The Loneliness of Knowing
It started last Wednesday at lunch. The break room light buzzed the way old lights do. Someone had left a pink box of day-old donuts open on the microwave. I was nursing a coffee that tasted like cardboard and heat. My girlfriend was across from me, scrolling quietly. Two coworkers sat to my left arguing about gas prices and the election like it was the weather.
On the TV in the corner, muted closed captions crawled: STOCKS MIXED. BITCOIN SLIDES.
“See?” Marcus said, tearing a chocolate sprinkle in half. “It’s crashing again. Should’ve bought at twenty grand, sold at a hundred, called it a day.”
“Bro, it’s all pretend money anyway,” Deon added. “Screens and vibes.”
I felt the heat in my face before I said a word. That quiet distance slid in, the one that makes the room feel like a fish tank and me on the other side of the glass.
I should have let it pass. I didn’t.
“It isn’t pretend,” I said. “It’s a network that settles value with no permission. The supply halves every four years. You can verify it yourself.”
Marcus smirked. “Halves? So it loses value every four years?”
I laughed, and it came out wrong. “No. The issuance halves. The number of new coins—look, imagine gold that tells the truth about how much gold there is.”
Deon tilted his head. “Can I buy lunch with it?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But that isn’t the point.”
“The point of money is buying lunch,” he said, and everyone laughed. It wasn’t mean. It still landed.
I heard myself keep talking anyway. Hash rate. Nodes. Time preference. I watched their eyes glaze like the donuts. My girlfriend’s foot found my shin under the table. Not a kick. A reminder.
“Okay,” I said, backing out of a sentence midair. “I’m doing it again.”
“What’s ‘again’?” Marcus asked.
“Trying to give you a map when you didn’t ask where you were going,” I said. “My bad.”
The room softened. Marcus shrugged. “Nah, it’s cool. I just don’t get how numbers on a phone are real.”
I took a breath. “Fair. I didn’t either. For a long time.”
We ate in a quieter way after that. The TV kept crawling. My coffee cooled. I stared at the donut box and thought about how much easier it is to explain a system than it is to sit with the fact that most people don’t want a new one. Not until the old one hurts too much.
When lunch ended, I held the door for Deon. He said, “If it ever buys lunch, you can show me.”
“I will,” I said. “And I’ll pay.”
The Day It Clicked
I was not born knowing any of this. I used to roll my eyes at Bitcoin. I called it a scam to people who knew better and were kind to me anyway.
There was not one lightbulb moment. It was a slow leak in the roof. I kept a bucket under it and told myself it was fine. Then one night the ceiling gave. Charts, whitepapers, late videos from people who spoke in full sentences about money and time. I realized inflation was not a glitch. Debt was not an accident. The machine was working as designed, and it was working on me.
Bitcoin was not an asset to chase. It was a doorway I could walk through. Not away from reality, but into it.
The Mistake I Keep Making
I still forget that understanding cannot be transferred like a file. I still reach for the lecture when a question would do. I still think I can carry someone the whole way across the bridge instead of meeting them in the middle.
At lunch, I wanted them to see what I see. The halving schedule like a metronome. The way ten minutes can be a heartbeat. The calm you learn when you stop negotiating with your future self.
What came out was jargon with a pulse.
If I could redo that hour, I would have said less and asked more.
“Have you ever had your card fail at the register?”
“Who decides how much your money is worth?”
“What do you wish money did that it does not do?”
And then I would have shut up.
The Dialogue That Stayed
After the shift, I texted Marcus a screenshot of a small purchase I made with Lightning. A burger. “Lunch,” I wrote. “It works.”
He replied with a laughing emoji. Then: “Okay teacher. Maybe explain it to me sometime without math.”
I typed three long replies and deleted all of them. Then I sent: “Deal. No math. Just how to hold your own keys.”
He sent a thumbs up. No confetti. No conversion. Just a door left unlocked.
The Part That Hurts
What bothers me is not that people do not know. It is how little space the world gives them to find out. The timeline is a slot machine. The news is a panic room. Paychecks arrive thinner and smaller. People do not have time to learn how money works because money is the thing taking their time.
So they repeat what sounds safe.
“Screens and vibes.”
“Should’ve bought at twenty.”
“It’s crashing again.”
I used to hear lines like that and armor up. I wanted to fix the thought. Now I try to sit with the person who is carrying it. I remember that I once did not know. I remember who sat with me anyway.
What I Can Live Instead of Say
I can pay in sats when I can and let people see it. I can help one friend set up a wallet and let them hold their own keys. I can stop arguing about price and talk about time, and how it feels to lower the volume in your head. I can be patient in rooms that reward speed.
Mostly, I can stop trying to be right and try to be useful.
The Quiet After
That night in the hotel, I lay on my back and stared at the speckled ceiling. The air unit cut on and off. My girlfriend turned toward the window and said into the dark, “You did better.”
“I still talked too much,” I said.
“You stopped,” she said. “That’s new.”
I laughed and felt my face cool. I checked the price out of habit and closed the app on purpose. I opened Notes instead and wrote down the questions I wish I had asked.
I fell asleep thinking about lunch, and the way the room softened when I said, “My bad.” Not because I surrendered the point, but because I stopped trying to win it. There is a difference.
What I Know Today
Conviction is not a speech. It is a way you move.
Some days it looks like letting a joke land and saving your breath. Some days it looks like paying for a burger with your phone because your friend asked if it was real. Most days it looks like doing the boring things well and letting your balance sheet tell your story in five years.
I still feel the loneliness. I also feel less need to escape it. The room is the same room. I am a different person in it.
That is enough for today.
And if tomorrow someone asks a real question, I will be ready with fewer words and a better invite: “Let me show you, and then it is yours.”
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