The Bitcoin Layer
I Woke Up Homeless With $75 When the Banks Took Everything | with Tony Yazbek
- Self-custody as fundamental: Bitcoin's core value is personal ownership and sovereignty; anything wrapped in legacy finance (ETFs, exchange balances) is not true Bitcoin ownership.
- Lebanon 2019 collapse: Tony Yazbek woke homeless with ~$75 after banks confiscated all savings overnight, catalyzing his Bitcoin conviction and The Bitcoin Way mission.
- Bitcoin as money, not investment: Treating Bitcoin as an investment denominated in dollars creates emotional volatility and poor decisions; framing it as a currency eliminates this distraction.
- Volatility is a measurement illusion: "Volatility" reflects dollar weakness, not Bitcoin instability—just as you don't track peso or rupee exchange rates against the dollar daily, Bitcoin's dollar price should be irrelevant to holders.
- Hardware and air-gap storage: The Bitcoin Way curates open-source, Bitcoin-only hardware wallets that never connect to a computer, eliminating most cybersecurity attack vectors.
- Education and jurisdictional sovereignty: True individual sovereignty requires protecting money (self-custody), privacy online, and optionally jurisdictional options; The Bitcoin Way teaches the complete circle.