♾️ Bitcoin and the End of Time Scarcity

FIRE BTC #39 - What if you live forever?

“The only thing more scarce than bitcoin is time.”

This saying is a favorite among bitcoiners. It resonates because it’s true—at least, for now. Every minute that passes is one you don’t get back. You can store your economic energy in bitcoin, which is perfectly scarce, but you can’t store your time. That’s the whole point of FIRE: to buy back your most precious resource before it runs out.

But what if running out of time was no longer guaranteed?

There’s a growing belief in biotech and futurist circles that we’re approaching something called Longevity Escape Velocity—a point where medical advances extend human life by more than a year for every year that passes. In other words, the average person could outrun death indefinitely.

If that’s true, it changes everything.

If time stops being scarce, what still matters?

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⏳ What still matters when time isn’t scarce?

The entire world is built on the assumption that humans don’t live forever.

Life expectancy has increased meaningfully over the last few hundred years. For a very long time, it was difficult to survive past 40. The Industrial Revolution, however, kickstarted a new trend of increasing life expectancy that continues to this day.

The chart below shows that in the mid-1800s, a child who survived to his first birthday would likely live into his late 40s. Today, that number is north of 80.

But despite these gains, every major institution, system, and social structure still assumes there’s a hard stop at the end.

Retirement systems are designed around a 20- to 30-year payout window. Life insurance companies price risk based on mortality tables that expect an endpoint. Social Security, pensions, estate taxes, and even the idea of a “legacy” rely on the expectation that wealth will transfer after death. Healthcare focuses on managing decline, not extending vitality. Education is front-loaded because we assume we only have one career arc.

Even the structure of the family is built around this assumption—parents raise children, and children eventually care for aging parents. And culturally, we lionize youth, fear aging, and treat death as life’s defining constraint.

Everything from public policy to personal planning assumes a deadline.
If that deadline disappears, the frameworks built around it come into question.

Without the pressure of a ticking clock, does urgency fade?

The question is no longer “How do I make the most of my time before I run out?” It becomes “What do I want to build, become, or contribute—now that time is not a factor?”

Right now, we search for meaning because we know our time is limited. We chase legacy, purpose, or experiences before the clock runs out.

But if the timeline stretches to 300 years instead of 80, the quest for meaning becomes less about a single arc and more about navigating many chapters. You don’t have to choose one career, one identity, or one way of life.
You can reinvent yourself across multiple decades, or multiple centuries, perhaps many times.

In that kind of world, the challenge isn’t just staying alive—it’s staying focused and motivated toward continuous growth and purpose.

And that brings us to FIRE—because if you can live forever, the idea of financial independence must evolve.

💎 FIRE after LEV

FIRE has always been about buying back your time while it still matters.
You front-load the effort to build your portfolio and earn freedom early enough to enjoy it. That urgency is part of its power, because time feels scarce. It is scarce.

But if time stops being scarce, then FIRE needs a reframe. Its principles don’t go away…in fact, they become even more important. Having a low time preference is even more essential when you’re planning for centuries instead of decades.

The “retire early” part of FIRE gives way to “re-tire”—as in, put on new treads and reinvent yourself. FIRE already makes this possible today. But if time becomes effectively infinite, the number of opportunities to pivot and explore new paths becomes limitless.

Think about how much the world has changed in the last 300 years. It’s impossible to know what 300 years from now will look like. In that kind of timeline, your identity and goals can’t be fixed. They need to evolve with you.

And if that’s true, the systems you build—financial and otherwise—must be resilient enough to support a lifetime of reinvention. You’ll need a foundation that can survive radical change.

Which raises the question: If today’s currencies, institutions, and retirement systems can’t last for centuries, what can?

🔁 Bitcoin is built for forever

If your life might not expire, you can’t build on systems that do. Bitcoin is money for indefinite time.

It doesn’t depend on a government, a central bank, or a corporate board, and its rules don’t bend to politics or inflation targets. It’s simply math and voluntary consensus—transparent, incorruptible, and enforced by a global network that becomes stronger over time.

Fiat currencies will fail, and institutions will falter. Entire systems will reset and be reorganized, perhaps multiple times in your continually-expanding lifetime.

Bitcoin is built to outlast them all.

In a world where time stops being scarce, durability becomes the ultimate asset. And there’s nothing more durable than decentralized code with perfect scarcity.

If you’re going to build for forever, you need money that’s engineered to last.

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

Until next time,

Trey ✌️