Operation Saylor - Episode 7/120

Hi again and welcome to another episode of the Operation Saylor. This is update number 7, corresponding to January 2023.

If you are reading this for first time, you might want to check Episode 1, where my plan and details are explained. That will get you in context.

Happy new year! With this episode, we leave behind 2022 and start 2023.

2023 has started with a sweet surprise in the form of the recent greens. Completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, but watching the blue line in the stack value chart go up for the first time is a new experience that doesn't feel that bad, to be honest.

With that being said, let's ignore price action and focus on the important stuff. This month has been a slow one without much activity in Operation Saylor. The only event has been the regular monthly installment being paid. The current € stack is getting small and it will only be enough to cover the February and March installments, so in April I'll have to shave a bit of the BTC stack to face the installment. After half a year of waiting with a certain childish excitement the monthly buys of this Operation, having gone through a month without doing that feels odd. And having to sell some bitcoin for dirty fiat will surely be bitter. But, that's life when you don't have a money printer at home, innit?

Leaving Operation Saylor on the side for a bit, I wonder how 2023 will look for the Bitcoin scene and adoption in general. Personally, I'm hopeful and think that the future is bright. That doesn't mean we couldn't get a bad year, because life is volatile and unpredictable. But the general trend we are marching on looks great to me. Just like the 4 year moving average of bitcoin's price always goes up, I like to think that a similar metric for adoption and progress, if it would exist, would also always trending upwards. Perhaps exponentially.

2022 was the first year in which I spent the entire year trying to be on the verge of what was being built in bitcoin. I've been running my own Lightning node and a lot of other self-hosted services since January 2022. I had the chance to play around with many different hardware wallets. And I've been following closely on other wonderful things being built such as LNbits, cashu and lately, nostr.

It's also been the year where small communities have been popping up all over the world. Besides El Salvador, we now have the Bitcoin Island in Philippines, Bitcoin Ekasi in South Africa, and Bitcoin Lake in Guatemala. It has also been the year where I've seen my city become active in terms of meetups, and I have had the pleasure of being in touch with many fellow maximalists and newbies alike in them, for which I'm tremendously grateful. On an country level, I also have the feeling that more and more meetups and online groups are appearing. I also see many people in my inner circle become more knowledgable and involved in Bitcoin, and a grin shines in my face when I'm sitting in a table with them and think to myself stuff like: "Oh look, half of the people in this lunch are DCA-ing and hodling."

With all of this technical and human engine steaming hot, I can't picture anything but success in 2023. I can see a year full of paying stuff with lightning with my close ones. Some people in my community are also thinking about accepting bitcoin payments in their small, street businesses (I'm hoping to help them with my LNBits instance). In 2022, I planted orange seeds in many friends and relatives, and I hope this will be the year when those seeds bloom and we see more bitcoiners joining our ranks. Hopefully, 2023 will also be another year of hard stacking. I've always been frugal in nature, but bitcoin has upped that a notch, and I'm happy about that.

Outside of Bitcoin, I hope to keep practicing the same low-time preference that I did in 2022. Last year I quit drinking alcohol and smoking completely. I've also been consistent with my exercise and have improved my weight. Overall, I feel much better and I look forward to keep the trend upwards only. I'm in such a great spot that I even find myself pondering about having children, something I always thought was not for me. The old saying "You don't change Bitcoin, Bitcoin changes you" might be true after all.

This is getting long. Let's call it a day. Here is to a great, orange 2023 with plenty of success and progress. Let's all do our part so that, on January 2024, we can look back on another great year for Bitcoin and for everybody. And, as always, see you around next month.