🤦‍♂️ Why Bitcoin is Stupid (Revisited)

FIRE BTC #48 - Mr. Money Mustache doubles down

Mr. Money Mustache, the O.G. FIRE promoter, is at it again.

He appeared as a guest on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast and was asked about bitcoin toward the end. Unsurprisingly, he reiterated his stance that “bitcoin is stupid” and you should not “invest” in it.

Here is the clip:

About a year ago, I kicked off the FIRE BTC newsletter by calling out MMM on his 2018 post. Bitcoin’s value is almost double where it was when the newsletter was launched, and it’s 10x the value from his blog post 7 years ago.

MMM still thinks bitcoin is stupid. Here’s why he’s wrong…

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🎲 “Bitcoin is like a dice roll that has just been continuing to come up on sixes”

This is MMM’s way of brushing off Bitcoin’s 15-year track record as dumb luck. If the price keeps going up, it must just be chance, right?

That’s a lazy analogy. A dice roll is random. Bitcoin’s success is anything but. Its track record isn’t built on luck — it’s built on fundamentals:

• Perfectly fixed supply: 21 million, forever immovable and unchangeable.

• Growing global adoption: from cypherpunks to millions of individuals, corporations, and even governments.

• Utility as money: scarce, portable, and incorruptible.

To dismiss all of that as “luck” shows no intellectual curiosity about why people value bitcoin. If you’re serious about financial independence, you should at least ask the question: what would make millions of people worldwide adopt this as their savings vehicle?

The answer isn’t luck.

📉 “Bitcoin is entirely dependent on belief. It doesn’t generate income. It’s speculation, not an investment.”

He continues: “I’d rather own something that generates ongoing income like a rental house or a business.”

MMM uses a narrow definition of “investment”: something that spits off dividends or rent checks. Anything else, in his view, is speculation.

But most FIRE folks aren’t “investors” in that sense either. Buying VTSAX means specifically not doing the things you’d do when assessing a particular business — analyzing cash flows, reading balance sheets, or calculating earnings multiples. It’s simply saving. You buy the whole market and bet that it will continue to preserve and grow your purchasing power as it has done historically.

Bitcoin does the same thing — only more directly and more potently. Its fundamentals are the qualities that make it the soundest form of money humanity has ever had. Its permanently fixed supply makes it more scarce than any other savings option. It is decentralized, meaning no one can control it, dilute it, or confiscate it. And it is portable and self-custodied, giving individuals direct ownership without relying on a gatekeeper. It’s the first true savings technology of the digital age — superior in many fundamental ways to MMM’s preferred “investments.”

Now, rental houses and businesses do generate cash flow, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But MMM makes a performative contradiction: that’s not what he actually advocates for in his own FIRE strategy. He tells his followers to put their money into VTSAX, a broad stock market index, which is not primarily about income, but appreciation. In fact, the entire FIRE methodology — the 4% rule and the dream of early retirement — depends on your portfolio growing in value over decades and then being sold down gradually to fund expenses.

That’s saving and speculation. You’re betting the market will keep going up. And historically, it has. But the same logic applies to bitcoin: its value grows as adoption spreads and demand increases against a fixed supply.

So if you’re fine with owning VTSAX to save, and your whole approach to personal finance depends on its value increasing, dismissing bitcoin as “not an investment” because it has no cash flows makes zero sense. They’re both bets on future price appreciation. Bitcoin just happens to be the stronger one.

📈 “This article [his 2018 post] is not about the price.”

MMM insists his critique of bitcoin has nothing to do with price — that even if it went to one cent or four quadrillion dollars, it’s still just speculation.

But price is the clearest signal of adoption in a fixed-supply asset. With bitcoin, the only way price rises over time is if more people choose to hold it. That’s a pure reflection of growing utility and demand.

The irony here was already stated above, but I’ll repeat it: the traditional FIRE path is just as dependent on price. The entire 4% rule works only if the market keeps going up. Without long-term appreciation in stocks, nobody retires early. That’s the foundation of the strategy.

So dismissing bitcoin’s price as irrelevant while depending on stock market growth is a double standard.

💰 “I don’t need bitcoin. I’m already financially abundant and retired.”

That’s great for MMM — truly. Retiring at 30 is an impressive achievement, and he’s clearly done something right.

The problem is that thousands of people look to him for advice, and he’s telling them to ignore the most successful asset of the past 15 years without even taking a serious look at why it works. That blind spot has cost his followers precious time — maybe years of their working lives — that they could have bought back with bitcoin. How much wealthier would his followers be today if they had used even 10% of their savings to buy bitcoin instead of stocks?

It also comes from a place of privilege. MMM can access U.S. index funds. He has a stable banking system. He’s playing the game from the best seat at the table. Millions of people worldwide don’t have that luxury. For them, bitcoin may be the only way to save in something that can’t be inflated, confiscated, or closed off by their government.

MMM insists he doesn’t need bitcoin, but the reality is that it doesn’t matter. He already owns it indirectly. The broad market index funds he champions include companies with bitcoin on their balance sheets. Over time, more and more of the returns in the stock market will be powered by bitcoin’s growth. Whether he likes it or not, he’s exposed.

So he can keep saying he doesn’t need bitcoin. But the truth is, he already has it.

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That’s it for this week — thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Trey ✌️