I see blockchain and crypto everywhere I go 🤓 Border-line blockchain obsession

How to tell when you're obsessed with crypto? I guess if most of your spare time is spent reading, writing or learning about crypto and pretty much every conversation you have somehow inevitably ends up at cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. I'm sorry, but my name is Pandora and I'm a blockchain-addict.

JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I WAS OUT,

I've been in crypto since 2013, back from ye good olde days when it was still possible to mine at home with a desktop pc. I did have a dedicated miner too, with two graphics cards running non stop. Even then though the earnings were mediocre at best. I had calculated that, without difficulty change, I would break even in about half a year. Of course the difficulty rose, and the price went down, and so did the profitability. Bitcoin and blockchain entered the long winter of 2014 and it faded out of most of our collective conciousness. My hard-earnedmined Bitcoin was worth so little, that I did not even bother to try cashing out. Oh, the ways in which hodlers are born..

THEY PULLED ME BACK IN.

Still, I couldn't leave the thought of crypto behind. The seed was planted. Vehemently I kept checking the price from time to time, and well known crypto news sites. It wasn't until the multitude of altcoins started to arise that my enthusiasm was rekindled in a big way. Turning 'useless' PoW into useful PoW was the first trigger, as it probably is for many. It triggers the imagination to ponder what else that computational power of a blockchain could be used for. Decentralized Youtube? Yes! Decentralized eBay? Of course! Decentralized Facebook? Brilliant!

Then later still, I learned of all the new projects and new ways they had devised to utilize the unique features of the blockchain beyond just changing the PoW: digital identity, censorship-resistance, trust-less transactions, anonymity, and so on. Blockchain wasn't just going to replace service providers, it was going to replace everything. From passports to e-mail logins, to messaging apps and web surfing, file sharing and content distribution, to crowd funding and digital lending. There's no end to the amount of applications one can imagine once you truly fully grasp the concept and implications of the technology. Coming from a background in philosophy and being schooled in game theory, I continue to be amazed by the effectiveness of blockchain in dealing with these issues so effectively. Consensus in a decentralized manner is a beautiful thing.

SEE CRYPTO, BREATHE CRYPTO, SLEEP CRYPTO

By now I have gotten to the point where I can't stop thinking about crypto, no matter what I do. There's not a conversation that I have that doesn't somehow end up involving me saying: "See!! That's why: Bitcoin!" or being the party-pooper to inform everybody that "That's all going to disappear once crypto goes mainstream and the blockchain equivalent takes over".

When I do groceries I think about how my loyalty points should end up with my crypto-stack, how in the future I can scan my groceries to see where they came from, and how it sucks that I have a seperate PIN/creditcard that isn't tied to my loyalty points and neither of them are a crypto-wallet. There's hardly anything that I do, touch or experience that I can't somehow relate to blockchain and how it will all change in the future. I have turned into that person.

I don't mind though, I've always been that person and I remember it well when I was that person during the early days of the internet. The time when being nerdy or geeky was still considered to be a terrible sin.

The curse of the early adopter - being the odd one out. It has happened a couple times more in my life, but never again so clearly as with the crypto-revolution we are currently in. It's still going to take another 10 years for the rest of the world to catch up, just as with the internet, but my past experiences has made me confident in my judgement and belief in crypto.

In fact, I kind of cherish these moments. The times when people just don't get it, or not yet anyway, and though it makes me frustrated at times I can find solice in knowing that they'll get there in a few years. Even if they, as an end-user, might not even know it.

I also feel blessed. Being 35 years of age means I belong to the oldest people that could still be categorized as millenials. And millenials are the ones who are going to make crypto go mainstream. I feel it puts me at a unique position of 'getting it' like the millenials, while still enjoying a higher degree of prior experience like the generation before me. I can take what I learned from the dawn of the internet and apply the lessons in this dawn of the new and decentralized internet. I probably would be less of a true believer if I didn't have those experiences - with age comes confidence.

This post turned out to be more of a blog-entry than a news story, but I thought it would be interesting to share my blockchain obsession and in turn ask you, my readers, what's your blockchain-obsession-status? Has it dwindled during the dip or is it as fierce as ever? Have you grown more certain or has your belief started to falter? Are you 'that person' yet in your social circles?

Please do share!

(Art by Roy Lichtenstein)