How to Get Rich (by being smart)
A foolproof formula.
Getting rich means you are entering the wealth creation business.
Creating wealth is accomplished through three ways:
Leverage
Asymmetry
Time
Leverage:
If you are working for a fixed hourly wage, you have no leverage, because you have a direct 1:1 ratio between how much time you work and how much you earn, no matter how much value you provide. Make money while you sleep and you have accessed leverage.
Asymmetry:
Asymmetry is the factor that defines great wealth creation opportunities.
Asymmetry is “Heads you win, tails you don’t lose much.”
If I have a coin flip, and heads earns me $100 and tails loses me $5, I would flip that coin an infinite number of times because the upside is much more significant than the downside. Heads I win, tails I don’t lose much.
A good example of an asymmetric bet is the buying and reading of a $20 business book. The risk of capital is quite low, however the book may provide you with information that goes on to make you thousands if not millions of dollars.
Time:
There are no get rich quick schemes. That is simply someone else getting rich off you.
True wealth is created with time and patience, the two most powerful warriors.
Let’s create wealth from Ground Zero. You are dead broke, no money in your bank account, with little to no hope for getting rich.
The first order of business is to find some consistent, stable method of generating income. You have to build a foundation. You have to get off zero. At this stage, it does not matter what field you are working in, money coming in is what matters.
This will almost certainly include renting out your time in a direct 1:1 time:income fashion. That’s fine. Rome is not being built in one day.
Now that you have some money, the next order of business is to cut down expenses as much as possible. Sleep on a couch, eat cheap food, completely avoid material and luxury purchases. If your focus is on creating wealth, you must have disposable income (money left over after expenses). If you earn more income, fine, you may choose to spend more money (that’s likely not in your wealth’s best interest), but money left over is absolutely essential.
With disposable income, you now have access to the first form of leverage: capital.
Whether it’s your own or somebody else’s, capital grants you the ability to source and create wealth through other leveraged, asymmetric opportunities.
During this entire phase, and throughout the rest of your wealth creation endeavor, you should be spending as much time as possible leveraging the infinite library of information: the internet.
The internet is where you will find knowledge, wisdom, and expertise on how to develop yourself and your database of intellect so that you can grow past and move on from your 1:1 base reality and mindset.
This is when you start building on top of the foundation.
Before we discuss what to do with your disposable capital, how do you approach the internet?
Chase your curiosities. Only you know what those are. Self-development is one of them, or else you wouldn’t be reading this, so carry on with that as a foundational pursuit. Self-development pours over into every aspect of your life. Developing your mind, body, and spirit is what enables you to continuously grow despite what may be happening externally. It enables you to weather inevitable storms and obstacles. It opens yourself to new possibilities and opportunities. If you are to build the above ground stories of your wealth creation enterprise, you must grow with it. It would be highly difficult to construct the 98th story of a building with only the plans and instructions of a foundation. The foundation is the foundation. From there, you keep stacking, you keep iterating, you find kinks in the armor and fix them, all the while, you keep growing. Self-development is the building up of the self so that you can build up everything around you.
Internally discuss what you are curious about, pursue those curiosities, internally and externally discuss the real world applications of those curiosities, and then apply those curiosities in the real world. This is called learning.
Figure out what you are interested in learning, learn about those interests, discuss how you might implement those learnings, and then implement those learnings. Rinse, repeat.
This is all done in your free time (and maybe some time on the job). The more you learn, the more you iterate, the faster you grow, the higher your wealth creation business soars.
You will find along the way something pops up by way of an intersection between what you’re curious about and a method of making money. Pursue, learn, iterate, grow, find out.
When evaluating potential avenues of making money outside of your 1:1 job, focus on infinite games, aka games without an end. Finite games have an end, in which you are then thrust into finding a new game, new players, and starting from the beginning. Chess is an example of a finite game. You play to win. When it’s over, you must move the pieces back to their original position and start over.
Infinite games are played to keep the game going. You play to play. The game keeps stacking on itself. The game itself is what you are after, not a win or a desired outcome. Infinite games are inherently limitless, which is the ultimate payout asymmetrically.
The most ideal, in terms of pure wealth creation, game to play runs along the line of the phrase, “Code it once, sell it forever.” But everyone’s game, in terms of maximized life enjoyment and fulfillment, is different.
You can play whatever game you like and still create mass amounts of wealth by leveraging your disposable capital efficiently.
Adopt the mindset that you are choosing to “save” your disposable money in something. Be it Apple stock, U.S. Dollars, gold, real estate, baseball cards, whatever it is, you are choosing to save your money in that thing.
Another way of looking at it is selecting the vehicle you would like to drive your wealth. If you choose U.S. Dollars, or any other fiat/political currency, you are choosing a vehicle that is annually losing gas, breaking down, and practically never refilling. The U.S. Dollar gets devalued every year. There has to be a better vehicle. There are better vehicles.
Stocks may be a fast car, but how long can they race? Has any company in the history of time ever lasted for all of time? With stock in any company, you are facing counterparty risk. What if Apple gets caught in a surveillance scandal, what if the CEO makes a poor business decision, what if a new company comes out with a device that blows Apple out of the water? You’ll have to start from the beginning.
Government bonds are often chosen, but has any government lasted for all of time? Additionally, the bond will always be paid out in the issuing government’s currency, which, as we know in our current fiat system, is guaranteed to lose value every year via inflation.
Gold has been a historically sufficient store of value, but it is physically cumbersome. What if you want to move across the planet? You will have to find a way to transport your gold. Someone can come and rob your gold off you at any time.
Real estate has grown in use as a store of value, but do you really own the real estate? Don’t pay your property taxes and you will find out. What happens if a fire burns down the building? Hurricanes? What happens if the area the building is in suddenly becomes rife with crime? What if you want to move across the planet, can you take your building with you?
What if instead of choosing a car to drive your wealth, you could choose a supersonic fighter jet?
What if you could choose something that is unbound by physical burdens and instead digitally secured by the largest computing network Earth has ever seen?
Understanding that scarcity is the greatest driver of perceived value, what if you could choose something that is the only verifiably, absolutely scarce asset in the universe?
What if you could choose something that has been the best performing asset in the world since its inception? Wouldn’t you want the best driver for your wealth? Would you rather have the second best? Third? Fourth? No, you’d rather have the best asset.
What is that asset?
Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is that asset.
Here is how all assets have done in Bitcoin terms since Bitcoin was created in 2009: https://x.com/Cole_Walmsley/status/1741933237440504011?s=20
They have all trended toward zero. They have all watched themselves falter as Bitcoin zooms past them in the infinite game of wealth creation and propagation. There has been no better vehicle to drive your wealth than Bitcoin over the last 14 years and it will continue to be the best vehicle to drive your wealth, because it is designed to do so.
Bitcoin is savings technology. It was engineered to be removed from physical or counterparty risk. It was designed so that nobody could inflate and devalue the supply, unlike all fiat currencies. It obsoletes all other stores of value. Here is my Twitter post on the subject: https://x.com/Cole_Walmsley/status/1642908928353738752?s=20
Bitcoin is the ultimate form of leverage and the ultimate asymmetrical bet. Buy it once, create wealth forever. Prosperity all around the world is infinite, but there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. We can mine more gold, we can create new shares of stock, we can build more houses, but we can’t make new bitcoins past that 21 million number. More in-depth commentary on asymmetry and how Bitcoin is the ultimate asymmetrical bet can be found in one of my previous posts:
There has never been an easier way to get rich.
Find disposable income, stack Bitcoin, rinse, repeat, wait.
Leverage: capital
Asymmetry: Bitcoin (infinite)
Time: wait and watch
Bitcoin is going up forever in value. https://x.com/Cole_Walmsley/status/1742081273005256923?s=20
Bitcoin is the way to get rich. Which opens you up to play whatever game you want to play. This is the case for all of humanity.
Life isn’t about getting rich. Life is about maximal enjoyment, discovery, exploration, fulfillment, and expression. That is the true measure of wealth. Bitcoin makes everybody rich, which means everybody can turn their focus to maximal enjoyment, discovery, exploration, fulfillment, and expression. All of humanity will be wealthy beyond their wildest imaginations, all because of Bitcoin.
Get rich, rather, get wealthy (by being smart). Buy Bitcoin.