Real stories from people around the world whose lives were changed by Bitcoin — not through investing, but through necessity, survival, and transformation.
Wherever you are on your journey, there’s a clear place to begin.
For the first time in history, humanity has access to a form of money that cannot be seized, debased, or manipulated. Bitcoin represents a once-in-a-generation innovation — and most people don’t know it yet.
Bitcoin Strategy Group exists to change that. From high-end executive consulting and corporate treasury strategy to children’s storybooks and graphic novels — we meet every audience exactly where they are.
The goal is simple: separate money from the state, and give every person on earth access to sound money — one conversation, one book, one story at a time.
Every medium reaches a different audience. Every story opens a new door.
Whether you’re an individual, a business, or an organization — the first step is a conversation. Reach out directly or fill out the form below and Tyler will get back to you personally.
After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, Tyler began his career at Groupon during its pre-IPO, hyper-growth years. He later spent nearly a decade as an Investment Advisor at Merrill Lynch, advising high-net-worth families and organizations across hundreds of millions in assets — before earning his Executive MBA from UCLA Anderson.
Over time, Tyler concluded that his personal values no longer aligned with those of the large banking institutions or the broader financial system — one that disproportionately benefits a small percentage of participants while the majority bear the long-term effects of inflation and currency debasement.
Tyler relocated to San Luis Obispo and founded Bitcoin Strategy Group — a media and consulting company at the intersection of Bitcoin, AI, and storytelling. Through physical content, digital content, and advisory services, Bitcoin Strategy Group’s mission is to get as many individuals and organizations “off of zero” Bitcoin.
Tyler lives in San Luis Obispo with his wife, Caitlin, and their two dogs, Gordy and Bodhi.
“Most of us do not arrive at Bitcoin through comfort. We arrive through pain, disillusionment, struggle, and eventually clarity.”
Tyler first discovered Bitcoin in 2012. But he did not truly understand it until 2023 — after his life completely fell apart.
From the outside, he looked successful. A degree from Notre Dame, an Executive MBA from UCLA, a career at a major bank helping manage millions of dollars, living in Santa Monica — spending a decade helping the top 1% get wealthier. But behind the scenes, he was suffering.
More than 100 times under anesthesia. Multiple spinal fusions. A full lumbar laminectomy. Dozens of stem cell treatments, radio frequency ablations, nerve blocks. 50+ of LA’s top doctors. 200+ prescription medications. And only getting worse.
He was living in what felt like the matrix — trusting elite institutions, elite doctors, and a system that looked impressive from the outside but was deeply broken underneath. When doctors were debating another fusion, a morphine pump, a fentanyl patch, or a spinal cord stimulator, AI cut through the noise and gave a simple answer:
“You have advanced Degenerative Disc Disease, and there is a simple way to manage this. Get a total disc replacement, then walk. Walk as much as you possibly can.”
Ten years. Nearly $1M spent on medical care. $28M charged to insurance. And it took AI 10 minutes to explain clearly what was happening and what needed to be done. My experience taught me something unexpected. The same institutions I’d trusted to guide my health had failed me. That realization made me question other systems I’d taken for granted, including money.
After the disc replacement, Tyler and AI turned to finances — and arrived at a simple framework: two assets only. Cash and Bitcoin. Cash for short-term bills. Bitcoin as a savings account — to hold, grow, and build upon forever.
Following the surgery, Tyler began rebuilding his life and business around AI and the Bitcoin standard. The experience forged a conviction that now drives everything he does.
“Bitcoin is rarely an overnight intellectual conversion. It comes in stages. For many of us, conviction only comes after despair. After the illusion breaks. After the system fails us personally. Only then do we begin to understand what Bitcoin actually is.”
The goal of This Is Why We Bitcoin is to share human stories — stories from around the world that capture the emotional and philosophical journey that so many go through before arriving at full conviction. Those conversations eventually became the foundation for This Is Why We Bitcoin, a project dedicated to preserving the human stories behind one of the most important monetary shifts of our time. Right now, Tyler is laser focused on two projects: The Saylor Series and This Is Why We Bitcoin — 21 stories from 21 individuals across the U.S., South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and beyond who discovered Bitcoin through inflation, war, conflict, pain, and struggle.
Very few people wake up one day and casually decide to go all in on Bitcoin. Most get here through suffering first. Through broken systems. Through realizing the world they trusted is not what it seemed.
“There is no greater cause I would prefer to dedicate my life to than the separation of Money and State.”
FIX THE MONEY. FIX THE WORLD.
— Tyler L. Tabit
This Is Why We Bitcoin is a subsidiary of Bitcoin Strategy Group, LLC.
Bitcoin Strategy Group is the parent media and consulting company behind This Is Why We Bitcoin. While TIWWB shares the human stories behind Bitcoin, BSG helps individuals and organizations apply those lessons through education and advisory work.
Every balance sheet is different. The goal is to provide clear, practical frameworks that help clients “get off zero” — often beginning with a modest 1%–5% allocation — and scale from there with confidence.
Choose a topic and move at your own pace through clear, practical Bitcoin education.
Choose a topic below to build your understanding of Bitcoin one step at a time.
A plain-English introduction to digital money that no bank, company, or government controls.
Read topicSee how Ford’s energy currency idea anticipated many of Bitcoin’s sound-money themes.
Read topicCompare the same house priced in dollars and Bitcoin to see how currencies tell different stories.
Read topicExplore a long-term lens for Bitcoin’s growth pattern with an illustrative interactive chart.
Read topicLearn why the end of the dollar’s gold convertibility changed money, prices, and debt.
Read topicLearn why Bitcoin can be divided into tiny units and how sats make everyday amounts easier to discuss.
Read topicLook at why housing, education, healthcare, and other essentials feel harder to afford over time.
Read topicCompare the long-term tradeoffs of the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Bitcoin in plain language.
Read topicCompare ETFs, regulated custodians, and self custody in simple beginner-friendly terms.
Read topicUnderstand why balance sheets, payments, and treasury strategy are changing for businesses.
Read topicRead human examples of Bitcoin helping people and organizations find a second financial option.
Read topicBitcoin is a kind of money that lives on the internet and is not controlled by any bank, company, or government.
There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin, so no one can quietly print more and make yours worth less. You can send it to anyone, anywhere in the world, at any hour, without asking permission and without a middleman taking a cut.
Think of it as digital cash that you truly own: it is yours to hold, yours to spend, and no one can freeze it or take it away when you control your own keys.
Curious how this connects to real people’s lives? Read a story from someone whose life changed because of Bitcoin.
A satoshi, often shortened to a sat, is the smallest standard unit of Bitcoin.
One Bitcoin equals 100,000,000 satoshis. That means you do not need to buy or use a whole Bitcoin; small everyday amounts can be measured in sats instead.
Sats make Bitcoin easier to understand because they turn tiny decimals into simple whole numbers. Instead of saying 0.00010000 BTC, you can say 10,000 sats.
The larger unit most people recognize when they first hear about Bitcoin.
The smaller units that make saving, spending, and teaching Bitcoin more approachable.
You don’t need thousands of dollars to start. Many people build their Bitcoin savings a few dollars and a few sats at a time.
For example, someone investing $10 a day in sats, no matter the price, accumulates Bitcoin gradually over time without needing to buy a whole coin at once.
Curious how this connects to real businesses and treasury decisions? See the bigger picture.
In 1921, Henry Ford proposed the concept of an energy backed currency in an interview published on the front page of the New York Tribune, titled “Ford Would Replace Gold With Energy Currency and Stop Wars.” Ford envisioned a scarce, globally neutral currency backed by energy rather than gold, one that could transmit value instantly across the world. Ford believed the existing monetary system encouraged conflict and concentrated too much power in the hands of financial institutions.
“We shall demonstrate to the world two things, first, the practicability, second, the desirability of displacing gold as the basis of currency and substituting in its place the world’s imperishable natural wealth.”
Ford argued bankers would oppose it because it threatened their power, famously stating “the cause of all wars is gold.” His idea was not Bitcoin, but it pointed toward many of the same problems Bitcoin was later designed to address: money that does not depend on gold, banks, or political trust.
Nearly 90 years before Bitcoin existed, Ford was describing core ideas behind it: scarcity, neutrality, energy, global transfer, and resistance to financial capture. What he lacked was the technology. Bitcoin made the idea practical.
Curious how Bitcoin’s growth has followed its own predictable pattern over time? Explore the Power Law.
The median US home price rose from $288,400 in 2016 to $434,700 in 2024. Priced in dollars, housing looks more expensive. Priced in Bitcoin, the same home tells the opposite story.
In dollar terms, the number rose by more than $146,000.
In Bitcoin terms, the same home became dramatically cheaper.
Housing is flat when priced in Bitcoin. It only looks expensive when priced in a currency that is constantly losing value.
“Inflation is not an act of God. Inflation is a policy.”
You don’t need a whole Bitcoin to benefit from this. Learn how Bitcoin breaks into smaller units.
For nearly 200 years, the purchasing power of the US dollar stayed relatively stable. Prices went up during wars and down during peacetime. The system had natural checks. Then on August 15, 1971, President Nixon ended the convertibility of the US dollar to gold. That one decision changed everything.
Under the Bretton Woods system, the dollar was backed by gold at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce. Countries could exchange dollars for gold. This kept governments from printing too much money because every dollar had to be backed by something real.
Nixon suspended the gold standard to deal with inflation from Vietnam War spending and domestic programs. Temporarily became permanently. The dollar became a fiat currency, backed by nothing but government promise. Within two years, the Bretton Woods system had collapsed entirely.
The CPI chart shows prices were essentially flat for nearly 200 years before 1971, then began a nearly uninterrupted rise that has never stopped. The national debt, which had been relatively contained, began its now-famous vertical climb immediately after 1971.
Both the CPI chart and the national debt chart have a clear inflection point at 1971. That is not a coincidence.
Many Bitcoin supporters view Bitcoin’s fixed supply as a direct response to the challenges created by modern fiat monetary systems. Bitcoin permanently limits its total supply to 21 million coins, by code, making it fundamentally different from currencies that can be expanded at any time by any government.
Many Americans feel that housing, education, healthcare, and other essentials have become harder to afford over time. This page explores some of the long-term economic trends behind that experience, and why a growing number of people are rethinking how they save.
A four year degree at a private university cost roughly $50,000 per year in 2006. By 2026, that same education costs $80,000 to $100,000 per year. That is $320,000 to $400,000 for a single undergraduate degree before housing, food, or living expenses. Graduate school adds another $200,000 to $300,000.
The education spending chart shows something striking: inflation-adjusted spending per student has risen over 140% since 1970, while reading, math, and science scores have remained completely flat. The cost of education has exploded. The measured outcomes have not kept pace.
The median US home price has risen more than $146,000 in dollar terms between 2016 and 2024. Priced in Bitcoin, that same home became dramatically cheaper over the same period. In many major US cities, the gap between what someone earns and what a home costs has widened to a point that even high earners find themselves priced out.
Tyler Tabit, the founder of This Is Why We Bitcoin, graduated from Notre Dame, earned an Executive MBA from UCLA Anderson, spent nearly a decade as a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch managing hundreds of millions in client assets, held a mortgage license, and helped dozens of people buy homes. When he tried to qualify for a modest two bedroom condo at age 36, he did not come close to qualifying. Not even with a co-signer.
That experience, more than any economic chart, is what led him to a simple conclusion: if someone with his credentials and background cannot buy a home in this system, something is fundamentally broken.
The issue is not personal failure or irresponsible spending. The issue is that a currency which can be printed without limit loses purchasing power over time, and that loss falls hardest on people who save in that currency rather than in assets.
Those who hold real assets, real estate, stocks, or other stores of value, tend to see their wealth rise as the currency weakens. Those who hold cash savings watch the same cash buy less every year.
Saving still matters. What you save in matters just as much.
This page is not an argument against working hard, saving, or planning for the future. It is an argument for understanding what you are saving in, and why the choice of asset matters as much as the decision to save at all.
This reflects the founder’s personal perspective and experience. It is educational material, not financial advice.
If you decide to do something about the purchasing power problem, there are three long-term investment approaches most people consider. Here is an honest, plain-language look at each one, along with their historical performance and tradeoffs.
The S&P 500 has produced roughly a 10% average annual return over long periods based on historical data. It is the least volatile of these three options because it spreads exposure across many large US companies.
It is widely recommended for long-term investors who want steady, broad market exposure without having to pick individual stocks. Warren Buffett’s standing advice to most individual investors is to buy a low-cost S&P 500 index fund, hold it, and keep buying regardless of market conditions.
The Nasdaq has historically delivered roughly double the S&P 500 return over 10 year periods, but with significantly more volatility. Its heavier weighting toward technology companies means larger swings in both directions.
That can mean a higher potential ceiling, but it also means higher potential drawdowns. The same concentration that can help during strong technology markets can hurt when those companies fall out of favor.
Bitcoin is the most volatile by far, and it has also had the highest historical ceiling. From 2013 to 2023, Bitcoin delivered a cumulative return of 315,678% and an annualized return of 124%, appearing at the top of the annual performance table in most years compared to other major asset classes.
The volatility is real and should be understood before investing. Bitcoin also had years of significant drawdowns, including minus 58% in 2014, minus 73% in 2018, and minus 65% in 2022.
Higher potential returns usually come with higher volatility. The right choice depends on your goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance.
Regardless of which option you choose, dollar cost averaging, buying a fixed amount at regular intervals regardless of price, is one of the most widely recommended approaches.
It means you buy at the top, the bottom, and everywhere in between, which removes the pressure of trying to time the market.
This page is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Individual circumstances vary, and a licensed financial advisor should be consulted for personalized guidance.
Once you decide you want to own Bitcoin, the next question is how to hold it. There are three main approaches, each with different tradeoffs between convenience, security, and control.
A Bitcoin ETF is available through standard brokerage accounts at platforms like Fidelity, E-Trade, or Robinhood. It is a familiar structure for people who already use brokerage accounts.
A Bitcoin ETF is a paper claim on Bitcoin. You can only buy and sell during market hours, settlement takes 24 to 48 hours, and you cannot transfer it to a personal wallet or take direct ownership of the Bitcoin itself.
This option can work well for a retirement account where you do not plan to access the funds for many years.
A regulated Bitcoin custodian holds actual Bitcoin on your behalf. Services like BitGo use institutional cold storage for clients who want professional security while still relying on a third party to hold the asset.
BitGo is insured up to $250 million, licensed in all 50 states, publicly traded, and manages over $100 billion in Bitcoin.
This is closer to owning the real asset than an ETF, because the custodian is holding Bitcoin for you. The tradeoff is that you are still trusting another company to safeguard it.
Self custody means you hold your own private keys. Only you have access to your Bitcoin. No bank, no government, and no third party can freeze, seize, or restrict it.
This option requires the most personal responsibility. If you lose your keys, you lose access permanently.
For people in countries with unstable governments or histories of asset seizure, self custody is often considered essential rather than optional.
Each approach involves different tradeoffs between convenience, security, and sovereignty.
Most people start with an ETF or custodian and move toward self custody as they become more comfortable with the technology.
This page is educational information only. It is not financial advice.
Bitcoin’s price looks chaotic day to day. But when it is plotted on a long-term chart, it has followed a remarkably consistent growth pattern for more than 15 years. That pattern is often called a power law.
Past and current dates from January 2011 onward show a historical estimate interpolated from known Bitcoin price anchor points. Future dates use the simplified published approximation price = 10^(-16.493) x days^5.68, where days are counted from Bitcoin's genesis block on January 3, 2009. This is not a price prediction, investment recommendation, or financial advice.
A power law means growth does not happen in a straight line. It follows a curve that can accelerate early on and gradually stabilize as it grows. Similar patterns appear in nature and society, including earthquake frequency, city population distribution, and river networks.
Three structural reasons are often cited for why Bitcoin may follow this kind of pattern: network effects, where every new user can increase the value of the network similar to early internet or telephone adoption; a fixed and permanently capped supply of 21 million coins; and an energy cost anchor from mining, which ties new supply to real-world energy expenditure.
This is a useful long-term lens for thinking about Bitcoin’s trajectory, not a price prediction or financial advice.
Curious what this means for a business balance sheet? See how the math could apply.
Start with the problem every balance sheet is quietly facing — then the new option most businesses don’t yet know they have.
The business landscape looks nothing like it did seven years ago, before COVID. The ground shifted — costs, customers, capital, the cost of money itself — and the old playbook hasn’t caught up.
Meanwhile, cash sitting on a balance sheet quietly loses purchasing power every single year. It still reads the same number on paper, but it buys less every time you look. And for most businesses, there has never been a real second option — just dollars in the bank, slowly leaking value.
Businesses that haven’t adapted to the shift are already behind.
Starting January 2025, new FASB guidance lets every business in America add Bitcoin to its balance sheet with fair value accounting treatment — one that flows through to EBITDA rather than sitting trapped in an impairment-only corner of the books.
This matters more than it sounds. Since 1940, the SEC effectively kept non-bank businesses out of holding securities on their balance sheets, pushing nearly everyone toward dollars or Treasuries by default. That default has shaped corporate treasuries for over eighty years.
Bitcoin is not a security — so it sits outside that restriction entirely. For the first time, ordinary businesses have a clean, accountable way to hold something other than cash.
Every business now has a second option for its balance sheet: cash that quietly loses value every year, or an asset that has compounded at a very different rate over the last decade. The question isn’t whether to choose one or the other — it’s the split.
Picture two similar businesses on the same street — same lanes, same customers, same cash in the bank. Both face the same choice. They make different treasury decisions, then carry on running their business as usual.
Keeps every dollar in the bank. The balance still reads the same number years later — but after a long stretch of rising prices, that money buys noticeably less than it used to.
Keeps most of its cash for day-to-day operations and moves a portion into Bitcoin for the long term. Same business, same lanes — but its balance sheet is built on two different assets instead of one.
The point isn’t a number. It’s that two near-identical businesses, starting from the same place, end up with very different balance sheets over time simply because of one decision about where to keep long-term money.
An illustrative side-by-side comparison, not a forecast. It makes no specific return predictions or guarantees — the two paths differ because the underlying assets behave differently over time.
As of March 30, 2026, Square turned on Bitcoin Lightning payments by default across its merchant network — roughly 4 million businesses worldwide. No new hardware, no manual setup. If you run Square, it’s already there.
Bitcoin payments through Square cost nothing through 2026, then move to a flat 1% fee in 2027 — compared to the 2–3% most merchants already pay on card transactions, with no chargeback risk.
With payments already flowing, the real decision is simple: does the business keep the Bitcoin it receives, or auto-convert it straight to cash? That choice ties directly back to the split.
We work across the whole business — business model, cash flow, debt, operations, and balance sheet — not just one corner of it. And we build that work around two new inputs most consultants aren’t using yet.
Artificial intelligence, applied across operations and decision-making — helping the business move faster, leaner, and smarter than it could a few years ago.
Bitcoin, used deliberately on the balance sheet and in payments — a second option for long-term money that simply didn’t exist for most businesses before.
Together, these help businesses close the gap and adapt to a landscape that has fundamentally changed — instead of running the old playbook against a world that moved on.
Every business is different. The split, the payments, the timing — all of it depends on where you stand today. The first step is a conversation.
The first collector’s edition is being built around 21 people whose lives changed because Bitcoin gave them a second option. These are stories of inflation, censorship, migration, medical hardship, entrepreneurship, family, faith, and freedom — told by the people who lived them.
Bitcoin history is not only written in code, blocks, and price charts. It is also written in kitchen tables, closed bank accounts, long walks home, small businesses, border crossings, and families trying to hold onto the value of their work.
In a small coastal town with no bank and one ATM, a community built the world’s first Bitcoin circular economy from scratch. What started as a local experiment eventually inspired an entire country to make Bitcoin legal tender.
Across parts of Africa, communities are using Bitcoin not as an investment but as infrastructure — a way to earn, save, and transact outside of banking systems that have historically excluded them.
In 2019, Lebanese banks began freezing accounts and blocking withdrawals. The local currency lost nearly 99% of its value. For millions of people, money they had saved for decades became nearly worthless overnight. Some found a way out.
Venezuela’s currency has lost 99.99% of its value over the past decade. Millions have left. Those who stayed needed a way to preserve what little they had left. Bitcoin became that way for some of them.
When people are forced to flee their country, they can’t take their business, their land, or their savings held in a local bank. Bitcoin is the first form of money in history that can cross a border in your head.
A young woman was on track for medical school and an MBA. Then she ran the numbers on what that life would actually cost her — in debt, in time, and in the years she would never get back. She made a different choice. The math worked out.
The first edition of This Is Why We Bitcoin is being shaped as a historical record of the human side of Bitcoin.
If Bitcoin helped you protect savings, move money, build a business, survive a broken system, or see the world differently, your story could become part of the historical record.
Submit a short note below, or use the contact method and include enough detail for Tyler’s team to follow up.
A portfolio of media projects spanning every audience — from high-net-worth executives to children learning what money is for the very first time. One mission. Many stories.
A premium hardcover book telling 21 real-life stories from individuals and organizations across the globe who have turned to Bitcoin — not as a speculative investment, but as a necessity. Based on original interviews and firsthand accounts gathered through travel and direct conversations with people living in diverse economic and political environments, including regions affected by inflation, banking restrictions, and financial instability.
Each chapter presents a unique perspective, highlighting how Bitcoin has been used to preserve savings in the face of currency debasement, move money across borders when traditional systems fail, and provide financial security and independence.
Or do you have a Bitcoin story or journey you would like to share with our team? If so, please submit it below or email it to us and we will consider publishing it in the upcoming book This Is Why We Bitcoin.
We view Bitcoin as a global and neutral asset. So no matter where you are from, no matter your background — we would love to hear your story and share it with the world.
Submit Your Story →A long-term, multi-volume collection that captures and distills the most important ideas, frameworks, and insights from Michael Saylor’s work on Bitcoin and the future of finance. Planned as a 21-volume series released over the next decade, each book is designed as a high-end, library edition collectible — crafted with premium materials and timeless design.
The vision is to create a definitive body of work that not only preserves these ideas, but presents them in a format worthy of their significance — books that are meant to be studied, collected, and kept for generations.
Financial literacy for everyone — brought to life through characters, adventures, and real-world scenarios that make understanding money genuinely fun. Instead of lectures or technical jargon, the story explores what money is, why inflation happens, how savings are affected over time, and why Bitcoin exists.
A quarterly Bitcoin magazine and newsletter dedicated to education, storytelling, and thought leadership. Serving everyone from families and entrepreneurs to executives and nonprofit leaders — bridging the gap between emerging technology and everyday decision-making.
Two essential documentaries that ask the most important questions about money, government, and freedom. Start here if you’re new to Bitcoin — or share these with someone who needs to see them.
These films represent the kind of storytelling Bitcoin Strategy Group believes in — work that doesn’t just explain Bitcoin technically, but communicates why it matters on a human level.
The best Bitcoin education doesn’t start with whitepapers. It starts with stories that make people feel the weight of the problem — and then reveals the solution.
The men who built this nation warned us — in strikingly clear language — about the dangers of central banking, paper currency, and the concentration of monetary power. Their words, written centuries ago, read like a diagnosis of today.
The Founding Fathers believed monetary power should rest with the people — not centralized banking institutions. As students of history, they understood that paper (fiat) money has always lost value over time, often leading to instability and widening economic inequality. Furthermore it centralizes control to the Federal Government and away from the people.
In Tyler’s words: “Bitcoin takes power away from the State and restores it back to the people. Bitcoin represents the greatest peaceful protest of our time.”
Below are their words. Read them slowly. Then ask yourself: what would they think of the Federal Reserve?
Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and defender of classical liberalism, foresaw Bitcoin decades before Satoshi Nakamoto. The “sly roundabout way” he described — introducing something governments cannot stop — is exactly what Bitcoin became.
In 1921, Henry Ford proposed an “energy currency” — scarce, backed by energy, beyond the reach of bankers — that would displace gold and end the financial incentives for war. He envisioned something remarkably similar to Bitcoin: a digital, energy-backed, apolitical store of value.
The warnings were there. The vision was there. What was missing was the technology. In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto delivered it. Bitcoin is not a new idea — it is the culmination of centuries of thinking about what honest money should be.
