Students, Student Veterans, & Anti-Bitcoin Indoctrination

There is a proliferation of bad information in the modern era. Mainstream media, newspapers, and that ‘bro’ at work that touts his trading knowledge as gospel; we all come across bad information lately. That is no different than in the Bitcoin & shipcoin space (thanks to Matthew Kratter for the family-friendly term). There comes a time, either now as early adopters pre-2025 or in the future when you buy your bitcoins from your KYC bank, Normie, that you may come across altcoins. For me, my shipcoin time came in mid-2020 just as the pandemic caused by COVID occurred. I was stuck in my home, twiddling my thumbs, wondering what I was going to do with all this free time on my hands. At this point, I knew of Bitcoin, but I didn’t know it intimately. This story will inform you how America is slowly being taken over by these altcoins (shipcoins) with the indoctrination of university students who, honestly, probably don’t know any better. Before we speak on the current Crypto indoctrination of our American students, let’s dive down a personal story to demonstrate how one may come across shipcoins prior to Bitcoin.

I first decided that I couldn’t do anything until I planned how to get into this “crypto” market. I bought a $1.5k course that was advertised to me on YouTube due to their fearmongered advertisement speaking on the global elites taking over the world with Bitcoin, tomorrow. Yes, my ignorance threw me into distress, but hopefully that’s relatable when you first enter the space. I studied this course as if everything was on the line, because, in theory, it was. I learned technical analysis, the latest hardware wallets to buy, and the best practices for being in the crypto space -- and this was a crypto course through and through. I’d rather not talk about the second course I also bought to think I could outcompete the market.

I bought my first sats of Bitcoin in June 2020 from Coinbase (I know, spare me the insults) when the price was about $9.5k. Be wary of these KYC exchanges and do your best to buy Peer-to-Peer (P2P) via methods such as Bisq or Robosats. Other than that, make sure you self-custody your satoshis when your balance is sufficiently sized to have a usable UTXO. I divested my stock market money and put it into Bitcoin thinking it was the smart move; only time could tell. I meticulously navigated the website and security settings to make sure I could securely and safely transfer my bitcoin to my Ledger device at the time. Sweating, I entered my bitcoin wallet address and pressed the ‘send’ button from Coinbase. I had to wait an ungodly amount time (just about 10 minutes), but this was the most anxious I had ever been. I can’t believe I had gone “all in” and transferred my money to a hardware wallet. What had I done?

A few days pass and the money is still there. Is this it? Is this what being sovereign feels like? I had no clue. I didn’t even know the true meaning or feeling of being sovereign until many years later. Here’s where things go down the wrong path… I traded Bitcoin for Ethereum to stake and trade into altcoins. Ethereum deviates from Bitcoin’s core principles of being sound money. This is to say that Ethereum is trying to do everything except for being a money for the people. I hope many may not give me flak for this as most have their shipcoin days, but I still think of these days as some of the most degenerate trading days I’ve ever had. I use to ‘research’ day in and day out looking for the most up-to-date information to make certain trades. There were even times where I’d forego my responsibilities to find more information. After all that I did… alright.

Eventually, the allure of “getting rich quick” in the “shipcoin casino” with all the many altcoins and NFTs surely died down. I divested a large majority of my altcoins back into Bitcoin, but here was the thing: I had less Bitcoin than when I first bought. Now, I look back and think of what mistakes I have made to get where I am now. Although foolish, it really grew me as a Bitcoiner to this day. I truly learned why none of these other altcoins could compete with Bitcoin, why Bitcoin is a better form of money, and that being “just money” is the best use case which should not be misguided by other use cases (like storing jpegs). With my background understood, let’s discuss the topic really at hand: students at universities around the nation being placated with crypto garbage.

I, myself, am a student veteran. With this, I believe scholastic excellence and decentralized leadership (i.e. leading by example) are key aspects one should follow if we are to leave a positive impact on those around us, our community, and further, the world. That’s why two demographics I associate myself with are Student Veterans of America (SVA) and Bitcoin Veterans (BV). BV and SVA have taught me a tremendous amount about how to carry myself post-military career while being in the Bitcoin space and at school. SVA runs a Student Veteran Census and year after year have shown how student veterans outshine, outcompete, and outdo our civilian counterparts who are the typical 18-22 year old student. This is not to gloat about being a student veteran, but a “matter-of-fact” that we translate our military experience into the classroom. With these in mind, one of the values I have had imprinted into my character is to leave a lasting effect on those at my school. I believe wholeheartedly the best thing I can do at my school at the current moment is to (obviously study, but) orange pill my peers and school faculty so that they are on a Bitcoin Standard. There’s finally traction being made at my school, however, it is in the form of a “crypto club” to be inclusive to all people. I believe this is the wrong approach to take as we can be inclusive without diverting into degeneracy with shipcoins. So far, there has been very little ability to educate, respectfully, to my fellow students. I understand we all have our own journey, but it does help having a mentor to guide newer people into the space. We’ve all had a mentor or hero we’ve looked up to when we first join the space… up until you realize that they’re just as flawed as the next person. Long story short, I’m looking to guide those to the path of Bitcoin enlightenment. With that covered, finally, let’s delve into what I’m seeing at universities.

Some universities (such as MIT or FAU) have had instructors or guest speakers who are actively teaching how Bitcoin is the monetary network everyone should move to. When Mining Disrupt occurred during March 2025, I recall attending a fireside chat at Florida Atlantic University with the legendary Jimmy Song! For those who don’t know, Jimmy Song has been an influential part of the development of Bitcoin Core, the software that operates the Bitcoin network. Massachusetts Institute of Technology have taught a Bitcoin-only course (albeit taught by Gary Gensler, but nonetheless) and host a mini-conference for Bitcoin called the MIT Bitcoin Expo. These two universities have demonstrated that it is possible to showcase Bitcoin excellence.

Following this though, most universities have not become as privy to the notion that Bitcoin-only should be the route they should take. Which leads me to this point: why are our public and private universities proliferating scam coins? Some normies may say “Bitcoin is crypto, why are you in such a fuss?” or that “They aren’t doing anything wrong,” but here’s the thing, Bitcoin is different than crypto and they’re unwittingly leading their students down a path of only losing money (at best) or one of destruction (for some). For example, Yahoo! Finance showcases how many of these top school such as Cornell, Caltech, and Harvard (see here) are spreading the nonsense that are cryptocurrencies and blockchain. These are top schools known around the globe with enough clout behind their name that they should not haphazardly be teaching such trash. Granted, MIT does have a cryptoeconomics lab, however I don’t see as much shipcoinery from them. If our best schools in the nation can’t even forego the shipcoin casino, what example does my much smaller school take from this?

Ergo, referring back to student veterans in the Bitcoin space and a local leader, it is a moral obligation to do all that I can to lead my peers towards a Bitcoin future. If you are a college student, a veteran, and in the Bitcoin space, I implore you to do what you can as well to push for a Bitcoin only group at your school. Do what you can to change the minds of your faculty members, start a Bitcoin club, and maybe even run a node for your school through their engineering or IT department. We are the ones in charge of forging the path to a Bitcoin future. Without us, the local Bitcoiners in your neighborhood making a difference, we are doomed to live in a fiat caste-based slave society with no hope to escape. With Satoshi releasing a successful blockchain network with a sixteen year track record, the software to control us via CBDCs or shipcoins like XRP/Ripple is literally only one presidential candidate away from taking away what rights we have to freely transact. Be the leader at your school to show them the Bitcoin way because our brightest, young, impressionable minds are literally on the cusp of a fork in the road: either to a life of sovereignty or to a life of mediocrity and despair.

Stay Humble,

MA₿