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I’m rereading The Sovereign Individual for what must be the third or fourth time, and every time I go through its pages I feel the same thing, this isn’t just a book, it’s a blueprint for the future, a manual disguised as a historical analysis that predicted with astonishing accuracy the age we’re stepping into.
It’s not meant to entertain you or make you feel good, it’s meant to prepare you, it dissects power structures, taxation, violence, sovereignty, and most importantly the transformation of the individual’s role in society as we transition from industrial to digital economies.
I already wrote a deep dive into its core thesis, how control over money has historically been maintained through violence, in this article
10,000 Years of Violence Over Money
But today I want to focus on something that’s even more chilling, its predictions, because these weren’t hopeful visions of a better tomorrow or techno-utopian dreams, they were cold projections based on logic, and two decades later they’re unfolding with almost surgical precision.
Just consider this
You can open a brokerage account from anywhere in the world in minutes, no paperwork, no human interaction
Microsoft Teams now offers real-time AI translation during calls, making it possible to speak in your native language and be understood instantly by someone who doesn’t share it
Starlink is providing high-speed internet in places that were considered dead zones just a few years ago
Healthcare is being delivered by algorithms before you even see a doctor
And OpenAI is putting personal AI agents in your pocket that understand you better than most people do
None of that is science fiction anymore, it’s just the new baseline
But the most striking part of the book is this prediction
“In the near future your phone will become your bank, your computer will serve as your global brokerage, your local bank branch and your digital kiosk, and with strong encryption your wealth will be accessible only to you, not by force but by code.”
That single paragraph reads like a Bitcoin whitepaper written in the 90s
We’re already there, Bitcoin is mainstream, Lightning is scaling, self-custody is rising, and financial sovereignty is no longer a concept, it’s a toolkit
The countries that are embracing this shift are prospering faster than anyone expected, places like Dubai, Qatar, Switzerland, Andorra, they aren’t just attracting capital, they’re attracting the people who create capital, because they’ve understood something most nations still resist, capital is mobile and talent follows freedom
On the other hand, countries that keep raising taxes and increasing financial surveillance are becoming less competitive by the day, they are bleeding wealth, they are pushing out their top creators and they don’t even see it
That’s why I believe more than ever that we are heading toward a form of money that is digital, borderless, difficult to confiscate, and increasingly outside the reach of traditional tax regimes
The book outlines three stages of trade
The first is local, analog, cash-based commerce, limited by geography
The second is digital trade, where online payments are made using national currencies, but taxation and control still dominate
And the third is emerging now, a global system of virtual currencies, instant transactions, privacy-first infrastructure, and a complete uncoupling from centralized oversight
Revolut already supports Bitcoin Lightning payments
PayPal and Strike are integrating similar systems
The architecture is being built and adoption is accelerating
Then comes the sentence that still haunts me
“Digital money in the Information Age will return control over the medium of exchange to those who own wealth, rather than to nation-states that seek to confiscate it.”
And the follow-up hits even harder
“The richest person in 2025 will be the one who holds this networked money.”
Naturally I ran the numbers
Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to own around one million BTC
At today’s price that makes him worth approximately 100 billion dollars
That places him somewhere between the seventeenth and eighteenth richest person in the world according to Forbes
But if Bitcoin hits 200,000, which is not unrealistic, he would move up to the number four spot globally
Right behind Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg
And no one even knows who he is
That’s not just wealth, that’s sovereignty
At Asymmetric we’ve already written about how to navigate this shift safely and legally
We told our readers when we bought Bitcoin around 16K
We’ll continue to share how to use these assets to secure financing, buy real estate, build cash flow and preserve privacy in a world that is becoming more transparent and controlled by the minute
This isn’t theory anymore, it’s already happening
And like every great transformation, the rewards go to those who are early, prepared and willing to act before it becomes obvious
You don’t have to predict the future, you just have to position yourself for it