It was a bittersweet moment for me. I’ll take some time explaining both.

This is something I have told myself and others that I would never do. That it makes zero logical sense to sell bitcoin for dollars, yet here I am. I’m in a bind and I had to switch over to USD. It wasn’t any hurtful percentage of my stack, but it was painful anyways. I never expected I would have to do it, I’m simply cash poor right at this moment, and I’m going through a transition where I just needed bitcoins help. And that brings me to the sweetness of it all. There’s a lot of it honestly. First off, bitcoin is a tool of dependency, and I had to depend on it. It really felt good that it was there when I needed it. I was bailed out of a sticky spot by my Sats. Additionally, I was bailed out by my own decisions to stack and save as often as I could over the years, which feels good. Furthermore, the way I converted these Sats for USD felt good too. I would have used an exchange if I absolutely had to, but I had a few avenues before going down that particular dark alley. My first option worked right away, and it was nothing short of awesome. I have a friend who, a few years ago, was a coworker. He got into bitcoin because of me. My daily rants of freedom and autonomy around the coffee pot were the hook, economic quips about finite supply and near 100% network uptime, the line and sinker. Since then, he’s really grown into a much stronger bitcoiner than I, and I’m super proud of that. He motivates me to improve myself these days. He mines, he works for fiat at a bitcoin company, he has his wife stacking, and he is a major participant and contributor in his local bitcoin circular economies-yes plural. He also does a lot of volunteer work for the Bitcoin Veterans, who, if you haven’t checked out for yourself, you should. They are a strong force for adoption and education.

Bitcoin the network doesn’t just mean the network of nodes connected to each other sharing the information that requires bitcoin to work as it does. It’s personal too. Your own personal network is so important in this space because we need like-minded people in our circles to truly reach bitcoin's full potential. The second I reached out to this person, and told him I needed to exchange some sats for USD, he was able to oblige. I was hoping at best for him to have some contacts for me in the DC area, but he was willing and able to give me the cash I needed. He even sent me the cash before I was even ready to pull from cold storage and send him the sats. GEEZ what a relief that was. I was so thankful and overcome by the type of persons the bitcoin social network produces. A couple hours later I sent him his sats, and there was no exchange involved to KYC me or freeze my account on fraud accusations for my “protection.” We just transacted with each other. As it should be. Although I’m still a little down for needing to convert this small % of my stack, I’m eternally grateful that I was able to.

P.S. My first cross post! Cool feature @k00b