'New Money' is now 'Bearly Learning'

I'm back to writing and plan to write about more than Bitcoin

Hello HODLers,

It’s been a long time! My apologies for the abrupt end of my New Money newsletter over two years ago. 2021 was a pretty sh*tty year for me and I hit peak burnout from life. I ended an almost 8 year relationship, was betrayed by my business partner at DAIM, ended up in the hospital from COVID and had a major back injury. All of this set in motion a transformative two year period that allowed me to reconnect with myself and evolve as a human while broadening my interests and passions around tools, systems and habits beyond Bitcoin that I believe are good for people, empower the individual and improve the human experience. I’m very proud of the person I’ve evolved into and hope you will continue to read along as I explore topics that overlap and intersect with the principles and foundations of Bitcoin.

For those needing a refresher, my name is Adam Pokornicky, although most of my friends call me “The Bear”. I’ve been a Bitcoiner since early 2013, discovering it 2012 after learning Julian Assange and Wikileaks were cut off from the financial system. I believe in the mission of Wikileaks in speaking truth to power by exposing government and corporate wrongdoing through publishing leaked documents and classified information. Their belief in transparency and accountability, that the public has a right to know what powerful institutions are doing is essential for a healthy democracy. When Wikileaks were cut off from the financial system for exposing civilian casualties and other abuses in Iraq, I became absolutely fascinated about how they were accepting money from humans around the world from this thing called Bitcoin. This sent me flying down the Bitcoin rabbit hole with my two friends Mike and Mike where we talked about and learned about Bitcoin together over the next six months and eventually sent our first dollars to a shady Magic The Gathering Exchange(Mt. Gox) in Japan. Since then, I’ve spent the past decade+ trying to help people understand and allocate savings to Bitcoin. Early subscribers started reading my newsletter back in the 2017 bull market when it was ‘CryptoBits’, with the remainder of the 3,600+ subscribers signing up in when I rebranded it to ‘New Money’ back in 2019 and served as an Investment Advisor for Bitcoin.

While I remain steadfastly dedicated to and invested in Bitcoin(only) and will continue to write about it, I’ve become obsessed with learning and integrating into my knowledge center, lifestyles and systems that I believe are tools of human empowerment and relatable to the values of Bitcoin and the sovereign individual. Examples include Bitcoin, Biohacking/Longevity, Food/Nutrition, Mycelium, Spirituality/Consciousness/Enlightenment and Psychedelics. Thus, ‘Bearly Learning’ and it’s sister Instagram account “Bearly Learning” (follow for more condensed visual models) will reflect that evolution of me, “The Bear” and my never ending thirst for learning and how I wish to connect with the world.

Because I have not written in well over two years, I wanted to give everyone who signed up for a Bitcoin newsletter the option to “OPT OUT” before I start writing again. Not everyone will be interested in the above topics and I ask that you respectfully hit the unsubscribe button if you are NOT open to receiving perspectives that might be differ from how you perceive the world or the constructs you believe in.

Mental Models and Systems for Living

For those of you that remain with me, I encourage you to maintain an open mind, message me, comment, add to the conversation and share relatable knowledge you’re learning about too. With the new direction of ‘Bearly Learning’ I will occasionally dive deep into mental models and systems that I believe are worth considering.

My general day to day mental model is to question everything, think outside the box and peel back the onion to seek and understand all sides of every issue. The box is a generic term through which you view and interpret the world. For most, you’re always inside the box, in one compartment or another. Classic symbolism of a Jack-in-the-box is a metaphor for a controlled mind. The design and function of Jack-in-the-Boxes tend to be relatively uniform, hinting at the potential for homogenization and loss of individuality when minds are controlled by the same external forces. The sudden pop-up of the Jack can symbolize how external forces can suddenly and unexpectedly influence our thoughts and actions, potentially revealing deeper, hidden aspects of ourselves. This resonates with the idea of a controlled mind being susceptible to manipulation or external triggers.

The box constrains what you see, what you think, how you feel, and what you do. And the less aware of them you are, the more power these constraints have over you. Although we’ve had a hand in programming our mental model over the course of our lives, it is being continuously updated according to our brain’s set of survival-based criteria. Our particular model of the world determines what we pay attention to, how we interpret and explain what we pay attention to, and the meaning we assign to events. In other words, learned skills, habits, and implicit biases that influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

Most humans rely heavily on the conscious part of our brain. We are best served by deliberately stretching and expanding are minds via physical activity, learning, exposing ourselves to new situations, different viewpoints and challenging ourselves. As we continue learning and evolving, more and more information is turned over to the unconscious part of the brain that is outside are awareness. Over time we develop greater proficiency and capacity in part because our brain is making associations and anticipating what is coming next. Physical activity and exercise is cognitive candy, stimulating one of the brain’s most powerful growth factors, BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) in the region of our brain deeply involved in human cognition. The older you get, the more important it is to exercise and keep our existing neurons young and healthy, making them more ready to connect with one another while encouraging neurogenesis or the creation of new cells. This is why racket sports like tennis, paddle tennis, pickle ball and ping pong are so healthy for humans, because the fast pace and strategic thinking, keep your brain engaged, improving alertness, focus, and reaction time. It also enhances problem-solving skills and memory.

There is a War for Control of Your Mind

As our mental model expands, we are able to see things differently, think different thoughts, and do different things. This is why I am convinced they (and by they I mean those in positions of power- wealthy elites, large corporations and the psycopaths/narcissists/machiavellian types) are slowly, but intentionally poisoning our food supply, water supply, air quality, soil fertility and general way of life. Through heavy metals, chemicals, pesticides, seed oils, processed food, nutrient depleted food and lab grown produce/meat, they want to make us sick and keep us sick because the less healthy we are, the less healthy our minds are too.

This is why their has been a target assault over the past six decades capturing industries suchs as Big Food, Big Ag and Big Pharma, while consolidating and exerting control of the media, the news, and the channels we receive information and messaging. Whoever controls the media, controls the mind. Unless you are living under a rock, we’re all caught in a desperate power struggle for truth where governments and those in power want to censor free speech and different opinions, label misinformation and decide what is true for us. Don’t you think if you are given ALL of the information not just part of the information, you can make an informed decision. The best approach is to develop a multi-faceted framework that involves critical thinking, a willingness to challenge one's own assumptions/biases and an open-mindedness to learning and evolving that recognizes the different lenses through which we can perceive. Ultimately, the definition of truth remains a subject of ongoing philosophical debate and personal exploration.

Not Getting Vaccinated

Not getting vaccinated was the best thing that ever happened to me. Most criticized my decision as selfish, reckless and deserved, not understanding that I’d rather die then ever be forced or told what to do with my life. During recovery I was obsessed with learning what happened to me, why I got sick(I had scarring in my lungs from pneumonia a decade ago), why there were no recommended prophylaxis or early treatment protocols for COVID recommended by our Public Health authorities and why it was so difficult and demonized to get access to Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin for treatment(which won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize as a wonder drug for treating billions of humans for a variety of viruses and illnesses and have ironically both been quietly recommended by the FDA) but had to be destroyed and demonized in real time in order to get EUA(Emergency Use Authorization) to approve these experimental drugs they call vaccines(vaccines by definition should prevent transmission and infection) approved without any safety testing for efficacy, adverse effects or harmful contamination inside of them.

Given what we know now about the vaccines and the lack of proper safety testing and adverse effects before bringing them to market, its somewhat hard to believe the majority of humans that got vaccinated and were lied to/deceived are not raising hell and more angry about the harmful adverse effects we’re seeing from around the world with respect to Blood clots, Myocarditis, Pericarditis, Turbo Cancer, Guillain-Barre syndrome and Sudden death. I think most people feel duped and stupid rather than angry and deceived right now which I will discuss more on this topic at a later date.

For me, the totality of my personal experience along with the corruption and evilness from what I discovered, set in motion the conditions to look inward, evaluate my life and make some pretty serious changes focused on individual accountability, exercise, nutrition, naturopathic and holistic health solutions, evolving my consciousness and pursuing things that are good for me.

From Bitcoin to Mushrooms 🍄

During this time, I decided to stop managing Bitcoin for people. I always felt weird about being paid as an Investment Advisor for an asset I encouraged people to buy, hold and consider as savings and a permanent balance sheet allocation to never touch again. However, it wasn’t until I went to Tijuana, Mexico at the beginning of 2023 and did DMT(N-Dimethyltryptamine, a psychedelic substance known as the spirit molecule, found in various plants and animals, including humans in our pineal gland), did I decided to fully walk away for good. My experience was humbling me to the core, helping me shed my identity as a ‘Finance Bro’ and guiding me to seek out a life for myself filled with passion and purpose instead. After returning from the trip later that evening, I fell asleep and woke up the next morning and had a flood of thoughts rush to the front of my mind that forced me to put pen to paper and begin journaling. While I have love to write blog posts in the past, I had never actually taken the time to journal for myself. Six pages later my mind unleashed lessons learned that I encountered in my experience and a path for myself that I can only describe as transformative and clear. The next day, I immediately accepted a CFO role with Mountain Meadow Mushroom Farm, an Organic Specialty Mushroom Farm in Southern California I was investing in that used to be the largest mushroom farm in the SW U.S. before it fell on hard times.

If I’m being honest, I never imagined I’d be involved in agriculture and working on a farm, but I’ve been curious and passionate about mushrooms and their ability to heal people and the planet ever since reading “Healing Mushrooms” and “Bitcoin is the Mycelium of Money”. My unorthodox career spanning two decades of Wall Street distressed debt investing, founding and operating a Tech Startup and Investment Management have provided me experience acrsss multiple disciplines that makes me a perfect fit for restructuring and revitalizing a broken and beaten farm due to COVID, Big Ag legislation, California labor laws and many faults of its own, and turning it into a billion dollar mushroom wholesale supplier and manufacturer for the functional and psychedelic mushroom industry over the next 5-10 years. Almost as if the universe always had a plan for me, I believe I’ve found my dream job, providing me the opportunity to wake up everyday with passion and purpose. In a country/world where our food supply is becoming more poisoned, processed and synthetically altered, I get to be a part of and lead an organic mushroom farm where everything we grow, produce and share with the world is all natural, clean and the highest standards of quality, created from a regenerative loop of agricultural waste to nutrient rich compost and soil that we create ourselves. At some point in the next month I’ll share the story about Mountain Meadow Mushroom Farm. It’s a very special place where the work we are doing here is healing people and the planet.

As I return to writing, I am doing so with a more holistic approach to life, Bitcoin and topics that intersect with what I believe empower the individual and improve the human experience. I hope you remain a subscriber and add to the conversation, but if you don’t, no hard feelings, enjoy life and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to express myself.

Please enjoy my next post:

Your Ignorance of Bitcoin Doesn't Actually Change What's Happening

It focuses on Bitcoin and the significance of the upcoming ETF and the unlocking of access of Bitcoin to over $60 Trillion in wealth from managed assets of the Investment Management and Brokerage industry. Stay tuned…. things are about to get explosive!

Mush Love 🍄❤️,

-The Bear 🐻