E176: Eric Larchevêque: Why Bitcoin Is the Only Money You Actually Own

Eric Larchevêque, a 52-year-old French microelectronics engineer turned entrepreneur, holds 100 percent of his liquid net worth in Bitcoin, measures his wealth in number of bitcoins rather than euros, and views the asset exclusively as a long-term store of value rather than a vehicle for quick enrichment. Two formative banking experiences drove this conviction. Around age 28 he lost his entire net worth when a Latvian bank failed due to bad management and alleged mafia involvement, recovering roughly one third by signing away his debt claim to a liquidator. Later, a Luxembourg bank gave him 30 days to close his account, refused to return his physical gold bars, sold them, and transferred euros instead, demonstrating to him that a third-party custodian treats assets as an IOU rather than actual property.

He argues that money held in a bank account is not truly owned but is merely a debt owed to the depositor, and that governments and institutions have frozen or seized assets repeatedly throughout history and will do so again during wars, revolutions, or financial crises. He cites Russian citizens losing banking access after the invasion of Crimea as a concrete example. Gold is the best existing alternative but fails on transport, weight, and authenticity verification. Bitcoin held in self-custody, meaning the holder controls the 24-word private key offline, is the only asset he believes solves the ownership problem. Bitcoin held on an exchange such as Coinbase or Binance carries counterparty risk from government blacklists or capital controls, and he invokes the principle not your keys not your coins to distinguish true ownership from custodial holdings. He built Ledger in 2014 specifically to keep those 24 words offline and out of reach of internet-based hackers.

Larchevêque frames Bitcoin's relevance through time preference, arguing that sound money tied to gold in the 18th and 19th centuries incentivized saving and produced lasting civilization, while fiat monetary policy institutionalizes low time preference by spending now and deferring consequences. He describes Bitcoin's fixed monetary policy as a return to sound money that realigns present behavior with future outcomes. His personal conviction, explicitly framed as not investment advice, is that Bitcoin will reach one million dollars in fiat value, though whether that takes five, ten, or twenty years is uncertain. He adds an uncomfortable caveat: a world where one Bitcoin is worth one million or ten million dollars is a world with a great deal of suffering, and growing interest in Bitcoin and movement toward catastrophic monetary failure are inseparable trends. He acknowledges he still does not understand why the fiat system has not already collapsed, having expected it to do so ten years ago.

On investment approach, Larchevêque no longer advises people to invest in Bitcoin following the events of 2022 and the FTX collapse, though he continues to invest himself. He says the only people he knows who succeeded with Bitcoin are those who forgot about it and did not watch the price, and that everyone who tried to beat the market by selling or rotating into altcoins ultimately lost everything. He notes that someone who bought Bitcoin in 2021 could in 2026 be barely up or even down depending on entry point, potentially lagging S&P 500 returns over that period. His recommended approach is dollar-cost averaging a fixed slice of savings automatically each week or month and never touching it, and he cautions against putting in money needed for daily life because doing so causes price-watching and poor decisions.

Physical attacks targeting crypto holders are a serious and growing threat. His co-founder David was kidnapped along with his wife in January or February 2025, tortured, and had a finger severed. Criminals demanded 10 million euros in Bitcoin as ransom, targeting Larchevêque as the intended recipient of the extortion. He says a public video he had made weeks before the abduction stating he did not have access to his own Bitcoin helped convince the kidnappers. He notes that France accounts for approximately 80 percent of all criminal cases worldwide involving kidnapping related to crypto, but that in France 100 percent of such cases ended with all criminals arrested and no ransom successfully paid, partly because crypto ransoms can be seized before criminals convert them to fiat on exchanges. His only advice in a kidnapping situation is to call the police immediately, and his first line of defense is not publicly disclosing that you hold crypto at all.

On AI and entrepreneurship, he predicts a significant shift in the software industry within months as coding agents are now mature enough to make developers 30 to 50 times faster, which he says is already causing SaaS market cap to decline as investors expect companies to build their own dedicated systems. He pushes back on the narrative that AI will enable one-person billion-dollar companies, arguing that finding product-market fit has not become easier, competition for the same markets will intensify, and the real challenge for entrepreneurs is now selling and finding customers rather than building.

Larchevêque's current venture, The Bitcoin Society, ticker TBSO, is publicly listed on Euronext and co-founded with Natan Benchimoll and former NBA player Tony Parker. It operates three products covering entrepreneur networking, alternative asset investment education, and media.