five years of bullets

i've written in roam every single day for five years. not because i'm disciplined. because it works.

most note-taking apps are filing cabinets. folders inside folders. hierarchies that make sense when you create them and become prisons six months later.

roam is different. it's a web.

every thought connects to every other thought. not because you planned it. because that's how thinking actually works.

when i discovered bitcoin in 2011, it felt like seeing the internet for the first time. that "wait, you can do that?" moment. roam gave me that feeling again.

here's what five years taught me:

your brain doesn't think in folders. it thinks in connections. the note you write today about robotics suddenly links to something you wrote two years ago about bitcoin. you didn't plan that connection. roam revealed it.

expandable bullets change everything. you can collapse an entire project into one line, or expand a single thought into a universe. your notes breathe.

search isn't about finding files. it's about surfacing relationships you forgot existed.

most people quit note-taking apps because organizing becomes work. roam removed the work. just write. link what matters. the structure emerges.

i'm not here to sell you on roam specifically. i'm here to ask: where do you put the thoughts that matter?

if you don't have an answer, you're losing ideas every single day.

five years ago, i built a second brain. it remembers everything i forget. it connects dots i didn't know were related. it makes me smarter by making my past thinking accessible.

you don't need roam. you need something.

because the ideas you lose today are the breakthroughs you'll never have tomorrow.

what if being right actually mattered?

right now, on x, the person with a million followers gets heard. the person who predicted bitcoin at $1 gets ignored. that's backwards.

imagine opening x and seeing a number next to every account. not follower count. not engagement rate. but a merit score. how many times were you right when everyone else was wrong?

did you buy bitcoin in 2011 when it was a joke? did you see trump winning the moment he came down the escalator? did you call cannabis legalization before the politicians did? tesla's rise before the media believed?

the score wouldn't care about your follower count. it would care about your foresight.

here's why this matters: the people who see the future early don't get rewarded for being right. they get mocked, dismissed, or ignored. then, years later, when their prediction becomes obvious to everyone, nobody remembers they called it first.

ray dalio built bridgewater on a simple principle: track who makes good predictions, and listen to them more. not who's loudest. not who's most popular. who's most accurate.

what if x did the same thing? an ai that reads every tweet you've ever written. scores your predictions against what actually happened. updates your merit score in real time as events unfold.

suddenly, the quiet person who bought bitcoin at $10 has a 99. the influencer who's wrong about everything but gets likes has a 12.

the platform wouldn't change who you follow. it would change who you trust.

because being right about the future when everyone else is wrong? that takes courage, pattern recognition, and real insight.

those are the voices we need to amplify. not the ones optimizing for virality.

the house of cards

fifty years.that’s how long the assad family ruled syria. fifty years of iron grip. immovable. inevitable. permanent. until it wasn't.

in twelve days, the whole thing collapsed. not with a whimper—with a cascade. soldiers abandoned posts. cities fell like dominoes. the man who seemed eternal boarded a plane to moscow.

everyone is shocked. but the signs were always there. russia was distracted by ukraine. iran was bleeding from israeli strikes. hezbollah was wounded. the economy had cratered. soldiers hadn't been paid. the people were starving.

the foundation was hollow. the structure stayed standing only because no one pushed. then someone pushed.

here's what most observers miss: stability and permanence are not the same thing. something can appear stable for decades—until the moment it isn't.

first principles thinking isn't about predicting the exact moment. it's about seeing the cracks while others admire the facade. when i saw bitcoin early, or tesla before its surge, or twitter when it was still raw—I wasn't psychic. i was asking different questions.

not "will this work?" but "what would have to be true for this to be inevitable?" not "is this popular?" but "is this structurally sound?" the crowd looks at surfaces. the curious dig beneath.

assad's syria looked solid because no one tested it. the moment the test came, the answer arrived in twelve days. what else in your world looks permanent but isn't? what institutions, assumptions, or career paths are you treating as bedrock—when they might be hollow?

the future doesn't announce itself. it reveals what was always true. your only job is to look.

the ancient protocol

three thousand years ago, the bhagavad gita offered a radical idea: do your work without attachment to the outcome. perform your duty. release the result.

sound familiar? that's the only way to survive a bitcoin cycle.

the vedas proposed something even more disruptive—that consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of reality. quantum physicist amit goswami arrived at the same conclusion through mathematics.

the mystics and the scientists agree: what we see isn't what's real.

bitcoin operates on a similar principle. there's no central authority. no king. no federal reserve pulling strings. just nodes—individual participants—each sovereign, each contributing to a whole that no single entity controls.

atman meeting the blockchain.

here's the pattern: ancient wisdom says you are not separate from the universe. quantum physics says observation creates reality. bitcoin says you don't need permission.

three different languages. same truth.

decentralization isn't a feature. it's a philosophy.

detachment isn't passivity. it's power.

we keep searching for the new. but sometimes the new is just the old, finally given the technology to prove itself.

the mystics didn't have a whitepaper. but they understood the protocol.

the keyboard therapist

writing isn't content creation. it's therapy. i wrote about my marriage and posted it; a few hours later my wife's cousin in colombia was crying. that's the magic: you sit alone, type words, and someone across the planet feels something.

no flight. no meeting. no handshake. just words traveling at the speed of light, landing in someone's heart. forget the monetization, the followers, the algorithm — the real gift is simpler: writing lets you have a conversation with yourself without looking crazy.

most people are afraid to publish — afraid of judgment, afraid of being wrong in public. but you're not creating content; you're documenting a process, thinking out loud, leaving breadcrumbs for the person you'll become and the people who need to find you.

the secret isn't to write well. the secret is to write often. every day. even when it feels pointless. especially then. who might you reach if you committed to showing up at the keyboard every single day? only one way to find out.

first

someone has to go first. first means arrows in the back. first means fighting the central bank in the supreme court—and winning. first means clearing the path while others raise billions.

unocoin was india’s first bitcoin platform. 2013. before the hype, before the headlines, before anyone believed. backers didn’t buy a company — they bought a mission.

a decade of being first taught me this: pioneers don’t always get the parade, but they prove the parade is possible. now the road is clear.

bitcoin is no longer just speculation. it’s infrastructure and inevitability — nations and leaders are stacking. the $100 trillion future is arithmetic, not fantasy.

what’s stopping unocoin from $200b? nothing but the decision to grow — deliberately, relentlessly, scientifically. we’re hiring believers: engineers, marketers, builders who want to leave fingerprints on the future.

the latecomers saw the market. we built it. the next chapter isn’t catching up — it’s finishing what we started. if you’ve been waiting to join, this is it.

why ucoin?

because in a noisy, complicated world, the simplest path usually wins. in india, the simplest path to bitcoin has had the same name for more than a decade.

most companies show up late and try to impress with features. unocoin showed up early—2013 early—and decided to build the house instead.

while others waited for permission, unocoin asked: what would it take to make bitcoin feel as familiar as sending a text? the answer was never another complicated trading screen.

it was speed. it was safety. it was trust earned one transfer at a time.

most exchanges make you wait days for money to settle. unocoin made it minutes. when someone takes their first step into bitcoin, the worst thing you can hear is, “please wait. we’ll get back to you.”

people don’t need a lecture on blockchain. they need a door that opens. that’s why beginners start here—not because they know everything, but because unocoin removes reasons to hesitate.

safety isn’t shouted. it’s built: ssl, 2fa, face scan, fingerprints—layers you never notice unless something went wrong.

millions use unocoin not because it’s perfect, but because it has survived: 12 years, three bull markets, two winters, a supreme court case. competitors came fast and disappeared faster.

the ruins tell their own story. so does the fortress still standing. unocoin isn’t the loudest player. it’s the one that stayed, kept improving, and offered prices and tools designed for humans, not hedge funds.

wallets. debit cards. merchant tools. enterprise rails. all stitched around a simple idea: make bitcoin possible for the next billion people.

india's bitcoin company

every industry has a first mover. a tiny group steps forward before the crowd arrives.

in india that step came in 2013, long before most people could spell bitcoin or buy one. unocoin showed up early, stayed late, and kept building while others debated.

headquarters: bangalore. mission: make digital money simple enough for millions.

method: remove friction until your cousin, uncle, or accountant can use it. and it worked—two million people use unocoin every month.

not because of a stunt, but because trust compounds. do the right thing long enough and people notice; so did investors like tim draper and barry silbert.

unocoin didn’t win because bitcoin was inevitable. it won because someone took the hard first step when rails and rules didn’t exist.

ten years later others sprinted, stumbled, or vanished. unocoin kept showing up.

buying, selling, accepting payments, or learning the ropes—behind every feature is the same promise: make it simple, make it safe, make it something your future self will thank you for.

unocoin isn’t just india’s first bitcoin company. it’s the one that stayed long enough to become india’s bitcoin company. and that’s the difference.

bitcoin is freedom

bitcoin isn’t about money. it’s about freedom.

freedom rarely arrives with fanfare. it begins when someone takes the first step before anyone else believes it matters.

in india, that step happened in 2013. unocoin showed up early, stayed late, and kept building while others argued whether bitcoin was real.

most people don’t lose freedom all at once. they lose it in tiny exchanges of time for money that melts while they sleep.

inflation is a quiet thief. bitcoin is the quiet antidote — a currency that refuses to leak, a network that doesn’t ask for permission, a system that won’t lock you out because it’s sunday or because your signature doesn’t match.

sovereignty isn’t a slogan. it’s a habit: hold your own keys, your own future, your own agency.

and unocoin? we built the door so people could walk through. not the loudest, not the fanciest — just the one that was open.

two million people noticed. not because of a stunt, but because trust compounds. do the right thing long enough and someone always pays attention.

others sprinted, others stumbled, some vanished. we kept showing up.

bitcoin won’t fix your life. it will remind you that you can. time is precious, and money should respect the hours you traded for it.

freedom isn’t earned someday. it’s chosen. today. the world is changing faster than most realize — good thing you’re paying attention.

the real reason to wite

writing isn't about teaching. it's about thinking.
i used to believe i needed something important to say before i could publish. some grand lesson. some polished insight. that belief kept me quiet for years.

the writing is the thinking. you don't write because you know. you write to find out what you know. most people won't care what i publish here. that's fine. a few will, and for those few, i want to open the door.

show the process. share the mess. ten years building one of india's first bitcoin companies. hundreds of consulting calls with financial firms who pay thousands for an hour. mistakes i've made. lessons i've earned.

i'm not hoarding it anymore. will writing daily change my life? maybe. maybe not. but i'll never know if i don't ship. the sidelines are comfortable. safe. forgettable. you've been watching long enough. so have i. time to start.

deep fun

i learned something simple and unsettling the other day: there’s shallow fun and there’s deep fun. i told my eight- and eleven-year-old daughters while we walked, and they got it — kids remember what adults forget.

shallow fun is ice cream, a movie, the swipe and the scroll. it feels great for a moment and then leaves a sugar crash and the sense you traded time for nothing that lasts.

deep fun is the math puzzle that makes your brain spark, the run that hurts before it helps, the habit that isn’t glamorous but changes your life. it compounds while shallow fun fades.

bitcoin works the same way: not the shiny adrenaline of speculation, but the slow, disciplined choice to protect your time, sovereignty, and future. it’s doing something today that pays off ten years from now because it honors the hours you traded to earn your money.

unocoin was built on deep fun — showing up early, building rails before anyone cared, removing friction inch by inch so millions could participate. not exciting in the moment, transformational in hindsight.

deep fun is parenting, building, saving, learning, lifting your own weight — the work that feels like work until it becomes freedom. shallow fun is easy; deep fun is earned. only one of them shapes who you become, and kids still remember why.

tools that tilt the future

some technologies don’t just make life easier. they make you different. not because they’re flashy, but because they quietly reshape how you think, build, and decide.

here are the ones that matter now—the tools that tilt the world if you let them.

bitcoin
not a fad. not a gamble. a foundation. the first tool that lets you store your time without asking a bank for permission. if sovereignty had an operating system, this would be it.

roam research
a second brain for people tired of losing their own thoughts. ideas link, conversations weave, insights compound. it’s not software—it’s memory with structure.

ai assistants
leverage in a box. a partner that never sleeps, never gets bored, never says “i don’t know.” the people who learn to collaborate with ai will build faster, think deeper, and ship in hours what used to take teams weeks.

robotics
the physical version of ai. machines that move, lift, sort, weld, carry, fetch. we’re entering a world where labor becomes software—where action becomes programmable. entire industries are about to be rewritten.

tesla model x
a reminder that the future doesn’t wait for consensus. fast, silent, self-driving. proof that impossible things become normal the moment someone refuses to build by analogy.

quadrotor
a flying camera that bends perspective. creativity at 400 feet. it turns the world into a playground for storytellers.

3d printer
a mini factory at home. ideas stop being theoretical. kids learn that imagination can become plastic by lunchtime. prototype today, iterate tonight, improve tomorrow.

ai art & music tools
a new kind of paintbrush. a new kind of instrument. they don’t replace creativity—they erase the excuses that kept you from expressing it. the gap between imagination and creation has never been smaller.

personal automation
scripts, bots, workflows. the unglamorous revolution. your calendar books itself. your finances reconcile themselves. your tasks organize themselves. every minute you automate is a minute you get back.

These tools aren’t about convenience. They’re about agency. About choosing deep fun over shallow fun. About building systems that make your future self grateful you started early.

The world is tilting toward those who use these tools with intention. Not to escape work, but to amplify it.

What did I miss? Which tools changed you?

start with the problem

most startup advice is noise—echoes from people who've never built anything that mattered.

so where do you go for signal? yc.

yc doesn't give advice. yc gives frameworks. they don't tell you what to think. they teach you how to think. and now the whole course is online. free.

start there.

then forget brainstorming. paul graham puts it simply: "don't try to think of startup ideas. notice problems. preferably your problems."

microsoft. apple. google. facebook. not brainstorms. answers to questions the founders were already living.

so find the problem you can't stop thinking about. the one that frustrates and fascinates you.

build that.

the rest is noise.

where the future is hiding

quantum computing. artificial intelligence. blockchain. three forces reshaping the world—one equation, one model, one block at a time.

ai is already everywhere: your camera, your inbox, your recommendations. but it's a black box. blockchain, on the other hand, explains everything—openly, relentlessly. combine them and the black box becomes glass.

add quantum computing—not faster machines, but a different kind of thinking altogether—and the whole picture shifts.

shoucheng zhang said it plainly: these three aren't trends. they're the foundations of a new information universe.

every major shift looks nerdy right before it becomes obvious. bitcoin in 2013. electric cars in 2012.

the future doesn't announce itself. it compounds quietly until one day everything has changed.

watch this space.

the boring part cost $14 billion

meta just paid $14.3 billion for half of a company that labels data.
not the model. not the algorithm. the labeling.

scale ai became a $29b company doing the work no one brags about. humans tagging images, rating answers, checking code. slow, expensive, invisible work.

and yet meta wrote one of the biggest checks in its history for it. because innovation is useless if you can’t feed it.

alexandr wang figured that out early. infrastructure beats ideas at scale. that’s why meta didn’t just invest—they hired him to run superintelligence.

this pattern repeats everywhere. bitcoin didn’t scale on ideology, it scaled on mining, custody, compliance, and boring systems that don’t fit in a demo.

ai won’t win on clever prompts. it wins on data pipelines no one sees and few can build. same with robotics, same with energy, same with finance.

the demo gets applause. the pipes get paid.

so the question isn’t what breakthrough you’re chasing.
it’s what infrastructure you’re actually building.

they built it to hook you

sean parker said it out loud in 2017.
facebook exploited a vulnerability in human psychology.

they knew about the scroll. the badges. the dopamine loop.
and you keep checking anyway.

it’s not your fault.
but it is your problem.

you can’t fight attention engineering with willpower.
willpower is what you use when you’re already losing.

you need a philosophy.

one that says: i choose what gets my attention, and i happily miss the rest.

that’s digital minimalism.
not deprivation. clarity.

every notification has a cost.
every scroll steals from something you said mattered.

your attention isn’t infinite.
it’s the raw material of your life.

the radical move in 2025 isn’t deleting apps.
it’s deciding—intentionally—what deserves you.

and protecting that choice like it matters.

because it does.

the future already happened

bitcoin launched january 3, 2009.

sixteen years later, most organizations are still “exploring blockchain use cases.”
that’s not strategy. that’s denial.

Peter Drucker called this “the future that has already happened.”
the shift occurred. you’re just managing like it’s 2008.

effective management starts when you stop reacting and start leading what’s already underway.

ai didn’t sneak up on you. gpt-3 was 2020.
robotics didn’t surprise anyone. Boston Dynamics has been public for years.
bitcoin isn’t new. the whitepaper is older than instagram.

Michael Saylor didn’t invent the future.
he managed the one that already arrived.

there are three types of organizations now:
those studying change.
those adapting to it.
those rebuilding around it.

management only works when you know what future you’re managing toward.
otherwise you can spend a thousand minutes and go nowhere.

maintaining the status quo in 2025 isn’t stability.
it’s decline with better excuses.

the best managers noticed the future already happened—and reorganized everything around that fact.

set the goal.
praise what moves toward it.
redirect what doesn’t.

one minute. lasting impact.

but only if you’re managing the right future.

which future are you managing?

they don't want your newsletter

they want to belong.

seth godin said it plainly: tribes aren’t built by introductions.
they’re built by working side by side on something that matters, under pressure.

community isn’t a strategy.
it’s what happens when people see the same problem and decide to build anyway.

bitcoin didn’t grow because of newsletters.
it grew because people kept building while being mocked, attacked, and ignored.

ai didn’t advance because of meetups.
it advanced because researchers worked through winters when belief was scarce.

robots don’t get built because of picnics.
they get built because engineers keep pushing against hard problems.

if you can’t answer two questions, you don’t have a community:
who is this for?
what is this for?

communities form around meaning, not metrics.
belonging, not engagement.

the strongest communities don’t need platforms or budgets.
people show up because the work matters.

the real question isn’t how to build buzz.
it’s what you’re building that’s worth showing up for.

are you building something that matters?

what kawhi taught me about bitcoin

toronto, 2019.
the raptors were in the finals and the whole city felt like one nervous system.

and then there was Kawhi Leonard.
quiet. unmoved. repeating one thing: stay in the moment.

he didn’t talk about championships.
he talked about the next possession.

six years later, i get it.

bitcoin didn’t survive the crash by thinking about price targets.
it survived because the tech still worked, block by block.

ai won’t be built by predicting agi timelines.
it’ll be built by people writing code today.

robots won’t automate the world by debating the future of labor.
they’ll do it by fixing the sensor that’s two milliseconds off.

the people who matter aren’t reacting to noise.
they’re present with the work in front of them.

the future isn’t here yet.
the past already happened.

the only thing that’s real is this moment.
and championships—of any kind—are built there.

stay in the moment.
it’s the only one you have.