How to Escape the Rigged System
Level 2- Value Investor
Welcome Avatar! While we certainly don’t have the time to do a 1x a week life post, if someone new comes in asking during our Q&A we’ll read it! We’ll address this individual’s question and create a framework for cyclicality.
Before jumping in, the statement “not able to invest” is entirely incorrect. If you’re 20 something you should be in a stage of accumulation. This doesn’t just mean a few digits on a screen. It means a wide range of skill sets that can be used to improve your life.
Secondly, everything is cyclical. That is true. When you’re 10 you care about nature and when you’re 70 you care about nature. When you’re nearing death you have zero filter. Children have zero filter. There are a million parallels if you look hard enough.
The circle of life is real.
Important Assumptions
Before we jump in, we are making the assumption that you’re making good decisions. If you found this website and recognize a lot of the major themes: 1) do what you’re amazing at not what you love, 2) 20s is for going all out because you have immense energy, 3) you won’t want the same things at 25 as 45 and 4) Time is the most valuable asset - if you waste it you need to spend 2, 3 or 4x as much energy to get the same results later in life.
On that note we can move on.
Part 1: The General Script Doesn’t Work
Go to school —> Get a W-2 —> Lever up with car/home —> Take a 2 week vacation + complain about politics/economy —> assume anyone who chooses another path got lucky —> wake up at middle age with a pink slip and wonder what went wrong
As you can see, this doesn’t seem like an amazing way to live. If you recognize the problems with each step you can prevent it by changing your belief system: 1) No one is coming to save you, 2) Boss/Politician just using you for profits/votes, 3) most prefer that you don’t improve as it makes them insecure/jealous and 4) there is nothing safe about an income decided by someone else in some humiliating performance review
Big picture, no one hires someone if they think the individual will lose money. This means top performers are getting significantly less than they produce in mega corps.
Majority Give Up: After reading the four points, everyone quits. They believe in magic pills. A knight in shining armor. Or. Some Red/Blue president to completely change their lives. It’s rooted in fantasy vs. reality.
You’ve Got Less Time Than You Think: Don’t believe the old people who tell you to “slow down”. You really don’t have that much time. Realistically, you want to grind extremely hard in your 20s and be financially free by around 40. If you end up being rich by 35 or 45, it’s not worth discussing. The rough range/line in the sand is 40. It’s highly unlikely that someone has zero at 40 and somehow makes up for 40 wasted years in five. You can start when you like. You can make it at any time. However. Getting in your own way reduces the ***probability*** of success by a large margin.
20s: Unless you do something utterly insane (drug/alcohol addiction or worse), you can pretty much do it all. You can work, go out and party 2x a week, build a business and stay in shape. Anyone saying otherwise? They are lying.
The only tricky part is that you need to make smart long-term decisions. If you blow everything on vacations and lifestyle inflation you won’t have enough left over to build your own niche WiFi biz.
Early 30s: You see some separation. You should be above average (by a wide margin) with a realistic path to being set by 40 (plus/minus 5 years). If the path laid out assumes perfect promotions, perfect investments and perfect everything… it isn’t realistic. This is the first sanity check.
Mid-Late 30s: Huge separation in people. Looking back mid to late 30s is a bigger separation than college. Not kidding at all. Socioeconomic split happens around here along with lifestyle split. It’s hard to hang out with someone in a completely different zone (economic or lifestyle choice). You don’t see parents hanging out with non-parents all day. You don’t see single people interested in hanging out with random parents on the weekend. Shared experience begins to drift significantly. Again. Neither is good nor bad. Some people should be parents others definitely should not.
40 Benchmark: At this rough age band, you’re optimizing for time and quality of life. Adding some digits to your name is fun but it isn’t really changing your life at all. Again. If you’re close and didn’t hit 40 on the dot, it just doesn’t matter. The general premise is the same.
Summary
If you are taking your life seriously, you will recognize that your time is extremely limited. The standard path sold to you doesn’t work in excel. Go ahead and plug it in (only works under perfect conditions of no lay offs + star performer straight to hedge fund manager/Managing director/Partner etc.)
While you need that W-2 to just pay bills, its really funding the correct “Funnel” which is: 1) any recurring revenue business, 2) asymmetric investments, 3) skill stack that will be useful in 5-10 years - such as sales and 4) consistent purchase of new cash flowing assets (or building them)
Part 2: Cycles to Remove Single Points of Failure
Everything moves in cycles to your own life. Babies are in diapers and adults near death end up in diapers. Not fun to think about but also how the world works.
If you follow the tea leaves from step one, it means that you need to become self sovereign. This means avoiding a single point of failure. You do not want: 1) one boss deciding your worth, 2) one source of income, 3) one industry determining your future and 4) one skill to pay for everything.
What usually happens? People figure out they can earn money on skill A. That’s great. Then they ignore skill B, C and D. All three of these could be new revenue streams but it is just too “painful” to get started.
Psychologically if you are earning $200K from skill A, it doesn’t make sense to earn $50K from skill B. This is how NPCs think.
A person who understands cycles? They will realize, if A plummets by 50%? Skill B may go up to $100K+. Think that through. Who is in a better position to survive the future. One guy who makes $250K from one task or a person who makes $150K from business A and $100K from business B (with neither business being in the same industry?). It’s clear as day.
Easy to Say Hard to Do
Around 90% of people will ignore all of this. They will double/triple down on one income stream and when it goes away, they will be left scrambling.
Its hard to go through the same painful cycle. It’s even harder to do it when you feel like a genius from one break through. This is also why most people fail.
Level 0 Quitters: They have 50 ideas, complain that it’s all luck and never try to start anything. In the real world, the only way to move the needle is by building immediately. It’ll give you information to adjust. No amount of reading or rumination will compare to simply doing.
Level 1 Quitters: Majority of people don’t even get through the development period. If you did everything correctly as outlined on the paid side of the stack, you know that around year 3 you see inflection. Some people quit at year 3.1 because it wasn’t perfectly 3.0. Others? (the majority) don’t even survive 6 months. They didn’t even bother testing demand (insert chorus of laughter)
Level 2 Quitters: They understand the S-curve but once they get into acceleration/inflection? They just stop. They don’t bother looking into new businesses and think it will be stable forever. Mike Tyson is waiting for these types. It’s no different than a late career layoff. Nothing lasts forever
Theme Here: If you take your foot off the gas before you’re truly done you could do significant damage. Damage measured in years (not months). Much like watering a plant, you can’t quit once its a certain size. It’ll die and once it does, there is no amount of water that’ll fix it.
Same cycle in everything. Max pain and boredom, inflection, max boredom. If you get complacent expect it to go down.
Why It Doesn’t Change
A good implied question we got is “why the cycle doesn’t change”. The answer is the same: human emotions. Also math.
If you feel like a genius it means that all your hard work paid off. The problem (psychologically) is that this payoff was the result of effort five years ago. Once you start to view your life in this manner it’ll make a lot more sense.
Despair = Market Share: Coincidentally it rhymes. We don’t believe in coincidences.
If people are peak negative on the economy, an industry etc. It means that this is the easiest time to gain market share. In the stock market this is reflected in prices as well. If everyone is sure it is “dead” then you should be excited not depressed.
People then go back into the industry, hype starts to pick up and years later everyone is a “genius” and back down we go.
A good rule of thumb for younger people, if your parents are calling you to tell you they are “proud” of you. It’s probably a top signal. If your parents are calling to say you are a disappointment and have no future (it is likely a bottom signal). We’re aware that good parents don’t operate in these emotional extremes but the point is the same. Replace parents with friends/colleagues etc.
Summary
If you view the world from this lens it’ll explain a lot of the doomerism and cyclicality. The majority are constantly in a state of “woe is me” and “life is unfair” which makes it impossible to create the standard luck cycle.
The most successful people you know (celebrities, politicians etc.) all have terrible down years (at some point in their life). The hilarious part? The typical NPC expects perfect from everyone - except themselves.
Part 3: Autonomy and Sovereign
If you’re able to start grinding early (20s as you should) then its pretty easy to solve for decision trees: 1) Does this make me more autonomous and 2) does this make me more sovereign.
If it doesn’t you should skip and if it does you should press forward. If its 50/50 then its a judgement call for you.
Don’t Get Sidetracked
The number of times we get bad/repetitive questions could crash an AWS server. It’s the reason we paywalled for Q&A.
If you are using brain cells to debate a 10% W-2 difference, you’re not really betting on yourself. Or. You’re not convinced in how things shake out long-term. Either answer isn’t great and unless the situation is dramatic it unlikely moves the needle at all (dramatic defined as 30%+ changes in either direction + change in hours + change in equity/upside/downside)
If your boss changes or the new firm doesn’t like you for some reason, is that really worth 10%? Will all the headaches associated with moving/losing political capital be worth it? Is this even going to move the needle.
As you can see the question isn’t that meaningful. Switching from one W-2 to the other doesn’t change autonomy or sovereignty. At all.
It’s a hard mental hurdle to jump through but how serious are you about winning this rigged game?
Are you building someone else’s dream or your own?
Is this going to change my freedom or make me more dependent on someone else?
Are you increasing or decreasing the amount of free time you have?
These are the real questions to ask as they get you closer to the real objective. Which is free to do what you want when you want (as much as possible). There is no childish world view where you have zero obligations 24/7/365. The goal is to: 1) gain more control of your time, 2) lower dependence on single individuals and 3) reduce catastrophic risk.
If you want a boring and annoying example of one we did live here, it was actually in January of 2025. We got bombared with hate comments/mail suggesting it wasn’t going to be good since Trump coin launched. We took a full 3 months off to learn basic real estate flips before looking at crypto again. Avoiding the losses was the least important part. The most important part was learning a new way to make money
While we were deleting emails from people saying SOL was going to $1,000 into the FTX/Galaxy unlock (yes people believed this), we furiously built up a new basic skill set. That’s all you need to do.
If there is a dead period, most people just sink into despair. You’re seeing it right now. Another war breaks out, more AI fears, more quantum computing fears etc. The dead period is the best time to launch new products. If you can succeed when demand is temporarily lower than usual, how much are you going to make when it reverses?
Unsurprisingly, we’re much more excited than the vast majority in 2026. Ideally emotions/sentiment go a bit lower, we’ll still be building.
Summary
Anyone who is in accumulation mode should start thinking in those two terms. Unless there is a massive difference in long-term outcome, just focus on Autonomy and Sovereignty
If you don’t believe this, go ask everyone you know “Would you take a 20% pay cut but work for yourself and no one else ever again?”. They will say yes.
Part 4: Everything You Do Compounds
Most people think of boring S&P 500 7-9% CAGR rules. We’re not talking about that at all. Your friends, business partners, assets, health, habits etc. All of this compounds at a rate of 10% as well.
If you choose the wrong ones for years? You will need to generate higher returns to catch up.
Compound to Get to the K-Shape: If we agree that it’s all rigged for asset holders you have to come up with a strategy to outpace them. The only viable path has been beaten to death here: equity, building on your own. For every unicorn/massive IPO there are millions of failures.
If you talk to wealth management firms they will tell you flat out “our typical client is a small business owner”. You’ve already got your answer and just need to avoid the wrong friends who claim you’ll fail forever (that’s not how this works at all, every failure is closer to success).
The way you compound is no different from a good investment.
Friends: Do you think the people you talk to most will be where you want to be in 5-10 years? If not you should adjust your time to reflect your goals. You can have friends in different walks of life. Just recognize whoever you talk to most is where you end up
Business Partners: Ask if you expect them to be bigger or smaller in the future. If the answer is bigger you’re good if the answer is smaller, you’ve made the wrong choice. In the world of work, this is all that matters. You’re not blood relatives the only shared goal is growing
Health: All the decisions you make in your 20s will show up in your 30s. 30s show up in 40s. So on and so forth. If you think this is a joke, it is not. The guys at the gym who look amazing at 50-60 know a lot more than the latest trending fad.
Habits: If you journal it makes it easy to recognize emotional highs and lows. The hard part is training your brain to register the signs and act on them correctly. If everything is firing on all cylinders you’ll see it in your own writing style. That’s when you should get back to grinding on the part you expect to break.
Assets: Repetitive given what we write about 95% of the time. That said, you should have a clear world view and 90-95% of your decisions need to be consistent with that.
If you’re compounding all of these things rapidly, you’ll slowly make headway. Every 3-5 years or so expect a pretty significant jump in standard of living/quality of life. If you’re doing well in all of those, surprise, surprise, it makes it a lot easier to do well in other aspects as well (social, dating, coming up with new biz ideas etc.)
Summary
One of the reasons we get frustrated over minutiae commentary? It’s actually a reflection of the commentator! If someone is using bandwidth on things that don’t matter it means he/she doesn’t even believe in their positions. This is a much bigger problem than the question being asked.
We don’t mind if someone is happy with $500K or $50M. Just don’t claim “I want to be worth $10M… here is a question on a 10% wage change of $20K a year”. Decide what you want to do with your life and take it seriously, you don’t have that much time.
Don’t Expect Utopia in the End
A ton of you will make it. You have seen several people make it publicly in the jungle. Have you noticed? Not a single one of them is living in a utopia?
If you are 20 or 70, there is always going to be some sort of problem for you to solve. Just get used to it.
The goal is to limit the surface area of attack.
Bonus Note
For those that are curious, where do you think we are in the emotional cycle of life? Seems clear to us that we’re on the typical downtrend to peak despair/fear. WW3 + AI doomer + youth unemployment = getting near peak concerns.
What we do we know though, just homeless in a tent
We’ll be around through 2035, because we know how this all ends. Losing momentum is a big no for us. Will keep the pedal to the floor
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.
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