Fire on the Streets, Freedom in the Sheets
Opt Out Or Bow Down
Turning Riot Rage into Real Change
There is a TL;DR takeaways section at the bottom if you are in a hurry.
America feels like it’s splitting down its fault lines—red on one side, blue on the other, both shouting past each other in 280-character bursts. You might glance at the nightly footage of protesters and flaming barricades outside ICE facilities and think, “Good. The crackdown is overdue.” And that’s fine—this country works because we can disagree out loud.
But before you scroll away, set the immigration debate aside for sixty seconds and ask a bigger question: How comfortable are you with any administration—left, right, or whichever comes next—wielding unchecked power? Because what follows isn’t just about immigration policy; it’s about the reach that flows from infinite dollars. If today’s riots don’t move you, perhaps one of these other federal flexes will hit closer to home:
Warrantless NSA surveillance of phone records and internet traffic
IRS plans to flag every $600 bank transfer in the name of “tax compliance”
Civil-asset forfeiture, where police seize property without a criminal conviction
Drone strikes authorized without congressional war declarations
COVID-era vaccine or mask mandates on private employers
Patriot Act–enabled indefinite detention provisions buried in NDAA renewals
Pressure on social-media platforms to censor “misinformation” at government request
I could list 100 more, but I digress…
Shock & Smoke
Sirens ricochet off the glass of Wilshire Boulevard. Marines in desert camo idle beside National Guard Humvees, watching a crowd hurl neon-painted “ABOLISH ICE” signs over police shields. Helicopter spotlights bleach the night, revealing a burned-out Metro bus smoldering near the Roybal Federal Building—epicenter of LA’s sixth straight evening of anti-ICE riots.
Across the country the movement continues. Austin protestors try to storm their downtown federal complex; tear-gas canisters arc back and forth like phosphorescent comets until the crowd scatters into side streets. Seattle, Chicago, and New York replay the same script: rage, plywood, pepper spray, re-upped hashtags. Protests in Vegas, Denver and a plethora of other cities are only a spark away from becoming more destructive.
The anger is righteous—families torn apart by dawn raids sting the soul—but the method feels tragically familiar. We have marched, chanted, knelt, even camped in parks trying to create change. Yet aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps expanding. Why? Because power follows the money, and our money is quietly hijacked at its source.
The Ceiling of Street Protest
Protest has always held moral force. The civil-rights sit-ins of the 1960s desegregated lunch counters; anti-war marches helped drag America out of Southeast Asia. But remember the unwritten footnote: hearts changed only after budgets shifted. When the Johnson administration faced deficit stress and troop-funding shortfalls, the Vietnam draw-down began. Legislators count votes, yes, but they count dollars first.
Modern demonstrations hit a harder ceiling. Social-media virality compresses outrage into 48-hour news cycles, while congressional appropriations lumber on quarter-century rails. The LA riot may dominate Twitter for a week, yet ICE’s FY 2025 budget—$2 billion for 34,000 detention beds plus $360 million for “Alternatives to Detention” —is already baked into a 1,165-page DHS appropriations bill.
Marches illuminate injustice; they rarely defund it. This feels to me like the “resistance” simply does not have the tools to create enough friction to matter. Meanwhile the consequences are real. You might lose your job or your freedom in the process of trying to be heard. So where can everyday citizens find more effective tools? Tools that can be utilized in the safety of your own home, perhaps within the sheets of your own bed? Let’s talk about squeezing the money!
The Hidden Hand in Your Wallet
1. Money-Printing 101—The Cantillon Shortcut
When Washington spends beyond tax receipts, it issues Treasuries. The Federal Reserve then backstops those IOUs with freshly created bank reserves—digital dollars typed into existence. Early recipients (defense contractors, agencies, megabanks) get these dollars first and buy assets before prices adjust, while late recipients (you, the grocery clerk) face higher rents and grocery bills months later. This is the Cantillon Effect in living color. This is why money printing is good for DC and bad for you (inflation).
2. Pandemic-Era Proof
In February 2020, America’s broad money (M2) sat near $15.3 trillion. By April 2025 it pierced $21.8 trillion—a 43 % jump. Inflation duly spiked, peaking at 9.1 % in June 2022, the worst in four decades. We are still experiencing the downstream effects from this expansion of the money supply. The cumulative inflation (so far) that American consumers have experienced in those 5 years is staggering, at 24% by official numbers (28% by Trueflation data).
You didn’t vote for that dilution; it arrived via macro-keyboard shortcut. But the newly issued dollars did pay for lockdown stimulus, military hardware, and yes—federal immigration crackdowns. The next time you watch riot police in $900 helmets, remember those helmets were financed by vaporizing your purchasing power. Said another way; by taking the food out of the mouths of your children.
3. The Stealth ICE Subsidy
ICE’s detention regime costs roughly $6 million per weekday once you factor beds, transport, and staffing. A swollen money supply masks that burden. Spread the cost across 330 million citizens via a little extra inflation and most won’t notice—until their grocery cart shrinks.
Bitcoin: Opt-Out, Don’t Burn Out
1. Hard Cap vs. Infinite Tap
Bitcoin: 21 million units, algorithmically sealed. Period.
USD: Unlimited units, policy-driven supply, subject to political turmoil and endless re-election promises.
Owning BTC means exiting the leaky bucket. It’s peaceful, legal (remember Bernstein v. DOJ—code is speech protected by the 1st amendment). And it slashes Washington’s seigniorage by the value you pull from dollar circulation.
Seigniorage is the difference between the face value of money and the cost to produce it. The US government cost to produce new dollars is essentially zero. The VALUE of the dollar comes from diluting the value of every other dollar in existence, including your dollars!
2. Permission-less Rails
When protestors’ bank accounts are frozen (Canadian trucker protest, Operation Choke Point 2.0, etc), Bitcoin routes value anyway. No gatekeeper can censor a key you hold to a decentralized protocol. No company or politician can deny you your ability to transact with another person.
3. Starving the Beast, Satoshi by Satoshi
As I already said, every dollar you own gives the government the power to extract that value (at your expense) in order to finance their agenda by way of more money printing.
Every ounce of value converted to BTC is a vote against dollar debasement, because it limits the reach they have into your wealth. If you have no dollars, they can not devalue them to finance the things you are currently protesting against. It doesn’t require congressional hearings. The Fed simply can’t monetize what it no longer monopolizes. The metaphorical printer still whirs, but its inflationary ink reaches fewer pockets.
Just like marching down Main St and chanting, it takes a movement of the masses to make a difference. A protest of 12 people wont even make the local news. 12,000,000 people will make headlines globally. Same with removing power from the dollar. When 1% of the population owns bitcoin, it’s considered a speculative investment. When 12% own it, it becomes a statement that can not be ignored.
A Tactical Roadmap to “Hit Them Where It Hurts”
(No technical rabbit holes, just practical steps)
Right Now (first 15 minutes)
Download a beginner-friendly wallet (Cake, Aqua, Blue or Muun on mobile). Carefully save the 12 or 24-word backup phrase. DO NOT SAVE IT DIGITALLY! YouTube a tutorial for a beginner friendly walkthrough.
Buy a small amount of BTC on Cash App, Strike, or another reputable exchange.
Send it to your wallet to feel the “self-custody” moment. Now it is safe from government theft. Now it cannot be used to print more dollars and fund more overreach.
This Week
Set a “pay-yourself-first” auto-buy (DCA): Maybe 5 % of every paycheck or a flat $25/week—whatever won’t stress your budget.
Orange-pill one friend—send them $5 in sats to show how fast and cheap it moves. Tell them why you are doing this, or send them my article!
We are creating a death by 1000 papercuts sort of strategy here
Next 30 Days
Graduate to a hardware wallet (Ledger, Trezor, or Cold Card): transfer the BTC you’re stacking once its enough to warrant the on chain fees.
Build a mini “Bitcoin emergency fund”—shoot for one month of living expenses in sats. Plan to save this forever.
Support a local or online merchant that accepts BTC (coffee, beef jerky, newsletters—whatever you’d buy anyway).
Next 12 Months
Shift low-yield cash savings (CDs, money-market leftovers) into your BTC position.
Ask your employer or union if they’ll let you take part of your salary or 401(k) match in Bitcoin or a Bitcoin ETF sleeve.
Donate in BTC to causes you love—show nonprofits how friction-free it can be.
Election Cycle & Beyond
Tell every candidate you meet: “Sound money matters—I vote with my wallet.”
Keep stacking, keep learning—but skip the advanced stuff (node running, lightning routing) until you’re curious.
Measure success in sats, not social-media likes—quiet accumulation is the real protest.
Mantra: Save in BTC, sleep on it. No need to run a node—just don’t leave your coins in someone else’s control.
FUD Defanged
“It wastes energy.”
Bitcoin uses ~0.15 % of global energy—less than idle home devices—and can cut fossil fuel flaring emissions significantly enough to become carbon negative.
“The government will ban it.”
Two decades of court precedent protect encryption as speech.
Seizing a private key is tougher than shuttering a Twitter handle
Simply put, they do not have the power to kill Bitcoin. They could only criminalize people for using it. Luckily we value property rights in this country, so even that would be an uphill battle.
“Too small to matter.”
Every new adopter increases the cost—for politicians—to ignore it.
Network effects are exponential; revolutions often start at single-digit percentages.
“We The People” are the only fuel needed to make this matter.
Justice, Reframed
Non-violent resistance isn’t passive; it’s precision-targeted. After Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955, Montgomery activists didn’t torch buses—they boycotted fares, starving segregationists’ revenue. It worked! Jun 5th of 1956, the Supreme Court struck down bus segregation. This movement lit the fuse for what became over a decade of Civil Rights focused activities.
Today’s analog is opting out of inflationary government funding. A dollar is the modern bus token, and Bitcoin is the protest to defund the corruption. When you convert dollars to BTC, you’re not only protecting savings—you’re refusing to bankroll cages, drones, tear gas and rubber bullets. You’re reducing the State’s ability to skim from savings accounts and pensions through stealth inflation. That is moral, not selfish.
Action, Not Lip Service
Picture this: Same downtown LA block that is on fire today, only five years forward. No smoke. Street-food trucks ping Lightning invoices; immigrant-run stores accept sats at the speed of a handshake. The military deployed on US soil to stand against US citizens? Too expensive to deploy when Congress can’t painlessly print their paychecks out of thin air.
So here’s the challenge: Move the cost of one fancy coffee—$5—into Bitcoin right now. Feel the agency surge in your veins. Then tell a friend.
Raise voices, yes—but raise private keys higher. If we truly want to shut the machine that funds injustice, we must turn off its faucet of endless spending, not just yell at its hose.
Opt out. Stack sats. Starve the printer. That’s how you riot without a match. That’s how you create real disruption. That’s how we create a more free, a more just and a more fair America.
TL;DR – Why “Starve the State” Beats “Burn it Down”
Riots vent anger but rarely change budgets. Federal crack-downs run on dollars, not hashtags or broken windows.
The money printer is the real riot gear. A 43 % jump in M2 since 2020 lets Washington fund every detention bed, drone strike, or censorship program without asking voters first. And we get stuck with the 28% inflation aftermath.
Bitcoin is peaceful civil disobedience. Swapping debasing dollars for a 21-million-cap asset drains seigniorage, boosts personal sovereignty, and can’t be censored.
You already have the lever. Pull it! Auto-DCA a slice of each paycheck, self-custody, and spend sats in fledgling circular economies—no protest permit required.
Embrace an issue-agnostic power check. Whether you loathe ICE raids, warrantless surveillance, or $600 bank-spy rules, the same money hose fuels them all.
Final call: Move the cost of one fancy coffee into BTC today, share your personal “why“ with friends and loved ones, and show the State you’re done footing every bill it prints without your permission.
Well, that's a wrap for today y’all. If you found this helpful or it got you thinking, why not hit that 'like' button and share it with your buddies? The more we share, the more we all learn.
Disclaimer: The goal here is to educate and entertain. However, keep in mind, this isn't financial advice. I'm a regular person like you, sharing my perspectives based on my personal research and experiences. Always do your own research (DYOR) and make your own informed decisions.
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