As you may know, I sold my company this year to focus full-time on the cryptocurrency space. I went all in, choosing to convert to fiat to pay fiat bills as needed. My cryptocurrency holdings were valued in USD terms much, much higher than they are today.

With the prices down 80-90% or more across the board, you might think I'd have reason to be quite discouraged. Selling cryptocurrency at these prices to pay bills is certainly not fun, and I sure would love a nice strong rebound, but the real reason I'm not too discouraged is because I know why I got involved in the first place.

I have not forgotten my why, my reason: the source of my passion in this space isn't about profits or quick returns.

It's about creating a better world for myself, my family, and everyone.

I watched an amazing talk tonight. It was Andreas Antonopoulos' best talk so far, in my opinion. It brought me back to one of my first posts about bitcoin in early March of 2013 on my old blog:

In that blog I had a whole section about fractional reserve lending and the Federal Reserve banking cartel.

I was also reminded of the time capsule series I put together of my bitcoin related tweets from 2013 which you can see here (the December post links to all the others):

December 2013 Digital Time Capsule: Bitcoin Tweets from @lukestokes

From the very beginning, I wasn't involved because of the potential for personal profits or even because of the cool technology. I've always been involved because this is a path forward to escaping a completely broken system. We all know it's broken. We've tried protesting, changing it from the inside, apathetically ignoring it, or even just getting what we can out of it while it limps along. The real answer, so perfectly put by Andreas, is to escape the system completely.

The real answer is peer to peer decentralization.

Centralized systems are corruptible. They allow intermediaries to to drain massive amounts of wealth through legal theft. They reward theft with profit, legal immunity, and bigger opportunities for even more theft in the future.

This has to stop and the answer is in this video. The answer isn't to think about cryptocurrency as an investment, but as a way of life.

Please, watch and share this video:

I've been following Andreas and listening to his talks since 2013. This is one of his best. Please, do give it a watch and share it. If this isn't your motivation for being involved in cryptocurrency, then you may be in for the wrong reasons.

Also related and worth mentioning is this post by Dan Larimer in July of 2016: Steemit's Evil Plan for Cryptocurrency World Domination. Dan's post and the plan to bootstrap a real cryptocurrency everyday people could use was one of the reasons I got so excited about the Steem blockchain to begin with. Let's get back to that vision. Let's make it happen.

On a personal note, I haven't blogged about the latest details of our move to Puerto Rico because I tweaked my back and my head cold came back so bad I lost my voice. I've been resting in bed the last few days, but you can follow along via Twitter. I'll post more once I fully recover and get settled.

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Luke Stokes is a father, husband, programmer, STEEM witness, DAC launcher, and voluntaryist who wants to help create a world we all want to live in. Learn about cryptocurrency at UnderstandingBlockchainFreedom.com

_{I'm a Witness! Please vote for @lukestokes.mhth}