By chance, I picked out Atlas Shrugged off a bottom shelf on a Barnes and Noble trip. I had no idea what it was or that it was controversial. I just liked the cover art and the blurb.

At the time, I was living in motel room behind a Mexican restaurant in Los Banos, Ca, carless, bankless, and living paycheck to paycheck as a grocery clerk. I kept the copy in my apron and read it on my breaks.

It flipped my worldview upside down. Atlas Shrugged made it clear that I was choosing to be a victim and could, instead, choose to be a hero (or at least stop being a victim). I went pretty deep on objectivism, then anarchism and Rothbard and Mises.

At some point I decided to go to college (skipping some steps here ... I didn't graduate from high school), thinking I was going to do pre-med, but took an intro computer course and got hooked. I graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2012.

Being in CS, I occasionally saw Bitcoin mentioned on HN, but didn't make the hard money link. I'd also developed a healthy distance from politics and philosophy as I went through college, further preventing me from seeing Bitcoin's significance.

I bought my first Satoshis in 2014 to buy LSD on the Dark Net, and continued to buy small amounts of Bitcoin for similar purposes, still not having my Bitcoin epiphany.

Fast-forwarding a bit more, I was spending a lot of time on high-fat, low-carb Twitter in 2016/17 (I've always struggled with my weight) and eventually ran into Michael Goldstein, Pierre Rochard, Saifedean Ammous, and Jimmy Song. The dots finally connected between sound money and Bitcoin. I was hooked.

I moved to Austin 18 months ago and quickly dedicated the rest of my career to Bitcoin after attending a few Bit Devs.

Started from Los Banos now we here.