The US Founders Risked Everything.

Modern Leaders Risk Nothing.

We talk a lot about America today.
The headlines.
The noise.
The panic.

And then yesterday you had Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson reminding the country, bluntly, that once people get power in this system,they shouldn’t be removed. A lifetime seat. No accountability. A permanent bureacratic stsate. Not even the idea of risk.

Then today, the Federal Reserve will stroll out with its announcement like a royal court reading tea leaves. The markets pretend it’s sacred scripture. Banks pretend it’s stabilizing. But the truth is obvious:

Nobody in modern leadership has skin in the game.

Not the judges.
Not the agencies.
Not the bureaucrats who can’t be fired.
Not the analysts who get every forecast wrong and keep their jobs anyway.

Which makes the contrast with the Founders almost comical.

Because this country, this messy experiment we complain about all day, was built by men who risked everything and expected nothing in return.

And I don’t mean metaphorical risk.
I mean actual financial ruin, hanging, or exile.

The Revolution had no central bank.
No Treasury.
No IRS.
No certainty of tomorrow.

They financed a seven-year war with IOUs that were worth less than the paper they were scribbled on. And people accepted them. Why?

Because belief felt more real than gold.

Let’s breakdown the wealthiest Americans fighting the British:

Washington served without pay.
Hancock knew his signature was a death warrant.
Robert Morris signed promissory notes hoping God would cover them.
Lafayette risked the guillotine.
Haym Salomon died young, penniless, and unpaid.

These were not cushioned careers.
This was existential entrepreneurship.

No heirs. No pensions. No fallback plan.
Just conviction.

Meanwhile today, leaders hold power like it’s a birthright but refuse even the smallest personal risk. Everyone wants authority. Nobody wants consequences.

It’s power without danger.
Title without sacrifice.
Status without skin in the game.

Which brings us to the one group in America still operating under real consequence:

Investors.

Investing is one of the last places you’re actually forced to grow a pair.

No HR department.
No safety rails.
No bureaucratic insulation.
Just you, your thesis, your capital, and the market’s cold judgment.

And let’s drop the polite fiction:
For the people stacking and accumulating BTC because … others are doing it … and the big shots on TV are saying to … and Banks have begun offering it…you are doing it with the understanding its safe and secure and…

You’re doing it because you want a 10x. With no downside.

Say it.
Own it.
Admit it.

This is America.
Nobody buys assets hoping to break even.

You can hedge with options.
You can sprinkle bags into penny stocks.
You can diversify yourself into oblivion.

But the strongest hedge in the world is conviction — the ability to say:

“This is the road.
This is the bet less travelled.
This is the thing I’m willing to live with.”

Not because you’re a thrill-seeker.
Not because you enjoy pain.
But because every other option looks worse.

Great investors aren’t degenerates.
They’re not masochists.
They’re people who see an opportunity they believe in…
and they grow a pair big enough to hold through the storm.

Conviction is adulthood in a country that infantilizes everyone.

And here’s the irony:

The Founders would respect that more than anything happening in Washington today.

Because they understood risk.
They understood sacrifice.
They understood betting your life on an idea.

The Revolution wasn’t sustained by greed.
Or land grabs.
Or hypocrisy.

Despite Ken Burns documentary implying this

Greed doesn’t carry you through Valley Forge.
Land claims don’t convince farmers to take worthless paper.
Hypocrisy doesn’t fund a rebellion against the world’s largest empire.

Only belief does that. And a firm conviction that the British are pricks.

America was built on asymmetric bets — the purest form of risk-on courage.
That DNA still exists.
It shows up today not in politics, but in markets.

If a bankrupt group of merchants, farmers, immigrants, and aristocrats could fund a continental rebellion with no assets, then a modern nation with a $26 trillion GDP and a thousand safety nets can survive whatever comes next.

We aren’t weak.
We aren’t collapsing.
We aren’t doomed.

We are simply out of practice when it comes to courage.

But investors haven’t forgotten (AI build)
Traders haven’t forgotten (Look at the Future market)
Builders haven’t forgotten (We are all in this category from family to life)

Because every time you buy, every time you accumulate, every time you hold through panic, you’re reenacting the most American act of all:

You’re risking something today for a future you may never fully enjoy.

That’s belief.
That’s sacrifice.
That’s the American spirit, the real inheritance.

And it’s still here.

Waiting for the next person to do something before jumping is something the Europeans are good at, but not over on these hallowed shores.

No. We get marked for death, like John Hancock, the wealthiest merchant in Boston, who stepped up anyway, took the gavel as first President of the Continental Congress, and then signed his name so large and bold that King George could read it across the Atlantic without spectacles.

He practically drew a bullseye on his own chest and doubled the bounty on his head with one flourish of ink. That’s the American move.

Not waiting for consensus.
Not waiting for permission.
Not waiting for a risk committee or a Fed statement or a 401(k) match.

Just pure, unhedged, “come and take me” conviction.

That spirit didn’t die in 1776.

It’s still with us. But you must release the beast.

Seize the Day,

Eric