Optionality Report

You don't really know your bank until you try to move a larger amount abroad. Suddenly they want: a reason, a source of funds, an invoice, a phone call, and five working days. It's your money. You still need permission to use it. One bank, one country, one compliance department deciding what you can do with your own money. One bank account is a single point of failure.

One of the few things that actually annoy me when I visit Poland is Ukrainians blasting speakerphone calls in cafés and on public transport.

Europe taxes success. Latin America taxes patience. Pick the one you can afford.

I respect the commitment of people who move somewhere entirely for tax reasons... then spend ALMOST half the year in the places they actually like.

My home country Poland is an unbelievably resilient nation that takes no shit from anybody. Over the last few weeks there’s been a lot of noise about the tribunal mess, the shootout, and how Poles reacted. Here’s something that helps understand the country and why Polish people behave the way they do. For 123 years Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Education was deliberately restricted in the Russian and Prussian parts. Then the WW2. The Germans and Soviets both targeted the Polish elite on purpose. In Katyn in 1940 the Soviets killed around 22,000 Polish officers and professionals, many of them reserve officers, specifically chosen because they were the country’s doctors, engineers, lawyers and leaders. The Germans also systematically killed Polish elites, both Jewish and non-Jewish. The Holocaust wiped out most of Poland’s Jews, among them many who were heavily overrepresented in trade, medicine, and universities. After the war the communists kept education weak, and in 1968 another campaign forced out roughly 13,000 remaining people of Jewish origin. These were fully integrated Polish citizens, many of them academics and doctors, again targeting the remaining educated class. Poland had a large share of its elite deliberately killed or driven out. As bad as it sounds, it also lost a lot of good DNA material. And yet it still built a strong economy from a low base and keeps performing well above the European average in education. Poland was the first to face and fight back against the Germans in 1939 and the first to collapse the Iron Curtain. We are fighting hard to defend European culture. The resilience is obvious. The question is what the baseline would have looked like without those repeated hits. When I was a kid I blamed God and the world for being born in a shithole country. Over the years Poland made me proud. I’m proud to be Polish every day.

Western Europeans visit Argentina and say "how do people live like this?" Argentines visit Berlin and say the exact same thing. Both are right about different things.

The more time I spend in Croatia, the more I think sitting outside for three hours drinking coffee may actually be an advanced civilization.

I see people pushing non-CRS banking like it’s some hidden advantage. Most of them have no idea or simply don’t care. Outside the US, the places that aren’t in CRS (Common Reporting Standard) aren’t in it to protect client privacy. They’re just banking shitholes that nobody has pressured yet because they’re irrelevant. Bolivia is the current example. No CRS and a dollar shortage so bad people are using USDT as a workaround. The USDT stuff in Bolivian banks isn’t a feature. It’s what happens when the system can’t deliver real dollars. Kyrgyzstan and Cambodia are the same category for different reasons. Thin banks, tiny or nonexistent deposit insurance, and correspondent banking that works until it doesn’t. Promoters still send clients there for a fee while the client takes the risk. If you actually live there and just need an account for daily life, fine. If you want your money less visible, sort your tax residency first. Then use established banking systems. The random non-CRS country is not the solution.

People underestimate how much their social life depends on geography. A great house 90 minutes from everyone is often a worse lifestyle than a smaller place where your friends are 5 minutes away.

To the doomers claiming Poland has fallen and this was a Muslim terrorist attack: it’s already been confirmed the attacker was local Polish. My heart goes out to the people in one of my favourite cities in the world. Kraków 🖤

If you moved somewhere voluntarily and still don’t love it, you picked the wrong place.

Paraguay is still a political game, but it’s moving faster than most Western countries manage in a year. President out, bank executives and the former central bank president in prison, former president detained, people starting to get their money back. All in under four days. No burned cars, no destroyed property. In most Western countries this would still be in the “parliamentary investigation committee” phase six months from now, and probably nobody would end up in prison. Bravo.

Holy shit. Poland?

Right to smoke indoors as freedom?I I love Serbia and the freedom it still has. Smoking itself, though, is about as free as a 30-year mortgage on a small apartment or a €1,000-a-month job that barely covers the month. Same story across most of Europe. You’re choosing it, but most of the real decisions have already been made for you. I’ve seen otherwise sharp people plan their entire day around when and where they can smoke. Missed flights because the stopover wasn’t long enough for a proper cigarette. Meetings delayed. Evenings cut short. The addiction sets the schedule. A few years ago I sat at a wedding with a table of mid-level executives from Philip Morris. Some of the sharpest people I’ve ever met. After a few drinks the conversation turned to smoking and “freedom.” One of them said that it used to be freedom when it was mostly just nicotine, and quitting wasn’t that hard. Now the research side works on adding things that make it far more addictive, and the marketing side works on selling the idea that you’re still free. That’s the part most of the loudest arguments skip. These are extremely capable people, some of the best marketers and PR operators in the world, whose job every day is to make the product stickier and the framing more convincing. The industry has spent decades on both while pushing the message that opposing it is some kind of control. If you smoke and feel free while calling everyone who wants cleaner indoor air human cattle, it might be worth asking who actually designed that framing. Most of those arguments were tested and paid for by the companies that sell the product.

After 2 days in Serbia I think the ban on smoking in restaurants is legitimately one of humanity’s greatest achievements.