Interview: Zac Watson On Bitcoin’s Self Sovereignty
Zac Watson joined “Meet The Taco Plebs” to discuss Bitcoin’s impact on his life and freedom characteristics.
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In this episode of Bitcoin Magazine’s “Meet The Taco Plebs,” I sat down with the pleb Zac Watson (@zwatson on Twitter), to discuss his Bitcoin rabbit hole story, his thoughts on Bitcoin’s impact on life and his future price predictions.
Watson went into detail about his friends introducing him to Bitcoin in 2013 and the passion they had for Bitcoin sparking an interest in Bitcoin for himself. We discussed Bitcoin 2021 and all of the great experiences we had throughout the weekend.
To finish, we touched on what he believes to be the most amazing part of bitcoin: most importantly, the fact that Bitcoin allows people to alleviate themselves from government oppression to become self sovereign. And we also detailed how welcoming the Bitcoin community is.
Below are some more insights from Watson about his bitcoin journey.
What’s your Bitcoin rabbit hole story?
My rabbit hole story isn’t anything too exciting or extravagant.
I first heard about Bitcoin when I was back in high school around 2012 or 2013. A friend had mentioned wanting to get some of it, but I didn’t give it much thought besides “hmm, that’s interesting.”
Fast forward a few years later to 2016 to when I circled back to it: I had a few friends that were pretty into it and were quite tech-savvy and liberty-minded. These guys were pretty smart and I respected them quite a bit. They always seemed to be very forward-thinking, so I thought I should probably start paying attention and learn about this magic internet money. A little later in the year, some of us went to this music festival, Electric Forest, and my friend Brad had this massive flag pole with a planet earth flag and a Bitcoin flag. Seeing him enthusiastically and vigorously wave it around all weekend really planted a seed and helped orange pill me.
One of my takeaways from that trip was to start getting some of this bitcoin. I heard there was this halving coming up too, which apparently was bullish for price, so I bought some at the halving and have been stacking and HODLing ever since.
During 2017, I did fall for some of the shitcoin marketing and traditional “gotta diversify” talk and ended up dabbling in some of the shitcoins during that alt season. I stopped buying them in 2018 though and eventually ended up trading them for more bitcoin after I had gone deeper down the rabbit hole and had become more and more orange pilled. “The Bitcoin Standard” definitely helped quite a bit. Now I’m just a tunnel-visioned sat fiend doing my best to stay humble and stack as many sats as I can.
How has Bitcoin changed your life?
Bitcoin has really helped change my perspective on basically everything. It has lowered my time preference to focus on the big picture, encouraged me to show up every day as the best version of myself that I can be, has given me a whole new sense of clarity like never before and just overall given me immense hope for the future of this world and humanity.
It is very exciting to be going through this paradigm shift and entering this new age renaissance of abundance and prosperity. It has helped me find some peace and certainty in this current state of chaos and uncertainty that the world seems to be in. Overall, it has helped me refocus on what’s most important to me in life and reconnect with my principles and values. I have a whole new sense of motivation and inspiration since falling down the rabbit hole. You don’t change Bitcoin, Bitcoin changes you.
What is the most amazing thing about Bitcoin to you?
Wow, that is a tough question. There are so many amazing things about Bitcoin.
I think if I had to narrow it down, I would say either the sovereignty it comes with or else the people involved with it. I love how it is liberating and empowering so many people worldwide and creating a legion of sovereign individuals. It also seems to attract some of the greatest, brightest minds. Some of the smartest, kindest, most awakened people seem to be involved with Bitcoin and building it. I’ve met some of the coolest people in the space.
Some people say the Bitcoin community isn’t a thing or is just too toxic. I believe this is one of the greatest features of it. Starting to go to some IRL meetups was one of the best decisions I’ve made. I love to be surrounded by people who inspire me. It is honestly so refreshing to meet so many people that see clearly through the lies and propaganda and have a strong solid grasp of the insanity happening in the world. Shoutout to all the plebs, cyber hornets, sovereigns and freaks.
What are you most looking forward to in the Bitcoin space?
I’m really looking forward to all of the tools being built for self-sovereignty and overall freedom for humanity. It’s so awesome to see how many people are getting plugged into an open monetary network and being able to take back control of their money and not have it melted away. It is allowing many to become much more self-sovereign in the process.
It’s really cool to see all that is being built with open-source projects; they’re literally building tools for individual sovereignty. There was this one project in the FOSS Dome [at Bitcoin 2021] where this guy literally had this weatherproof case with a node setup in it, and it connects via Starlink and a hotspot. A literal off-grid node.
I also think privacy is going to become one of the biggest priorities for people, and has been for me. I’ve been trying to learn a lot more about what RoninDojo and Samurai are building. These projects seem to be next level.
I, like many others, am also very hyped for what is being built with Lightning. It’s super awesome to see how quickly that is blossoming and where that is headed. There are so many cool projects in that area, like Zeus for instance.
At the end of the day, Bitcoin was created to be a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” and that is going to need privacy and speed to fulfill that role. I think we are right on track and it’s exciting to see while gaining sovereignty in the process.
Price prediction for the end of 2021, and the end of 2030?
I think we hit sat/cent parity before the end of 2021 (over $1,000,000). I think we could potentially do it by Halloween. I think it’ll be over $10,000,000 by the end of 2030 and hit sat/dollar parity ($100,000,000) before the end of 2033.
I think this is very bearish and that we can do it much sooner, especially with all the money printing happening and the world going full Weimar Republic hyperinflation. I think we’re on the tipping point of “suddenly” and are approaching escape velocity to go full-blown hyperbitcoinization quickly.
