicably skating along the beach.
The Bitcoin Hero's Journey
Speakers/Moderators
Terence Michael
Terence Michael
This led him to writing "Proof of Money: The Big Idea Behind Bitcoin" and joining The Bitcoin Adviser to onboard HNWIs into collaborative custody and inheritance setups.
He currently hosts the daily show, "Bitcoin Today," is a consultant to Horizon's Bitcoin home equity program, is a contributor to the Santa Monica Bitcoin Office, and enjoys making loud Bitcoin videos while inexplicably skating along the beach.
Other
Speakers
Michael Saylor
Michael Saylor
Todd Blanche
Todd Blanche
Biography of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche
The Honorable Todd Blanche is the 40th Deputy Attorney General of the United States, overseeing the work of the 115,000 dedicated employees who fulfill the Department of Justice’s mission at Main Justice, the FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshals, ATF, and 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices.
Todd began his career at the Department where he served for over fifteen years in a variety of capacities, including as a contractor, a paralegal in the Criminal Division, and at the United States Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York where he eventually became an AUSA and later a supervisor.
After leaving the Department, Todd worked as a criminal defense attorney that included representing President Donald Trump in three of the criminal cases brought against him in 2023 and 2024.
Following President Trump’s historic return to the White House, the President appointed Todd to work alongside Attorney General Pam Bondi to make America safe again. At the DOJ, Todd is working tirelessly to implement President Trump’s priorities that include confronting illegal protecting American businesses from fraud.
Todd has been married to his wonderful wife Kristine for nearly thirty years, is a father and grandfather.
Paul Atkins
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Prior to returning to the SEC, Chairman Atkins was most recently chief executive of Patomak Global Partners, a company he founded in 2009. Chairman Atkins helped lead efforts to develop best practices for the digital asset sector. He served as an independent director and non-executive chairman of the board of BATS Global Markets, Inc. from 2012 to 2015.
Chairman Atkins was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as a Commissioner of the SEC from 2002 to 2008. During his tenure, he advocated for transparency, consistency, and the use of cost-benefit analysis at the agency. Chairman Atkins also represented the SEC at meetings of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets and the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Economic Council. From 2009 to 2010, he was appointed a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Before serving as an SEC Commissioner, Chairman Atkins was a consultant on securities and investment management industry matters, especially regarding issues of strategy, regulatory compliance, risk management, new product development, and organizational control.
From 1990 to 1994, Chairman Atkins served on the staff of two chairmen of the SEC, Richard C. Breeden and Arthur Levitt, ultimately as chief of staff and counselor, respectively. He received the SEC’s 1992 Law and Policy Award for work regarding corporate governance matters.
Chairman Atkins began his career as a lawyer in New York, focusing on a wide range of corporate transactions for U.S. and foreign clients, including public and private securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions. He was resident for 2½ years in his firm's Paris office and admitted as conseil juridique in France.
A member of the New York and Florida bars, Chairman Atkins received his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1983 and was Senior Student Writing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Wofford College in 1980.
Originally from Lillington, North Carolina, Chairman Atkins grew up in Tampa, Florida. He and his wife Sarah have three sons.
Mike Selig
Mike Selig
Chairman Selig brings to the role deep public and private sector experience working with a wide range of stakeholders across agriculture, energy, financial, and digital asset industries, which rely upon and operate in CFTC-regulated markets.
Prior to his leadership at the CFTC, Chairman Selig most recently served as chief counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force and senior advisor to SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins. In this role, Chairman Selig helped to develop a clear regulatory framework for digital asset securities markets, harmonize the SEC and CFTC regulatory regimes, modernize the agency’s rules to reflect new and emerging technologies, and put an end to regulation by enforcement. He also participated in the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets and contributed to its report on “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology.”
Prior to government service, Chairman Selig was a partner at an international law firm, focusing on derivatives and securities regulatory matters. During his years in private practice, he represented a broad range of clients subject to regulation by the CFTC, including commercial end users, futures commission merchants, commodity trading advisors, swap dealers, designated contract markets, derivatives clearing organizations, and digital asset firms. Chairman Selig advised clients on compliance with the Commodity Exchange Act and the CFTC’s rules and regulations thereunder, including in connection with registration applications and obligations, enforcement matters, and complex transactions.
Chairman Selig earned his law degree from The George Washington University Law School and was articles editor of The George Washington Law Review. He received his undergraduate degree from Florida State University.
David Bailey
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Eric Trump
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Mr. Trump also serves as Executive Vice President of The Trump Organization, where he oversees the global management and operations of the Trump family’s extensive real estate portfolio. This includes Trump Hotels, Trump Golf, commercial and residential real estate, Trump Estates, and Trump Winery. Known for his hands-on leadership and strong market instincts, he has played a key role in expanding the company’s presence across major U.S. and international markets.
A globally recognized business leader and public figure, Mr. Trump is a prominent advocate for Bitcoin and decentralized finance. He is a co-founder of World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, and serves on the Board of Advisors of Metaplanet, Japan’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin.
Beyond his business activities, Mr. Trump has helped raise more than $50 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the fight against pediatric cancer, a philanthropic mission he began at age 21.
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Jack Mallers
Jack Mallers
Cynthia Lummis
Cynthia Lummis
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Adam Back
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Amy Oldenburg
Amy Oldenburg
David Marcus
David Marcus
Matt Schultz
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Fred Thiel
Fred Thiel
Throughout his career, Mr. Thiel has consistently driven rapid growth and created substantial shareholder value. Prior to MARA, Mr. Thiel served as the CEO of two other public companies, Local Corporation (NASDAQ: LOCM) and Lantronix, Inc (NASDAQ: LTRX). He has successfully raised billions in equity and debt through private and public offerings, led companies through IPOs, executed high-value exits to strategic and financial acquirers, and implemented effective M&A and roll-up strategies.
Mr. Thiel attended the Stockholm School of Economics and executive classes at Harvard Business School, and is fluent in English, Spanish, Swedish, and French. Mr. Thiel is the Chairman of the Board for Oden Technology, Inc. and is active in Young Presidents’ Organization where he has led initiatives in both the FinTech and Technology Networks.
A recognized voice in the industry, Fred frequently shares his insights on energy and technology with major media outlets like Bloomberg TV, CNBC, and FOX Business, contributing to vital discussions about the future of these sectors.
Tim Draper
Tim Draper
He is a supporter and global thought leader for entrepreneurs everywhere, and is a leading spokesperson for Bitcoin and decentralization, having won the Bitcoin US Marshall’s auction in 2014, invested in over 50 crypto companies, and led investments in Coinbase, Ledger, Tezos, and Bancor, among others.
Afroman
Afroman
