--- title: "Why I Joined Swan Bitcoin" description: "A picture on my wall that says: “You literally ought to be asking yourself all the time what is the most impotant thing in the world I could be working on right now, and if you are not working on that why aren’t you?”" url: https://www.swanbitcoin.com/industry/why-i-joined-swan-bitcoin/ --- # Why I Joined Swan Bitcoin A picture on my wall that says: “You literally ought to be asking yourself all the time what is the most impotant thing in the world I could be working on right now, and if you are not working on that why aren’t you?” --- **Gigi** · August 18, 2020 · Updated June 6, 2024 ![](https://www.datocms-assets.com/56652/1689859565-screen-shot-2020-08-13-at-10-15-04-am.png?auto=format) It is a quote by Aaron Swartz and my daily reminder for two things: (1) life is short, (2) impor­tant things exist, and working hard on them is worth the sacri­fice so that the future might be brighter than the present. To me, that impor­tant thing is Bitcoin. ## A Flock of Swans I believe that the people behind [Swan](https://www.swanbitcoin.com/) — Cory, Yan, Brady, Brandon, Brekkie, Jörn, Reed, and many others — under­stand the impor­tance of Bitcoin. They under­stand that making the transi­tion to a sat-dominated world as painless as possible, for as many people as possible, is one of the most impor­tant things you could be working on. As more people opt into Bitcoin, having a way to seamlessly move from the fiat world into the Bitcoin world is essen­tial.  I know no better way than auto-DCA: set it and forget it. Ignore the noise, focus on the big picture, and consis­tently stack sats on the way to hyper­bit­coiniza­tion. Switching from manual buying to auto-DCA was one of the best decisions I ever made as a Bitcoiner, and I am delighted to join a company focused on that. Less FOMO, less trading, less zero-sum games. More building, more outreach, more Bitcoin Zen. ## Education Across the Pond It seems that the amount of your exposure to fiat is inversely corre­lated with your under­standing of money. Conse­quently, educa­tion around this and other topics related to Bitcoin are dear to my heart. Swan has a strong focus on educa­tion from the start, with Yan as the author of *Inventing Bitcoin* and Brady, Citizen Bitcoin himself, as the head of educa­tion.  Most people still have no idea what Bitcoin is, how it differs from other forms of money, and why they might want to use it. I hope this will change over the coming years, and I hope I can contribute to Swan’s effort of bringing Bitcoin educa­tion to the masses. There is only one way to build an [intran­si­gent minority](https://www.swanbitcoin.com/ten-million-bitcoiners-the-intransigent-minority/): one Bitcoiner at a time. ## This Is Water As David Foster Wallace famously said in his commence­ment speech: These two young fish are swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, *“Morning, boys, how’s the water?”* And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventu­ally, one of them looks over at the other and goes, *“What the hell is water?”* The metaphor may not be perfect, but in the world of Bitcoin, code is the water that David Foster Wallace is speaking of. I feel that I’ve been so immersed in Bitcoin that I forgot what makes it all work: [code](https://github.com/dergigi).  I’m excited to return to my roots as a computer scien­tist and programmer to work on what makes Bitcoin and its ecosystem work. I will continue to write words as well, but damn, does it feel good to write code again. ## Taking Flight I feel blessed to be part of something so monumental, so profound, so optimistic as Bitcoin. An orange beacon of hope, in a world that seems to be split­ting apart at the seams. I feel blessed that I can work along­side so many amazing bitcoiners — inside and outside of Swan — people that tirelessly work towards a bright orange future. I have the feeling that we are on the verge of something great. This giant bird is about to take flight, and I hope the world is ready. We will do our best to get as many people on board as possible, as safely as possible. It won’t always be easy, but I know in my heart that it is the most impor­tant thing in the world I could be working on right now. Onward! ## Gigi Gigi is the author of [21 Lessons](https://event.swanbitcoin.com/21lessons/), a popular book about lessons learned from falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. He launched various projects in the space such as bitcoin-resources.com, bitcoin-quotes.com, “Einundzwanzig”, and others. Prior to taking the orange pill he was a researcher and software engineer leading multiple development teams that worked on critical large-scale apps. He is passionate about security, privacy, and of course, Bitcoin. The article is protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) [license](https://dergigi.com/license/).