Born in Hamadan and raised in Canada, I was educated to postgraduate level and have an MBA from the University of Prince Edward Island. I am a senior-level IT entrepreneur with over twenty years of global experience and a proven track record in applying an appropriate and practical mix of technologies that meet business needs while minimizing risks. Moreover, I am a motivated achiever with the demonstrable ability to recommend enhancements to a range of enterprise operations and processes.
Following collaboration with several blockchain software developers on new products for the financial services sector, I finally started working on my own Fintech project in 2016. Since then I have been instrumental in building teams of experts that have developed a series of blockchain ecosystems, including digital assets as loan collateral, cross-border payments and digital banking, and have developed a following on Medium and Hackernoon with my insights into the crypto sector, including DeFi and NFTs.
In life, everyone is given access to three core currencies: time, money, and knowledge. How you invest and exchange these will define your growth, your freedom, and ultimately—your legacy.
1. Time: The Only Non-Renewable Resource
You can earn money. You can gain knowledge. But time? Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.
Every moment you spend is an investment. The question is: Are you investing it or wasting it?
Wasting time on low-value distractions or delaying action is like burning cash—only worse. Time has compounding power when used wisely. Whether you’re building a skill, a business, or a relationship, time is your most valuable asset.
2. Money: A Tool, Not a Goal
Money is a magnifier. It amplifies your choices and enables freedom—but it’s not freedom itself. Too often, people chase money at the cost of their time and health, only to realize they’ve traded away what really matters.
The goal isn’t to hoard money, but to use it wisely:
Buy back your time.
Invest in your growth.
Enable opportunities for yourself and others.
When money works for you, not the other way around, you’re playing the game right.
3. Knowledge: The Multiplier
Knowledge turns time into mastery and money into opportunity. It’s the multiplier for everything else in life.
Unlike time, knowledge compounds. Unlike money, knowledge can’t be taken from you. And when shared, it grows, not depletes.
Read. Learn. Ask. Surround yourself with smarter people. In the long run, it’s not who works the hardest, but who learns fastest that wins.
Final Thought: Be Wise. Balance Ruthlessly.
The smartest people understand this:
Use money to buy time.
Use time to gain knowledge.
Use knowledge to grow money—and value.
Time, money, knowledge. Master the exchange. Play long-term. Win with wisdom.
In an era where fiat currencies bleed value and centralized systems crack under pressure, a new form of capital rises from the ashes of financial decay—Bitcoin, the apex predator of monetary evolution. But Bitcoin is more than just digital gold. It’s the first time hard money collides with neural logic, the decentralized mind of machines and men.
This isn’t just economics. This is memetics, mathematics, and revolution woven into code.
Hard Money, Forged in Code
Historically, hard money meant gold: scarce, durable, hard to counterfeit. But in the digital age, gold is heavy, slow, and blind. Enter Bitcoin—scarce by design, mathematically capped at 21 million units, immutable, auditable, and borderless. It doesn’t need vaults or armies. It runs on the most secure computing network ever built.
Bitcoin isn’t just hard—it’s invincible.
Where fiat is printed by decree, Bitcoin is mined by proof. Where central banks obfuscate, Bitcoin reveals. Every transaction is a mathematical truth, timestamped in a public ledger no one can alter and everyone can inspect. That’s not just money. That’s pure logic in action.
Neural Logic: The Network Becomes the Brain
Think of the Bitcoin network as a primitive neural structure—a decentralized, permissionless intelligence. Each node in the network acts like a neuron, validating signals (transactions), enforcing the rules (the protocol), and rejecting false inputs (invalid blocks). No single node holds control, but all cooperate to maintain the integrity of the whole.
Bitcoin is self-regulating, adaptive, and increasingly resilient—hallmarks of a living, learning system.
As AI systems evolve and neural networks push the frontier of cognition, Bitcoin runs in parallel as the financial infrastructure for that future. AI will need money—neutral, incorruptible money. Bitcoin is that money. It is programmable value for programmable intelligence.
The Economic Mind-War
Bitcoin doesn’t beg for adoption—it infiltrates it. As fiat systems crack under inflation, surveillance, and capital controls, Bitcoin offers an escape hatch. Not with violence, but with superior architecture. It is not just a protest; it is a protocol-level upgrade to civilization.
It’s not just about number go up. It’s about sovereignty. It’s about intelligence choosing sound money. It’s about the first step toward separating money from manipulation—with code as the referee.
Bitcoin Is Inevitable
You can’t uninvent the internet. You can’t unlearn cryptography. You can’t unwind the birth of Bitcoin.
We’re entering a new phase of monetary consciousness—one where value flows at the speed of thought, governed by the cold rationality of mathematics, not the whims of bureaucrats. Bitcoin doesn’t care about politics. It doesn’t care about your opinion. It just runs—perfectly, relentlessly, incorruptibly.
The dawn of artificial intelligence has ignited a global conversation that feels eerily similar to past revolutions — from the steam engine to the semiconductor. But 2025 is different. This isn’t just about new technology. It’s about redefining what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines.
In workplaces across the world, algorithms are already outperforming humans in speed, precision, and scale. Writers face GPTs, designers battle with generative visuals, and financial analysts are now sharing the floor with AI that trades faster, cheaper, and without emotion. It’s not science fiction. It’s happening.
And yet — amid all the fear and uncertainty — something remarkable is emerging: a new type of productivity boom driven not by replacement, but by reimagination.
⚔️ The Conflict: Fear, Resistance, and the Myth of Replacement
Much of today’s tension with AI comes from a deeply rooted assumption: “If AI can do it, why do we need humans at all?”
This belief fuels a reactive approach: workers resisting automation, companies slow-walking adoption, and governments scrambling for regulations. Headlines amplify the narrative — “AI takes X million jobs!” — while ignoring the nuance.
But history teaches us that technology rarely replaces humans wholesale. Instead, it reshapes the landscape. The printing press didn’t eliminate writers. The camera didn’t destroy painting. In every case, the arrival of new tools created new needs, roles, and value.
So, what if the same holds true for AI?
🛠️ The Shift: Augmentation, Not Obsolescence
The most transformative AI users today aren’t the ones trying to replace their workforce. They’re the ones re-skilling them — empowering human talent to leverage AI as a multiplier.
Consider these examples:
In law, AI is digesting thousands of legal documents in seconds — freeing lawyers to focus on argument strategy and client interaction.
In medicine, AI is catching anomalies in scans with superhuman accuracy, allowing doctors to spend more time in diagnosis, empathy, and planning.
In journalism, AI handles rapid-fire news alerts while humans tackle investigative reporting and long-form analysis.
In design, AI provides endless iterations, but it’s still the human eye that decides what resonates emotionally.
In every case, AI acts as a force multiplier, not a replacement.
🌍 Global Trends: The Rise of the AI-Human Hybrid Workforce
A recent McKinsey report suggests that by the end of 2025, 60–70% of jobs will involve some form of AI collaboration — from chatbots in HR to code-completion tools in software engineering. Companies that invest in AI fluency today are already outperforming peers in speed to market, innovation cycles, and customer satisfaction.
What’s emerging is not a battle between man and machine — but a fusion of the two. And this fusion is already unlocking:
10–30% productivity gains in AI-assisted workflows
New categories of work, from prompt engineers to AI ethicists
Creative outputs once thought impossible at scale (think: video generation, AI-assisted drug discovery, hyper-personalized education)
🧩 The Paradox: AI Reveals Human Value
Ironically, the more capable AI becomes, the more it spotlights what only humans can do:
Empathy in leadership
Ethical reasoning in decision-making
Taste in design and culture
Context in strategy and negotiation
If you can prompt a machine to write a report in 5 seconds, the value shifts to the quality of your prompt, the decision you make from the insights, and the narrative you build around the data.
AI doesn’t make you obsolete. It forces you to level up — to refine your uniquely human edge.
🔮 The Takeaway: The Next Boom Won’t Be Human or AI — It’ll Be Human-AI
2025 may go down as the year when the fear of AI peaked — and then pivoted into power. The companies, professionals, and industries that thrive won’t be the ones who resist AI. They’ll be the ones who embrace it — not blindly, but boldly.
Because in the end, the productivity boom won’t come from AI working alone.
It will come from you + AI, working smarter, faster, and more creatively together.
In the ever-evolving landscape of global finance, 2025 is shaping up to be a pivotal year. The institutions and instruments that once defined the economic order — from central banks and traditional banking systems to legacy payment networks — are facing increasing pressure from an unstoppable wave of innovation, decentralization, and public demand for transparency. At the heart of this shift is Bitcoin, not just as a speculative asset, but as a systemic alternative to old finance.
For Bitcoin investors, understanding this dynamic isn’t optional — it’s essential. Because as old finance loses its grip, Bitcoin isn’t just surviving the upheaval; it’s quietly thriving in the cracks of a crumbling system.
The Erosion of Trust in Legacy Institutions
Traditional financial institutions are in a slow-motion credibility crisis. This isn’t new — it’s been building since 2008. But in 2025, the trust gap has widened into a chasm. Key examples:
Central banks are out of ammunition. After years of zero or negative interest rates and multiple rounds of quantitative easing, central banks have very little room to maneuver. Inflation targets are being missed or manipulated, and credibility is eroding fast.
Commercial banks are losing relevance. According to a 2024 IMF report, more than 32% of global millennials no longer use traditional banks as their primary financial provider, favoring fintech apps, crypto wallets, and decentralized protocols.
Money printing is no longer a hidden vice. In the past, monetary expansion happened in the shadows. Now, it’s in headlines. The U.S. alone increased its M2 money supply by over 40% between 2020 and 2023, fueling both inflation and public disillusionment with fiat.
Bailouts are back — and bigger. In 2023–2025, more than 15 major financial institutions globally were propped up by government action, exposing the fragile underbelly of a supposedly “stable” system.
This climate has created fertile ground for Bitcoin — a non-sovereign, deflationary, transparent alternative.
Bitcoin’s Strategic Position in 2025
Bitcoin has matured well beyond its early “internet money” days. In 2025, it’s being viewed as:
A hedge against fiat instability
A strategic reserve asset for both individuals and institutions
A neutral settlement layer in an increasingly fractured global financial system
Notable Shifts:
Nation-state adoption is accelerating. After El Salvador and the Central African Republic, at least five more countries are now exploring partial Bitcoin integration into national reserves or payment rails.
Institutional custody and adoption have normalized. BlackRock, Fidelity, and JPMorgan now offer integrated Bitcoin solutions. The 2024 approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in several major economies has further legitimized exposure for traditional investors.
Bitcoin is now part of macro conversations. Leading hedge fund managers like Stanley Druckenmiller and Ray Dalio have publicly rebalanced portfolios to include BTC — not as a fringe bet, but as a core allocation.
How DeFi and Bitcoin are Converging
While Bitcoin remains more conservative compared to the experimental energy of Ethereum-based DeFi, 2025 is seeing a convergence.
Bitcoin-backed DeFi protocols (e.g., Sovryn, Stacks, Rootstock) are enabling lending, trading, and yield on top of Bitcoin — without requiring users to leave the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) remains one of the most utilized assets in DeFi, proving that BTC demand extends beyond simple HODLing.
Lightning Network usage is up over 400% year-over-year, not just for micropayments, but for cross-border B2B transfers. This reduces friction for global commerce and further reduces reliance on SWIFT and centralized rails.
Regulatory Pressure Is Backfiring
Governments have tried to “contain” Bitcoin for years — through tax policy, KYC enforcement, and headline crackdowns. But in 2025, those efforts are increasingly viewed as signs of fear, not control.
Ironies of Regulation:
SEC lawsuits boosted decentralization. After years of litigation, crypto projects now proactively launch with better legal frameworks — while Bitcoin remains untouched, thanks to its immaculate conception and true decentralization.
CBDCs are backfiring. Far from calming the waters, central bank digital currencies have sparked privacy concerns. As governments gain surveillance powers, citizens are shifting to Bitcoin for financial autonomy.
Taxation is becoming unenforceable. The rise of self-custody, peer-to-peer exchanges, and global mobility has made Bitcoin taxation increasingly difficult to monitor or collect — a fact that regulators are reluctantly acknowledging behind closed doors.
Macro Forces Align in Bitcoin’s Favor
Three global trends are turbocharging Bitcoin’s narrative in 2025:
1. Deglobalization and Monetary Fragmentation
As U.S.-China tensions persist and the BRICS alliance gains influence, the world is moving toward a multipolar monetary system. In this environment, Bitcoin is the only truly neutral asset — not tied to any nation, bloc, or ideology.
2. Wealth Transfer to Gen Z and Millennials
Younger investors, who are natively digital and deeply skeptical of legacy institutions, are inheriting wealth. Surveys show over 60% of Gen Z trust decentralized money more than banks. Bitcoin is now part of retirement plans, college savings accounts, and sovereign wealth strategies.
3. Tech Integration
Big tech is bridging the final mile. In 2025:
Apple Pay supports native Bitcoin transactions via Taproot wallets.
Visa and Mastercard now process Bitcoin via third-party integrations.
Tesla resumed Bitcoin payments for select markets, citing “sustainable mining improvements.”
Risks Still Remain — But They’re Changing
Let’s be clear: Bitcoin is not risk-free. But the nature of its risk is evolving.
Volatility is declining as adoption increases.
Network security is stronger with new mining pools and geopolitical decentralization.
The attack surface is narrower than DeFi protocols or centralized stablecoins.
The biggest remaining risks in 2025 are political (outright bans in authoritarian states), custodial (exchange mismanagement), and user error (self-custody best practices still matter). But these are manageable risks — especially compared to the systemic risk of traditional banking collapse.
Conclusion: The Grip Is Gone — And It’s Not Coming Back
Legacy finance still has power in 2025 — but not control. The old playbook of regulation, media spin, and centralized gatekeeping is no longer working. Bitcoin has moved from resistance to resilience, from rebellion to relevance.
For Bitcoin investors, the message is clear: This isn’t just a hedge. It’s a historical transition.
Old finance isn’t going out with a bang. It’s losing its grip — slowly, systemically, and inevitably.
Mehran Muslimi 