Thousands of Bitcoiners in Miami at the BItcoin 2021 ConfereceThe Things Money Can’t BuyLet’s talk about things that money can’t buy.Money can’t buy honesty. In fact, people who are trying to persuade you to give them your money are often not being entirely truthful with you.Money can’t buy friendship. You can’t walk into a store or a bar and buy a friend — someone who shares your values, who respects you, who you respect. And for the same reasons it can’t buy you love, which is an especially deep form of friendship.Most of all, money can’t buy you things that are within yourself: it can’t buy you self-esteem, intelligence, courage or integrity to list a few. Give an insecure person a pile of money and they will squander it either in showing off to others or in self-destructive pursuits. Give money to an intellectually lazy person and they will not become any smarter. Give a coward money and he will only have one more thing to be afraid of: losing that money. And give a cheater money and he will try to use it to hatch some dishonest scheme by which to get more.The Things Money Can BuyMoney will buy you a nice outfit, a great haircut, a fancy car and a beautiful house, but happiness itself will remain out of reach without genuine friends and lovers, who you can trust and without being able to love and respect yourself.Money does not in fact buy happiness. Not on its own. It’s not sufficient.Why do we work so hard for money then? Why do some people measure their worth in dollars?It is true that we do need many of the things that money can buy, like food, shelter, clothing and even entertainment that makes us a little happier.Money can be an enabler. It can be used to purchase things that satisfy basic survival needs and thereby afford us the time to pursue these other values which money itself cannot buy.However, it is still very mistaken to measure our worth using any single number, let alone a number that we know omits friendship, love, self-esteem, intelligence, courage, integrity and many other virtues and values we should exhibit and pursue.What’s This Got to Do With Bitcoin?Now let us take a minute to look at the community of bitcoiners. Bitcoiners believe in a new form of money, bitcoin.We go to great lengths to explain why we believe it is the best form of money that has ever existed and is ever likely to exist.To be able to do that explaining we must first go to great lengths to understand what money is and how Bitcoin meets the requirements of being money.To do that we have to take a very honest look at history and at the present. We must explore what many people take for granted. We must ask hard questions and look for honest, defensible answers.We must learn about the math which bitcoin relies upon.We need to learn about energy production which Bitcoin relies upon.We learn about economics, which is the study of how people interact with those things that money can buy.We develop deep conviction, informed by all this learning and from our observations and reasoning about what is happening around us.We form views about where the world is headed.We conclude that a world with Bitcoin as its money, or even just as the money used by we who choose Bitcoin, is a better world.We conclude it is a better world because it is honest and transparent. It is a world without secrets, schemes and deceptions about what money is.It is a world without powerful people who exercise control of the system of money to control the weak.We then find a moral mission in Bitcoin.We take on the responsibility of spreading the knowledge.It requires courage to do this. We must put our money where our mouth is by buying bitcoin with our dollars. This is an act of risk-taking, or courage. It is an act of integrity — aligning our words with our actions.We must remain steadfast. We are laughed at. Powerful people and institutions mock us and try to discredit us. They label us as enablers of criminals and terrorists. We either fortify our courage and conviction or leave Bitcoin.Those of us who stay know that our fellow bitcoiners, who have been or are going through the same tribulations as we did are honest, intelligent and courageous.We respect each other. We become friends.We each contribute what we can, how we can. We build the world we envision.We do all this unwaveringly while millions stand on the sidelines, some watching with curiosity, some mocking us and some actively attacking and trying to stop us. Occasionally one runs over and says “I want to be like you!” And we welcome them with open arms.Becoming a Bitcoiner is a Process Through Which You Obtain Things Money Cannot Buy.Take a look. Money can’t buy honesty. It can’t buy friendship. It can’t buy self-esteem, courage, intelligence or integrity either. Yet Bitcoiners with their ideas, their ideals, efforts and their achievements have acquired all these things. Bitcoiners are honest. They have authentic friendships. They believe in themselves. They are brave. They are smart. And they possess an integrity that puts all of these things ahead of any wealth measured in a monetary value.No bitcoiner judges another on the basis of how much bitcoin that other person is worth. It’s a faux pas in the community to even enquire about that.I love my fellow bitcoiners. They are the best people on earth. Some may be financially rich, some not. But they are all worth much more than money to me. Bitcoin has given us all an abundance of the things that money can’t buy.