What psychedelics and Bitcoin have in common
In short: Both stand for freedom
Last week, atai Life Sciences (Nasdaq: ATAI), the psychedelics-focused mental health company that I co-founded, announced the addition of Bitcoin to its treasury strategy.
Beyond the financial rationale, which I outlined in my blog post on occasion of this news, I believe there is a deeper, more fundamental connection between psychedelics and Bitcoin.
In short: Both stand for freedom.
Bitcoin: Freedom from intrusive governments
The case for Bitcoin becomes a more widely understood truth every single day because of a very simple reality that people are waking up to: Owners of fiat cash have been taken hostage by governments for millennia.
Nearly every currency that has ever existed has ended up going down in flames at some point and literally becoming nothing more than worthless paper.
And the very few which have endured a longer period of time, like the (not so) Great British Pound and the USD, have been devalued excessively. The US dollar, for example, has by some estimates lost over 96% of its value since 1913 when the Federal Reserve took it over.
Given that individual salaries as well as corporate earnings are usually taxed right at the moment the money is made, further “silent taxation” via currency devaluation on post tax wealth effectively negates much of the fruit of one’s labor. In my view, this is nothing more than condemning people to slavery. It might feel better than what we conventionally understand by that term, but it comes very close.
Throughout time, people have tried to escape this economic erosion by buying land, real estate, gold, and many other stores of values. But even those stores of value, that have withstood the test of time, have often been subject to significant taxation and/or even outright confiscation from repressive governments at some point.
In my view, Bitcoin fundamentally changes this: For the first time in history, we have a globally accepted store of value, based on a finite supply of 21 million coins, ensuring scarcity and protecting against inflation; its decentralized structure makes it immune to government intervention and monetary mismanagement by politicians; and an immutable ledger provides transparency and security in an era of increasing financial distrust. Finally, it can be stored personally without need for a physical or even digital representation, making it protected from confiscation.
Bitcoin: Freedom from legacy financial institutions
Outside of governments, there are other predatory parties that have systematically repressed people for the better part of the past millennia, notably in the banking sector. For most in the developed world, this doesn’t immediately seem like a problem, but for most people in frontier and emerging markets, this remains one of the biggest proponents of poverty. Take the example of international payments, sending money globally from loved ones in the West to other parts of the world. The average transaction cost is arguably usurious, reaching well above 10% for simple transfers that are also subject to solvency and confiscation risks. Bitcoin unshackles us from these constraints and provides an instant way to transfer money and wealth from A to B.
Psychedelics: Freedom from your own ego
But as the saying goes, money is not everything. While financial freedom does matter, it is surely not the only factor, nor the most important one contributing to happiness in my opinion.
Philosophers have contemplated where true happiness really comes from for thousands of years. One fairly common answer throughout many philosophical and spiritual teachings is that true happiness lies in another form of freedom: freedom from your own ego.
As Osho said: “I is a great prison. It is your slavery and bondage to the mind. The moment you enter beyond the mind, you are - but you don`t have any notion of being an ego, of being an I. In other words: the more you think you are, the less you are; the more you experience that you are not... the more you are.”
But how can we manage, control and calm our egos? One answer is psychedelic therapy.
A psychedelic experience can mute or dissolve the ego, a phenomenon that is associated with marked alterations in activity across brain networks, particularly the ‘default mode network’, the part of your brain which creates your feeling of self. But instead of your brain being ‘empty’ once your ego has been muted, people during a psychedelic therapy session often realize that there is a much deeper sense of self – often referred with spiritual or religious terms like ‘soul’ or ‘god’. This part of you is always there, and is potentially a better guide than your loud, anxious and self-centered ego. And in that moment, when your ego is silenced and this other part of you can be heard, that’s when healing happens.
“The ego thrives on fear - it whispers of danger, of rejection, of failure.
But the soul speaks only one language: love.
And when you listen, when you follow the pull of love instead of the push of fear, you will recognize that your deepest self has always known the way.”
— Michael A. Singer
Apeiron’s mission
Most of my life’s work and Apeiron Investment Group’s investments are centered around a core mission to make the world a happier, healthier, and freer one.
With the work we do in longevity science, for example with Cambrian Bio and Centenara Labs, we ultimately aim to free humanity from the scourge of aging.
With our work in Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI) technology done by our portfolio company Blackrock Neurotech, proudly co-owned with Tether, we believe we will one day leave behind the constraints of our human body entirely, and will be free to explore the endless possibilities in our minds.
Last year at Token 2049 in Singapore, I had the pleasure of discussing the entire range of our investment strategy and our focus on ‘freedom’ with Zaheer Ebtikar from Split Capital, check it out:
Zaheer and I will be on stage again at Token 2049 in Dubai at the end of April.
Paramount to everything, I deeply believe we will enrich the entire world if we succeed in bringing psychedelics back into the medical, regulatorily approved realm. This is why I founded atai Life Sciences, into which I have placed my full confidence; I strongly believe in the potential of atai and am personally convinced that it will create value for patients and shareholders alike.
“Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.”
– Terence McKenna