What It Really Means to Own Your Money: Why Eric Larcheveque Put Everything Into Bitcoin

In this episode of When Shift Happens, I sit down with Eric Larcheveque, entrepreneur and one of Europe's most influential voices in Bitcoin, who's now building TBSO - La Société Bitcoin - a publicly listed company co-founded with NBA legend Tony Parker. While our conversation touches on entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, self-custody, and the future of money, it ultimately explores something much deeper: what does it really mean to own something?

Choosing Independence Before Bitcoin

Long before Eric discovered Bitcoin, he had already decided he wanted to build life on his own terms. During an engineering internship, he realised he couldn't imagine spending his career inside a large corporation. He describes feeling like "a cog in a very large organization."

Entrepreneurship wasn't a childhood dream. In fact, he admits he knew almost nothing about business. He had never studied finance, capital raising, or company formation. He simply knew he wanted the freedom to build something himself. He laughs about buying books from the library to learn how businesses actually worked because he was starting entirely from scratch. That decision to choose independence over certainty became the foundation for everything that followed.

When Institutions Failed Him

Eric often speaks about personal responsibility, and he learned it through experience. Years before Bitcoin existed, the bank holding hundreds of thousands of euros of his savings collapsed because of corruption and mismanagement.

Then came another lesson. After purchasing gold as a hedge against financial instability, he stored it in a bank vault in Luxembourg. When the bank later decided to end its relationship with him, he assumed retrieving his own gold would be straightforward. Instead, the bank sold the gold and transferred him euros instead.

That experience fundamentally changed the way he thought about ownership. As he explains, when your money sits in a bank, you don't necessarily possess the asset itself; instead, you possess a claim that depends on someone else's willingness and ability to honour it. Bitcoin, in his view, solved a problem he had already lived through: owning an asset without relying on a third party. 

Bitcoin Was Never About Getting Rich

"I never saw Bitcoin as a way to enrich myself. I always saw it as a way to protect the fruit of my work." Rather than measuring his wealth in euros, Eric says he thinks in bitcoin. The objective isn't maximising short-term returns but preserving purchasing power over decades.

He even jokes that during Bitcoin's dramatic COVID crash, he briefly thought he might have been wrong. But instead of panicking, he told his wife they should watch Netflix and accept that, if necessary, he would build another company. "I know how to make money again."

That mindset is perhaps more valuable than any specific opinion about Bitcoin. His confidence comes less from believing he'll always be right and more from trusting his ability to rebuild if he's wrong.

Why Bitcoin Is Really About Time

Eric talks about money’s impact on behaviour.

To explain this, he references the famous marshmallow experiment, in which children choose between one marshmallow immediately and two if they're willing to wait. In his view, the same principle applies to societies. When money constantly loses purchasing power, people are encouraged to spend now rather than think long-term, and saving becomes less attractive. 

Sound money, he argues, creates the opposite incentives by rewarding delayed gratification, encouraging investment instead of consumption, and stimulating people to think in years rather than weeks. Whether discussing individuals or entire civilizations, Eric repeatedly returns to the same idea: the kind of money people use influences the kinds of decisions they make. So Bitcoin goes beyond being a technological innovation, into a mechanism for encouraging longer-term thinking.

Having a Strategy

One nuance Eric returned to repeatedly was the difference between owning Bitcoin and building a Bitcoin strategy. Despite holding almost all of his own liquid wealth in Bitcoin, he explicitly tells listeners not to copy him.

Instead, he advocates consistency. Investing gradually, thinking in decades, and not trying to time the market. Most importantly, he emphasizes establishing rules before emotions can influence decisions. He believes the people who benefited most from Bitcoin weren't necessarily the smartest investors, but those who stayed patient. 

AI and Entrepreneurship

Although Bitcoin dominates much of Eric's public profile, he is equally excited about artificial intelligence. But his conclusion is surprisingly different from much of today's AI narrative.

He believes building software is rapidly becoming a commodity because AI agents can already write code, prototype products, and dramatically reduce development time. But that doesn't eliminate entrepreneurs.

"The question is no longer how do I build the best product," he explains. "It's how do I sell my product?"

Product-market fit, storytelling, distribution, trust, and sales remain profoundly human challenges. AI may amplify great ideas, but it cannot replace judgment or genuine understanding of customers.

Freedom Always Comes With Responsibility

No discussion about Ledger would be complete without addressing one of the most difficult moments in the company's history. Eric spoke candidly about the kidnapping of his co-founder, who was abducted alongside his wife by criminals demanding a €10 million Bitcoin ransom. The attackers even sent videos to Eric as part of the extortion attempt. 

The incident highlights an uncomfortable reality about self-custody. The same principles that give individuals greater control also require greater responsibility. For Eric, security isn't simply about technology. It's about preparation, operational discipline, and understanding that protecting valuable assets extends beyond passwords and devices into the physical world. It's a sobering reminder that freedom and responsibility are inseparable.

Success Is Having the Freedom to Say No

By the end of our conversation, the discussion had shifted away from Bitcoin entirely. When asked whether he's happier today than earlier in his career, Eric's answer wasn't about wealth. He said he's happier because he's free. 

Money matters only because it provides the freedom to choose how he spends his time, what projects he pursues, and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to say no. That philosophy also explains why, despite his financial success, he continues building companies, creating educational content, and advocating for ideas he believes in. He describes education as one of the most meaningful things he can contribute and sees learning as a lifelong process rather than something that ends with formal schooling. 

Whether discussing entrepreneurship, AI, or Bitcoin, Eric consistently returns to the same principle: meaningful freedom isn't handed to us by institutions or achieved through wealth alone. It's built through ownership, continuous learning, and a willingness to take responsibility for the future we want to create.

👉 If you enjoyed this summary, watch the full conversation on When Shift Happens on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

https://youtu.be/B8TcEsb-GlI?si=TAnaaa-Hsk6_EAQ_