Autonomy in Practice

Bitcoin is more than just freedom in theory...

Jun 28, 2025

This work of fiction is for my friend who has taken the time to show me his point of view on Bitcoin and its role as an act of defiance. It is a follow up to my previous post titled, “Freedom for Sale!”

I didn’t buy my first Bitcoin because I believed in freedom.

I bought it because my bank froze my account for the third time that month. I was driving Lyft and selling handmade soaps online, barely keeping up with bills. Then one morning, I woke up to an email: “Your account has been temporarily restricted due to suspicious activity.” No explanation. No timeline. Just frozen.

Rent was due in five days.

I called and waited on hold for two hours. The customer service rep told me they couldn’t verify my income sources. I asked what that meant. He said he didn’t know, that compliance had flagged it, that there was nothing he could do.

I hung up and screamed into my pillow.

That night, I scrolled Reddit for solutions. Someone wrote, “Start stacking sats. Just a little. No one can freeze your wallet.”

At first, I laughed. Bitcoin was for rich tech bros. For YouTube guys flexing Lambos and leverage trades. I couldn’t even afford groceries. But the next day, I took ten dollars in cash tips from rides and bought a tiny fraction of a coin on a peer-to-peer app.

It felt stupid. Like buying a lottery ticket with money I needed for gas. But I sent it to a non-custodial wallet on my phone and watched the balance flicker: 0.00002345 BTC.

I didn’t tell anyone. I just kept doing it. Five dollars here, ten there. I didn’t think of it as investing. It was more like tucking away coins under a floorboard. Useless today, maybe priceless tomorrow. But most importantly, no one could touch it.

That’s when I learned the real difference.

Most people buy Bitcoin on apps like Cash App or PayPal. It feels simple: click a button, buy, sell, move back to dollars instantly. But those apps control your Bitcoin. You don’t actually own it. They hold the keys. They can freeze it, block withdrawals, report you to the IRS, or shut your account overnight, just like a bank. They’re convenient—but convenience is always a trade for control.

I didn’t want that. I wanted autonomy.

So I learned how to buy from other people directly, with cash, using peer-to-peer platforms. I learned how to use a cold wallet and store my seed phrase on laminated paper tucked inside an old deodorant stick in my bathroom drawer. I learned how to use Tor and VPNs to connect to exchanges anonymously. I learned about volatility, watching my little stash swing up and down, sometimes losing half its dollar value overnight.

But every time I checked, it was still there.

No one could freeze it. No one could take it away with a phone call or a compliance flag. No one even knew I had it.

One winter, rideshare demand dried up. The soaps weren’t selling. Rent was overdue by two weeks. I didn’t want to cash out my Bitcoin, but I transferred a fraction to a friend who swapped it for cash at his job. He took a small cut for the risk. It wasn’t enough to pay everything, but it kept the lights on and bought me time to catch up.

I realized then what Bitcoin really was.

It wasn’t freedom in the grand sense. It wasn’t a revolution. It was autonomy. A small, stubborn piece of my life that no bank could freeze, no government could seize with a click, no corporation could lock behind a password reset. A value that belonged only to me.

I’m not rich now. Most days I’m still scraping by. But every week, I buy a little more. Some days I can’t afford it, and that’s okay. It’s not about getting rich quick. It’s about knowing that somewhere, beyond the grip of landlords and banks and payroll processors, there is a quiet pile of value that belongs to me alone.

Sometimes my friends ask why I bother.

“Why not just use Cash App? Isn’t all this VPN and hardware wallet stuff paranoid?”

I tell them I’m not paranoid. I’m paying attention. If the system can freeze my bank account today, it can freeze my Cash App tomorrow. If the government decides Bitcoin is a threat, they’ll shut down every easy on-ramp overnight. Then what?

I don’t want easy. I want unseizable.

Now some of them are doing the same. Five dollars a week. Ten if they can. We share tips on privacy tools, on where to buy without KYC, on how to store keys safely. It’s not a movement. It’s not a rebellion. But it’s something.

Something that feels like planting seeds in secret. Something that feels like building a world inside the cracks of this one. Something that, for the first time in a long time, feels like it might actually be ours.

Because autonomy doesn’t come all at once. It comes one small choice at a time. One satoshi at a time. One quiet refusal to stay fully owned by a system that sees us as nothing but labor and debt.

That’s what Bitcoin is to me.

Not freedom in theory.
Autonomy in practice.

This story came from a conversation I had with a friend. We were talking about Bitcoin, wondering if it’s really a tool for freedom or just another playground for the rich. He said something that stuck with me:
“Once you see it, you won't be able to unsee it. It's that sort of thing. It is the part you're missing. Control of the money is everything. So, take away that control and you liberate yourself.”
At first, I shrugged it off. I’ve seen how billionaires and mining cartels use Bitcoin to build power. I’ve seen apps like Cash App and PayPal sell it under a banking model that strips away its promise of autonomy. I’ve seen Wall Street turn it into ETFs to keep it under their thumb.
But his words kept echoing. Control of the money is everything. So, take away that control and you liberate yourself.
I started to think about what Bitcoin means for people with no assets, no savings, no power. For someone living paycheck to paycheck, Bitcoin isn’t a ticket to wealth. It’s a way to hold something no one else can seize, freeze, or devalue. A way to create a small foothold of independence in a system built to keep people owned.
That’s where this story comes from. It’s fiction grounded in reality, imagining what Bitcoin could look like if people used it as a tool for quiet autonomy instead of chasing quick wealth. When Bitcoin is treated like an investment, it becomes another asset class controlled by the rich. When it’s used to store value outside banks and governments, it becomes a different kind of power—one they can’t easily take back.
This conversation shifted how I see Bitcoin’s role in our lives. Not freedom as an abstract idea, but autonomy as a daily choice. That’s the part I was missing.