The Dashboard The Gallery Calculators About
• indicates pages with interactive tools

Interactive tools to see Bitcoin clearly.

Pressure-test the decision before you make it. Every figure shows its work.

Plan your bitcoin retirement New to Bitcoin? Start here

All explorations

How Much Bitcoin?
The peak is not the target.
How much is the question →
Paper Bitcoin vs. Real Bitcoin
Same light — different asset.
See what you hold →
Bitcoin as Collateral
The pledge you can see. Four thousand years of collateral – and the first pledge anyone can verify.
Read the exploration →
Risks to Bitcoin
Every storm has only made it harder.
See what it survives →
What Money Has To Be
One money must do three things at once — or it cannot do any of them.
Read more →
Bitcoin vs. Real Estate
Housing became the default store of value by elimination
Read more →
Bitcoin vs. Rental Property
What if the yield were higher — and the weather quieter.
Run the comparison →
Bitcoin vs. Paying Down the Mortgage
Every dollar on the mortgage earns its rate, guaranteed. Bitcoin has to beat that.
Find your hurdle →
Compare Housing Plans
Two housing plans, side by side. The difference, measured in bitcoin.
Compare two plans →
Bitcoin and Fixed Income
High yield, without bitcoin's volatility.
Read more →
The Bitcoin Hurdle Rate
Every use of capital is measured against something. Most bars are set far too low.
Clear the bar? →
Bitcoin and The Power Law
For every 13% increase in Bitcoin's age, the trend price doubles.
Read more →
The Bitcoin Floor
The floor price has held for fifteen years — watched live, every day.
See the record →
Bitcoin’s Spikes
Every spike came back. Each one smaller.
Decide before the next one →
Bitcoin & Metcalfe's Law
The network is still there. We just can't see it anymore.
See what the data misses →
The Bitcoin Doubling Ladder
Each step takes longer than the last.
Climb the ladder →
Bitcoin Bull & Bear Cycles
Every storm so far has been smaller than the one before.
See the cycles →
Discount, or Premium?
Bitcoin runs above and below one enduring trend — this page tells you, live, which is true right now.
See where it sits →
The STRC Mechanism
Built to hold a line — trading beneath it.
See what it’s saying →
Lump Sum or Ladder In?
Deploy it all, or ladder in? History sorts it out.
Find your call →
Your Bitcoin Deployment Plan
Your capital, your timeline — modeled against the channel.
Model your plan →
Wait, or Deploy Now?
Wait for a lower entry, or deploy now? The channel tells you when.
Explore the question →
What Daily Conviction Bought
Nothing clever. Nothing timed. Just every single day.
See what it bought →
Bitcoin Portfolio Allocation
What a small position does to the whole — the growth, the drawdown, and the drift. See it, cost included.
Size your position →
The Bitcoin Retirement Stress Test
The same plan, with the bear market included. Early is brutal, late is nearly harmless — find out which is yours.
Stress-test your plan →
The Bitcoin Horizon
What looks like turbulence over the course of a day is trajectory over the course of a decade.
Read more →
Is Bitcoin a Bubble?
A thing isn't a bubble simply because it has been called one.
Read more →
The Half-Life
How long until your money loses half its value?
Read more →
The Melting Ice Cube
Holding cash is not safety. It's an active decision with an ongoing cost.
Read more →
The Bitcoin Synthesis
Six components. One irreducible synthesis.
Read more →
What Bitcoin Is
Most people consider just a few dimensions. Bitcoin is all of them, simultaneously
Read more →
The Bitcoin Migration
From what can't be fixed, to what can't be broken.
Read more →
The Trilemma
Some problems are navigated, not solved.
Read more →
The Money Trees
Two systems. Different roots. One outcome.
Read more →
The Bitcoin Retirement
A stack that lasts a lifetime — or runs out before you do.
Read more →
Bitcoin Escape Velocity
A retirement is supposed to run down. There’s a line past which yours doesn’t.
Find your line →
Compare Bitcoin Retirement Plans
Two complete plans, side by side — and what the difference actually buys.
Compare your plans →
Disciplined Rebalancing
A model you believe in is a protocol you can run.
Read more →
The Fixed Pie
Your share remains undiluted — for eternity.
Read more →
Bitcoin vs. The Stock Market
Three growth curves. One decisive horizon.
Read more →
The Bitcoin Heatmap
The pattern reveals itself only when you zoom out.
Read more →
Borrowing Against Your Stack
Every coin sold today is a coin that compounds for someone else.
Read more →
Bitcoin Lenders Compared
Twenty lenders. One way of describing them — and the price that triggers each one, today.
See the lenders →
Bitcoin-Backed Mortgages
The home opens. The stack stays.
Read more →
Living on Bitcoin
Save in bitcoin. Spend in fiat. The float holds.
Read more →
Bitcoin Defined
Define it. Then debate it.
Read more →
What Money Is For
Saving is the default. The rest is choice — or should be.
Read more →

Get the essays and tool updates

A few emails a month when something new ships — an essay, a new tool, a meaningful update. No funnel, nothing for sale, unsubscribe anytime.

Subscribe on Substack
Recent updates
10/14/26 Bitcoin and Fixed Income: Strategy at a glance is updated to October: 848,250 BTC (11 October) and mNAV still about 0.8×. The reading now follows the money: $368.7M of STRC bought back in two weeks, paid mostly from USD Cash (down to $640.5M), while the $4.88B reserve pays dividends and interest. 10/14/26 The STRC Mechanism: filing figures brought up to October 11: three more buyback windows (3.7 million shares for $368.7M, at averages of $99.31 to $99.58), a $4.88B USD Reserve (about 34 months of dividends and interest), $640.5M of USD Cash and a float of about 87.9 million shares. 10/14/26 Bitcoin vs. Rental Property: Strategy's treasury (848,250 BTC) and USD Reserve ($4.88B) updated to October 11. The coverage tiles are unchanged. 10/14/26 The Bitcoin Fixed Share: the dollar's supply now grows at about 6.5% a year, the money supply's 50-year average and the figure the rest of the site uses; it was 7%. After 10 years a dollar holder keeps 53.3% of their share, not 50.8%. 10/14/26 The dollar's half-life now reads the same across the site: about 11 years, at the money supply's 50-year growth of about 6.5% a year. The Bitcoin Migration said about six years, Money Trees 7 to 10 and What Money Has to Be under 10. 10/14/26 Charts across the site now lay out their legends and axes again once the page's font has loaded. On a slow connection a legend could lose an item, such as 'Upper band (3× trend)' here at phone width, and lines on The Bitcoin Horizon, The Doubling Ladder and The Power Law. 10/14/26 Bitcoin as Collateral: the $100-of-collateral table is updated to October 2026. The 30-year mortgage rate is now about 7.4% (it was about 6.6% in August), and India's cap on gold loans is 75–85% of the gold's value depending on loan size (it was 75% for all loans until April 2026). The bitcoin loan terms ($40–60 per $100, about 9–14% a year) and the margin rates are unchanged. The Basel watch now notes that the Basel Committee expects to update its crypto rules by the end of 2026. 10/14/26 Disciplined Rebalancing: the results now say plainly that they are hypothetical: what the rules would have done on past prices, which nobody actually traded, before exchange fees and spreads. No figure changed.   All updates →
Explore
Latest
Bitcoin’s Spikes
Every spike above bitcoin’s trend since 2011, measured: how far it ran, how long it lasted and how it ended. Then what HODLers who funded a bill, trimmed or ran a standing rule ended up with, in bitcoin and after tax.
Decide before the next one →
Compare Housing Plans
Two ways to house yourself, side by side: buy now or rent and buy later, 20% down or 10% with the difference in bitcoin, this house or a cheaper one. The same savings and the same spending, and what each plan is worth at the end, after tax.
Compare two plans →
Bitcoin vs. Paying Down the Mortgage
A mortgage and some spare cash each month: pay the loan off faster, or hold bitcoin? The yearly growth bitcoin would need for holding to come out ahead, how often it has managed it, and the risks on both sides — the homeowner’s chair in the real-estate series.
Find your hurdle →
Bitcoin Lenders Compared
Twenty lenders that take bitcoin as collateral, one card each, described the same way: the published rate, the loan-to-value lines, the bitcoin price that triggers them today, who holds your coins, the terms, and the catch. Grouped, filterable, dated and sourced — nothing ranked or recommended.
See the lenders →
Compare Retirement Plans
Every plan is a choice against the plan you didn’t pick. Set two complete plans side by side — each with its own stack, retirement year and withdrawal — and read what the difference actually buys. Both share one set of assumptions, so no plan wins by being handed a friendlier market.
Weigh two plans →
The Bitcoin Floor
The lower edge of the Power Law channel, at 0.42× trend — a line price has hugged and held for fifteen years. Where it sits against that line right now, every close approach it has made and what followed, and the published criteria that would break the model.
See the record →
Foundations
What Money Has To Be
A good money must hold across time, move across space, and serve as a shared measurement. These three functions are not a menu — they are structurally coupled. Click through Bitcoin, Gold, USD, and a hyperinflating fiat to see how each holds — or fails to hold — the circuit together.
Read more →
What Money Is For
Money is for three things: saving, investing, and consuming. Saving is the default state from which the other two become choices. Fiat eliminates the default; sound money restores it. Click through Bitcoin, Gold, USD, and a hyperinflating fiat to see where each money holds — and where each fails — the three jobs.
Read more →
The Bitcoin Synthesis
Six existing ideas. One irreducible discovery. Explore each component that makes Bitcoin work, then try removing one to see exactly what collapses - and why this synthesis could only happen once.
Read more →
What Bitcoin Is
A flower-of-life visualization mapping Bitcoin's core properties - scarcity, decentralization, immutability, and more. Click each petal to understand the interlocking concepts that give Bitcoin its monetary premium.
Read more →
Bitcoin Defined
A single sentence. Eight load-bearing ideas. Reveal them one at a time and see why each one is essential to what Bitcoin actually is. The shortest accurate description available.
Reveal the definition →
The Bitcoin Trilemma
Every blockchain must choose two of three: decentralization, security, or scalability. Explore why Bitcoin deliberately sacrifices speed at the base layer - and why that's exactly the right tradeoff for sound money.
Read more →
The Arguments
Essay
The Bitcoin Migration
The exodus from an inherently broken monetary network that can't be fixed - to an inherently strong monetary network that can't be broken. A long-form exploration of what money is, why fiat fails, and why Bitcoin is the solution.
Read more →
The Half-Life
How long until your money loses half its value? An interactive decay curve reveals the dollar's half-life under different inflation assumptions - then compares the structural supply mechanics of fiat, gold, and Bitcoin.
Read more →
The Money Trees
Two trees, two monetary systems. Watch sound money grow through fixed supply and decentralization - while fiat withers under infinite expansion and central control. Toggle between them to feel the difference.
Read more →
₿
The Melting Ice Cube
Holding cash isn't a conservative decision — it's an active one with a quantifiable, ongoing cost. This interactive treasury tool models what inflation does to cash reserves over time, and what a Bitcoin allocation changes. Explore real company treasury sizes and run the numbers yourself.
Read more →
Living on Bitcoin
Holding everyday operating cash in bitcoin while paying fiat bills as they come due — a values-aligned practice with modest economics, real friction, and a psychological payoff. Project the float, stress-test it against a drawdown, and decide if the operational overhead is worth it.
Read more →
₿
Bitcoin Spend and Replace
The most common assumption about taxes when spending bitcoin in the US is wrong — but the right version of the practice can reduce the tax on a given transaction to nearly zero. A pragmatic guide to executing "Replace and Spend" cleanly under current US federal law, with the legal background tucked into the footnotes.
Read more →
₿
Paper Bitcoin vs. Real Bitcoin
An ETF, an exchange balance, a multisig vault, a hardware wallet — each is a different asset wearing bitcoin's price. Gold fell to confiscation in both its forms; bitcoin can fall in only one. A property grid for what each way of holding actually is, and what it costs you.
See what you hold →
Bitcoin as Collateral
Four thousand years of lending has turned on one question: is the pledge real? The first collateral anyone can verify – scored against everything else lenders take.
Run the scorecard →
Risks to Bitcoin
Bitcoin has been declared dead, banned, and out-competed more times than anyone has counted. Ten risks — state attack, the security budget, quantum, centralization, a rival coin — each in its strongest form and answered, with the markers that would tell us a risk is becoming real.
Read more →
₿
Is Bitcoin a Bubble?
Every bubble in history followed the same pattern: a dramatic rise, a collapse to near-zero, and a permanent flatline. Bitcoin has crashed over 80% three times — and each time reached a new all-time high. Compare Bitcoin's price history against every famous asset bubble, updated live.
Read more →
The Numbers
The Bitcoin Dashboard
Where bitcoin sits in its Power Law channel right now — the trend multiple and its zone, the trend price today, and how often price has closed below trend. A live read computed in your browser, with deep links that carry today’s position into the tools. A read, not a signal.
See where we are →
Bitcoin and The Power Law
Bitcoin grows proportionally, not exponentially. For every ~13% increase in Bitcoin's age, the trend price doubles. Explore the empirical law governing Bitcoin's scaling — then project it forward against a house purchase, 5 to 20 years out.
Read more →
Bitcoin & Metcalfe's Law
Does price really grow with the square of adoption? Measured from on-chain data, the exponent lands below the quadratic ideal — and the deeper finding is that the signal itself is fading, as ownership moves into ETFs and custody the data can no longer see.
Measure it yourself →
The Bitcoin Doubling Ladder
Mezinskis showed bitcoin's price doublings come at a steady cadence. This page makes it visible — where each doubling landed, the market's wild swings around the trend, and what the widening-then-compressing gap reveals.
Read more →
Bitcoin Bull & Bear Cycles
Bitcoin's best returns and deepest drawdowns are one fact, not two — the volatility is the price of the returns. Where the current cycle sits right now, the four historical bears, why volatility isn't the same as risk — and a deliberate refusal to guess where the bottom is.
See both sides →
Discount, or Premium?
Bitcoin oscillates around a long-run trend — sometimes far above it, sometimes far below. Where it sits right now, and what returning to trend would imply in the units everyone thinks in: annual return. The same arithmetic that reads generous at a discount reads brutal at a top — and the page shows both.
See where it sits →
Bitcoin’s Spikes
Every spike above bitcoin’s trend since 2011, measured: how far it ran, how long it lasted and how it ended. Then what HODLers who funded a bill, trimmed or ran a standing rule ended up with, in bitcoin and after tax.
Decide before the next one →
How Much Bitcoin?
The question every other page eventually meets, answered by the Bell Labs formula built for it. The Kelly criterion's raw answer is startling — and the lesson is the shape of the curve around the peak: under-betting costs a little, over-betting costs everything.
See the formula's answer →
How Much Cash?
Raising cash is selling, and whether that has meant more bitcoin or less depends almost entirely on where in the channel you did it. Pick a share and a moment in the record: how often a cheaper rebuy arrived, what it bought back after tax, and where the trade has historically paid.
Price the trade →
Bitcoin Portfolio Allocation
Where How Much Bitcoin finds the optimal fraction, this answers whether a fraction earns its place. Over a long horizon, the extra return a bitcoin allocation adds, stated with its cost beside it: the drawdown you must hold through, and how much of the portfolio's movement bitcoin drives, the engine of the return rather than a hazard. Growth projected from the Power Law.
See if it earns its place →
What Daily Conviction Bought
$30 a day since 2017, recomputed live. Pick a start date and a daily amount and replay the habit against bitcoin’s real price history — what it accumulated, what it cost, what it’s worth, and how deep the drawdown went. The record of a habit, not a recommendation.
Replay the habit →
Bitcoin vs. The Stock Market
Three growth curves measured against each other across the horizons that matter. The Power Law as the structural reference; historical cyclical-top entries as the stress test that proves the framework's strict conservatism.
Read more →
The Bitcoin Heatmap
Every monthly entry into bitcoin since 2010, tested against every common holding horizon — laid out as a single heatmap. At horizons of four years or more, every cohort wins. The pattern is overwhelming when you zoom out.
Read more →
The Bitcoin Horizon
Volatility is not risk — they are different categories. Bitcoin behaves the way it does because it is a system being adopted, not an asset being priced. Across fifteen years of price history, no rolling holding period of sixty-four months or more has ended in nominal loss. Try it against the worst entry points.
Read more →
₿
BTC vs. Real Estate
A house didn't used to be an investment. Explore the relationship between housing costs, incomes and bitcoin, and compare buying a house with buying bitcoin, looking back and projecting forward.
Read more →
₿
BTC vs. Rental Property
The landlord’s comparison: operating costs, tax and exit frictions on one side, the alternative’s risks on the other. Run your own numbers in the calculator.
Run the comparison →
Bitcoin vs. Paying Down the Mortgage
A mortgage and some spare cash each month: pay the loan off faster, or hold bitcoin? The yearly growth bitcoin would need for holding to come out ahead, how often it has managed it, and the risks on both sides — the homeowner’s chair in the real-estate series.
Find your hurdle →
Compare Housing Plans
Two ways to house yourself, side by side: buy now or rent and buy later, 20% down or 10% with the difference in bitcoin, this house or a cheaper one. The same savings and the same spending, and what each plan is worth at the end, after tax.
Compare two plans →
₿
Bitcoin and Fixed Income
Bitcoin-backed preferreds (STRC, SATA) yield 11–13% on a bitcoin collateral base. The question isn’t whether they beat treasuries — it’s whether they beat holding bitcoin. Run the crossover.
Run the calculator →
The STRC Mechanism
The deeper look at one instrument on the page above — STRC, trading below its $100 par. The discount reading and the warning reading, with live coverage math, the issuer’s rate/supply/buyback levers tracked as they move, and the sharp question: if you’re waiting for bitcoin to recover, why not simply own bitcoin?
See both readings →
₿
Borrowing Against Your Stack
Every coin sold today is a coin that compounds for someone else. Borrowing against bitcoin preserves the upside — but the strategy carries real tail risks. Model your scenario against rehypothecation tiers, see liquidation distance under stress, weigh interest cost vs. retained-coin appreciation.
Read more →
Bitcoin Lenders Compared
Twenty lenders that take bitcoin as collateral, one card each, described the same way: the published rate, the loan-to-value lines, the bitcoin price that triggers them today, who holds your coins, the terms, and the catch. Grouped, filterable, dated and sourced — nothing ranked or recommended.
See the lenders →
₿
Bitcoin-Backed Mortgages
Pledge bitcoin instead of selling it to fund a home purchase — a Fannie Mae-conforming product that preserves your stack while you live in the house. Model the pledge math against selling outright, weigh the counterparty risk, and see when the structural tradeoffs actually make sense.
Read more →
21M
The Bitcoin Fixed Share
Bitcoin's terminal supply of 21 million means your share of the network is mathematically fixed at the moment of acquisition — permanently. Watch how that compares to fiat and gold over time, then explore what a fixed share of a growing monetary network might represent.
Read more →
Disciplined Rebalancing
If bitcoin's price oscillates inside a bounded channel, a standing rule can trim into its spikes and buy back lower. Pick a preset or write your own, in multiples of trend, and see what it did in each cycle since 2011, in coins and in dollars.
Read more →
Lump Sum or Ladder In?
You have a windfall — deploy it all now, or spread it out? The answer isn’t “always one.” It depends where Bitcoin sits in the Power Law channel: decisive when cheap, patient when stretched, committed always. Drag the scrubber and watch the settled debate flip on its axis.
Find your call →
Your Bitcoin Deployment Plan
You have a sum to put into Bitcoin — all at once, laddered in, or a hybrid of the two? Model your own plan against the Power Law channel, both back across real history and forward as a range. The personal companion to Lump Sum or Ladder In?, built for your situation.
Model your plan →
Wait, or Deploy Now?
High in the channel, is it worth waiting for a lower entry — or is deploying now the better call? A position-aware look at when patience paid, and when the dip never came.
Explore the question →
The Bitcoin Retirement
A retirement account inside a bitcoin-denominated framework: see what your stack needs to be at withdrawal age to fund the lifestyle you want, given long-run trend growth. Adjustable assumptions, math you can check, no advice.
Read more →
The Bitcoin Retirement Stress Test
The sober counterpart to the retirement calculator. Drop a bear market into your plan at any year and see the sequence-of-returns cost: a crash while you are selling to live does lasting damage a crash before retirement never would. Shows failure plainly; makes no predictions.
Stress-test the plan →
Bitcoin Escape Velocity
A retirement portfolio is supposed to draw down. Under bitcoin’s historical growth curve there is a threshold past which yours runs up instead. Move any of three numbers and watch where that line sits — the stack you would need, the withdrawal you could sustain, the earliest year that crosses.
Find the threshold →
Compare Retirement Plans
Two complete plans, side by side, under one shared set of assumptions — so every difference in the outcome traces to a choice you made rather than to a friendlier market. Whether each crosses the threshold, when each runs out or holds, and what the gap between them is worth.
Weigh two plans →
Share this page
X LinkedIn Facebook