Bitcoin, Shamanism, and The Bubble By John Perkins

Backstage in the cavernous Las Vegas auditorium, I thought about the thousands of fired-up Bitcoiners who were waiting for my talk. They had recently heard Eric and Donald Trump Jr. and J.D. Vance speak from this same stage. Those three were celebrated as Bitcoin supporters. I had worked for “the enemy,” the World Bank, IMF, and Federal Reserve.

I was prepared for a hostile reception.

Stepping onto the stage behind my host, the environmental Bitcoin analyst Daniel Batten, I tried to calm myself by flashing back to something that had happened a few days earlier in San Francisco. I’d guided 200 supporters of the non-profit Pachamama Alliance on a shamanic shapeshifting journey.  

In less than a week, I’d experienced these two worlds that seemed so far apart. 

I was relieved, as I walked across the stage, to hear the thousands of Bitcoiners applauding. I peered out at them, but the massive bank of spotlights blinded me from seeing all but the front row of shadowy figures. Then I spied my partner, Kiman Lucas. She was kneeling near the stage, snapping photos with her iPhone. And in that moment I was struck by the similarities between the two seemingly disparate worlds of Bitcoiners and shamans. They are connected by a simple truth.

But before getting into that, a little background:

The Bitcoin conference was attended by about 35,000 people. The organizers had shocked me when they invited me to speak – and on the main stage no less. I told them that I didn’t know much about Bitcoin and they responded that they wanted me to talk about my life as an economic hit man. The venue was the over-the-top Venetian Hotel, complete with an indoor life-size replica of a Venetian plaza, Italian restaurants, small upscale shops, gelato stands, and a long winding canal where genuine gondolas piloted by striped-shirted, straw-hatted gondoliers who sang traditional Italian songs maneuvered their boats past Byzantine-Gothic villas, along winding streets, and under arched bridges.

By contrast the shamanic event was held in a private room at the Presidio Golf Club, just across a quiet tree-lined park from the Golden Gate Bridge. Three of my Indigenous Amazonian friends, Manari Ushigua, Narcisa Mashienta, and Belen Paez performed traditional chants from their Achuar, Sapara, and Shuar nations and classically-trained American musician Lauren Turk sang songs she’d written. Accompanied by a drum and rattle-like bundle of Amazonian plant leaves, I led people on a shapeshifting journey inspired by the Prophecy of the Eagle and Condor, a legend that describes the importance of transforming the current degenerative Death Economy that is polluting and consuming itself toward extinction to a regenerative Life Economy that creates sustainable human societies.

Bitcoiners and shamans. Two worlds. The simple truth that connects them: Each is molded by our perceptions – as are most aspects of our lives. Perceptions drive the actions that create reality.

My first perception of Bitcoin had been influenced by my training as a Keynesian economist and by the attitudes of many of the people in my cohort – a negative knee-jerk reaction to a new technology that seemed contrary to the bubble of beliefs that encased me.

We all live in bubbles that are built around perceptions shaped by our families, friends, teachers, spiritual leaders, politicians, and these days by the algorithms of social media and AI. In turn, our perceptions and the resulting actions produce reality. As the saying goes, “one person’s garbage is another’s gold.” […]

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