Sometimes it seems like life in the Cryptosphere is a constant test of nerves and resolve. You feel like things are going well, and then everything falls off a cliff... and when you're ready to declare that "it's all just too much for me," things suddenly become well again.
And then the cycle repeats.
This is definitely not a gig for the faint of heart!
I got to writing these words as a result of realizing that it has been pretty much exactly ten years since I first got involved in crypto. A visiting digital nomad friend of ours was staying for a few days because he needed reliable Internet, and it turned out that he had been working on Ethereum... even though his recommendation was that I buy at least a symbolic amount of Bitcoin, just as a way to be "part of the movement."
As much as anything, I think I was swayed when he pointed out that the "size" of Bitcoin had grown to almost $4 billion, at the time... it was no longer just esoteric small potatoes.
For the princely sum of $150, I ended up with a little over 0.5 BTC, using a service called "Local Bitcoins" which was active at the time, but seemed a bit sketchy to me.
I thought it was a heck of an investment, when I sold it for about $2,200, 2 1/2 years later!
So much for knowing what I was doing, but I expect I am not the first to think "It's unlikely it will rise much more than this!"
Although I thought is was cool, I actually wasn't expecting to get involved again because the risk level and the technology was just too far outside my comfort zone. I briefly considered trying to mine Bitcoin, but the tech and the expense was more than I was willing to deal with.
But then I found Steemit in January of 2017, and felt like crypto in a format I felt like I could wrap my head around: Social blogging. To be honest, I didn't actually expect to make anything, but I have always enjoyed blogging and the attached potential to earn a little crypto for doing so was cool.
And now, here I am, more than eight years later!
I'm mostly just oriented towards "letting it ride" as it were... in the hopes that someday this might all have a bit of value.
And if the end result is that it will have gone nowhere, then at least I will have had fun blogging... since writing is actually one of my hobbies!
The key to success — to the extent that there IS such a thing — seems to be to just keep going, no matter what, and no matter whether the markets are up or down.
Can't let bear markets or corrections like the recent meltdown get in the way of your focus... even though I recognize that the temptation is to do a lot of hand wringing and worrying.
I've only recently resumed blogging here on Blurt... and while I am hoping to keep going for a long time, I am also well aware that "life happens" and not always in the way you hope for — or expect.
The nice thing about "personal" style blogs is that you tend to always have material to write about, and they tend to be popular with a certain segment of the world who are more oriented towards "personal stories" than just information.
And that serves as enough inspiration to keep going!
Thanks for coming to visit, and enjoy the remainder of your weekend!
How about YOU? Does the trubulence of the cryptosphere trouble you? When did you first get involved? DO leave me a comment — engagement matters! Communities are built because people INTERACT with each other through the content that's created! This is SOCIAL media, after all. So share your opinion, be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer all worthy comments!
Sequence: 094 — Timestamp: 2025.03.01 - 15:12 PST
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I agree, not for the faint of heart!
Wow, too bad about your 0.5 BTC. I think a lot of us have similar stories. I was offered dozens of BTC when I was down on my luck in 2016, for example. I almost bought 1 BTC on eBay for $30, which included a physical "coin", but I turned it down because they were only $16 at the time and I didn't want to pay such a high premium. And a friend gave me 1 BTC when he died a few years ago, I later found it in my wallet, waited for the right moment, cashed most of it out (via gold coins and then fiat) last month when spot was $100000 USD. I paid off the debt to my ex/the govt, so now I'm getting my driver's license, passport, bank accounts, and other rights back. (Salute and RIP to my buddy Warren!) I helped a lot of people get into BTC in 2013. Myself, I don't invest for profit so I stayed out of it. But then in 2016 I finally got a wallet and started to learn about it, because I saw that it was becoming a legitimate currency. I've never "bought"... but I've made good use of that gift. I find it hard to use, and prone to catastrophic loss of funds. But powerful once you get it working properly. It's just not private, or decentralized, or free of banking/govt, the way it was supposed to be. I'm skeptical about BTC and other cryptos going forward. Glad to have got mostly out of the market. I think gold and silver bullion are the best savings for me.
As for blockchain blogs... they lured us in with the "make money for your comments and likes!" concept... which really didn't turn out to actually work. A few guys got rich and traveled the world on their earnings in 2016, but that was about it, and since then most of us have taken up the mantra "oh well, at least we kinda get some tokens, and we were going to blog anyway, so it's better than nothing". Fair enough, but let's be honest, this isn't what it was billed to be, either. People are right to be a little disappointed.
And now, look at BLURT. Scary chart indeed. I've put tens of thousands of dollars, and MANY years of my life (40 hours a week), into piling up 1.2 million BLURT which is currently worth 2 grand. And I'm not alone! It's not all about profit, for me, but losing money year after year after year... when supposedly EARNING for all my work... is not a happy feeling. I would have been better off on FaceBook (well not really, I'm life banned there LOL)
As for these blogs, I have to remind myself... they permanent. I can't edit them. So yeah, they're a nice form of diary. But very public, and very permanent. Like one of the most permanent things known to man so far. Just a thought.
I remember back on Steemit, one of the friends I made early on used to present crypto seminars and he had a bunch of promotional BTC coins made that he gave to workshop attendees. "Here, have a Bitcoin!" I wonder if any of those people still have those coins, tossed into some desk drawer, untouched.
Congratulations on your "success" story... always cool to hear someone having truly benefited!
No, these crypto social gigs are not what they were promised to be... which is perhaps less about the validity of crypto than about the fact that 99.99% of web content actually has virtually no monetary value. The same has held true for every "get paid for content" site I have been part of since 1999 — a handful of early adopters get rich, and everyone else ends up making a few cents before the venue slowly bleeds to death as the piranhas in the water slowly fight over smaller and smaller "food nuggets."
Here, perhaps the venues won't shut down, but while we might double the number of tokens we have staked, you end up with 100,000 being worth $500 last year, and having 200,000 being worth $400 this year and 400,000 being worth $350 next year and so on, ad nauseam.
Yeah, the blogs are permanent. So I keep what I say here to stuff I don't mind people knowing about me... now, and 20 years from now.
Thanks for stopping by!
Fantastic comment, agreed 100% and couldn't have said it better.
Also - thank you!!