Like many people who spend their days toiling endlessly in the gym with sole purpose of forcing their body to change against its will, I suffer from mild(?) body dismorphia. In my quest to finally silence the eternal nagging voice in my mind that tells me that I'm still the fat kid on the playground, I started researching steroids.
If Captain America can get all of his powers from a vial then why can't I? The simple answer is because unlike in the movies, the compounds I would have to put into my body are extremely liver toxic and have an extensive list of side effects I'm not interested in.
The extensive research into steroids didn't yeild any results, except for one tiny little rabbit hole. How do you buy steroids if you want them? With bitcoin...
This is back in June around the halving and bitcoin was sitting at 70k. How was that possible? I remembered when bitcoin died! It was all over reddit! It crashed completely never to return! How could it come back, last that I saw it was at 20k!
Obviously I had to investigate, and the rest is pretty much history. Bitcoin sells itself, all you have to do is learn what it is.
They say that parenthood changes you. It’s true. When I was about to become a father, I was suddenly concerned about money. I thought about what I do best - writing. So I set up a blogspot, submitted it to Google Adsense and hoped that it would go viral and rake in the millions.
Except that it didn’t. I’m still hustling over there now; it’s a good day if I can earn one cent from my blog. But jumping into the uncharted territory of content creation caught the eye of the social media manager of a local crypto exchange.
“Hey, would you like to be an influencer for us?” he wrote, “You don’t have to put in your own money.”
At that time, I was skeptical of cryptocurrencies. It just seemed surreal and sus to me - this notion of digital money. But I did think that crypto and blockchain would be the engines of growth in the future. Even if I didn’t believe in it myself, I should venture into it for the sake of my son.
So, I sprang into action. I converted all the BAT tokens to…
…Ethereum.
Why, you idiot? I hear you readers screaming at me.
Well, I don’t exactly know why. Maybe it was the fact that Bitcoin was so expensive and shooting for it felt like aiming for the impossible. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to be like everyone else - being gravitated towards the digital gold.
Anyway, so I opened up an account with the crypto exchange with ETH in my bag.
Subsequently, an article I wrote about this exchange went viral in my country. I managed to get about 10 referrals. This meant that I got sats for free because I earned a commission from my referees’ deposits. That pooh-poohed my resistance towards Bitcoin.
So, on my birthday two years ago, I decided to embark on the old-school way and give Cointiply a try. In fact, I documented about it here: https://www.publish0x.com/diaperfinancingfund/embarked-a-30-day-cointiply-challenge-on-my-birthday-xgljxrg. Gone are the days in which users could get 5 BTC from a faucet, but Cointiply still reliably dishes out sats. For an anxious and determined father, it is enough.
Well done! I'm happy you are doing well for your kids.
Literally at the Polyclinic right now with my daughter
You left us on a cliffhanger sensei ! Did you finally hit 50000 coins? How much was that in BTC?
Also approximately what year was it when faucets gave out 5BTC !?
Of course!
It’s a lifelong mission. Here it is where I’m at now.
50,000 coins = USD$5, not a life-changing amount but still…
I think The Bitcoin Faucet gave out 5 BTCs in 2010!
A colleague at uni, in 2017. He told me about it, and mostly recommended me to listen to videos from A. Antonopoulos. He quickly made me realize that my little sidestep into XRP during the 2017 bull run was a padawan's mistake from someone who didn't see the big picture. I then completely switched to Bitcoin in 2018. Went to a LN hackathon and was hooked ever since.
Actually, I did go to a Bitcoin meetup sometime before all that in 2016 in Seoul, but the speaker did not manage to convince me that it was anything else but magic internet money.
As a side note, my colleague almost got hired for a professor position on Blockchain and AI, but the position never ended up being created. But that colleague knew the technical ins and the outs of it all, and I owe my current fascination with it mostly to him.
what was the initial appeal of XRP besides your arrogance?
That's a good colleague!
Indeed.
I felt for him though as he recently had to sell part of his stack due to his partner incurring big losses due to leveraged trading.
Ouch!
I found it by accident. A YouTube video. Bitcoin. I stopped. It was sharp. I watched. More videos came. Then more research. I dug deeper. No fat on the words. One year back. Searching crypto in general, I found Stacker News in a post by @cryotosensei about SN in another blog. And here I am. Simple. Direct. No bullshit.
How fortunate! @cryotosensei is probably the first stacker that i had regular, positive interactions with. He is a good representative of SN
Stop it. I’m blushing
I will probably steal your words in an article I write in the future. Lovely
I've been a web dweller since the year 2000, once we were connected I couldn't keep away from the damn thing. I have noticed a few iterations of digital money during that time. It was around 2010 or so when I first noticed Bitcoin.
At first, it was just being asked for on file sharing sites. Some time in 2011-2012, I moved into a flat and learned that you can buy drugs on silk road in exchange for Bitcoin. I still didn't get into it then, but I noticed the price had skyrocketed. It really felt too good to be true.
In between I gave mining and shitcoining a go. The shitcoining didn't work out.
Not quite my entry (I was around before then), but I wrote up a thing for Bitcoin Magazine a few years ago for when it truly clicked for me.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/asset-bubbles-covid-19-make-bitcoin-case
Should make it a standalone SN post, I suppose
As I've probably told you several times, you edited the book that really made it click for me. I owe you and Lyn both my gratitude.
All your gratitude to Lyn. She did the work, I just sprinkled some dust and caught (almost all!) typos
The dust is the best part of a donut.
He used spell check and grammarly
WE DEMAND THR LONG VERSION
bitcoin popped onto my radar when it was like 2k and ripping to 20k, i then proceeded to follow this exact chart
I'm quite surprised people are still buying roids with btc, i would have thought monero would have been the go-to.
do people accept lightning for them now?
I actually don't know if they accept lighting...
roid dealers would probably be very receptive to being onboarded to lightning actually
Probably if they aren't already
not an answer
douche coin
If only I met you sooner. 😔
Not everyone is willing to learn.
It takes a special mindset to shake off the existing system.
Luckily for me, I know I'm stupid, so it's easy to admit that what I know is probably wrong.
he didn't answer the question
I received it for the first time as a form of payment for a freelance job I did, from there everything was to study Bitcoin and soak up its philosophy.
what year?
2016 more or less.
silk road, Ross Dead Pirate Ulbrict
News about a Bitcoin ATM, $300 BTC at that time
what year?
A sex worker I was seeing regularly (don't judge - I was going through something 😁) told me about it and turned me on to Paxful back in the day.
It was early 2023, not long after Damus launched. Someone I followed sent me 10 sats. It got me started on my Bitcoin journey.
A few months later, BlueWallet stopped its custodial wallet service, but I didn’t realize it. So, I ended up losing my first-ever Bitcoin. 😂