From classified ops to open source

Operating under a pseudonym fits the ethos—sovereignty starts with controlling your identity. Average Gary brought the “thinking shooter” principle from Naval Special Warfare into Bitcoin: you don’t need to know every answer, but you need to know where to find it. His path from military intelligence through Microsoft to large-scale Bitcoin mining reveals how decentralized systems reward proof of work over credentials and why open source tears down the walls between citizens and the institutions meant to serve them.

You can just do things, but when you do it, you better have an answer as to why you did it.

— Average Gary

Timestamps

  • 00:00 Career arc from Naval intelligence to Bitcoin mining
  • 05:30 Transitioning from military to Microsoft, learning Rust
  • 09:45 Why family and bureaucracy drove the shift from Navy to tech
  • 15:20 FinTech experience and recognizing surveillance in financial systems
  • 22:10 How Naval Special Warfare training shapes decentralized thinking
  • 28:35 Defense Language Institute, Chinese linguistics, and data analysis
  • 33:50 The “thinking shooter” concept and cross-functional awareness
  • 38:15 Moving to a large-scale Bitcoin miner as a software engineer
  • 42:40 Bitcoin Veterans: helping military community understand Bitcoin
  • 47:25 Why open source matters for government transparency
  • 52:30 Building proof of work resumes through GitHub contributions
  • 56:07 Local community action as centralized systems fail
  • 59:10 Closing thoughts on consistency and showing up

Resources

About Average Gary

Average Gary is a software engineer at a large-scale Bitcoin miner and founder of the Shenandoah Bitcoin Club in Northern Virginia. He served 11 years in Navy intelligence, including roles as a Chinese linguist at the Defense Language Institute and tactical intelligence specialist with Naval Special Warfare. After his military service, he worked as a software engineer at Microsoft and in FinTech before moving into Bitcoin. He's active in Bitcoin Veterans, an organization helping military veterans understand and adopt Bitcoin, and regularly contributes to open source projects focused on sovereignty and decentralization.

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