Hello Steemit!

I'm Taj and this is my introduction post! I'm a web designer with an interest in Cryptocurrencies.

How I got here

I remember in late 2013 when bitcoin had just hit $200 USD. I had heard about it some months before when it was around $7 and immediately got excited. I started telling everyone that I knew about this cool decentralized network that can manage transactions and wallet balances.

"It uses this technology called the blockchain to keep a public ledger and record transactions and you can send and receive money to any person in the world for a standard fee! It uses computers to mine- which is like processing the transaction by using an algorithm to-" - an excited Tajstar

"right, right, but like...we have credit cards and can use those online so" - every person I talked to

"no this is different your credit card company actually lends you the money so you can buy things, with bitcoin you OWN it and it's anonymous and you can use it however you want-"

"like an online bank account?"

"what?..no like your wallet but online"

"Right...so what can I buy with it?"

"well at the moment not much but-"

"sounds pretty useless"

"trust me it's going to be BIG and people are working on getting it in more places"

"lol okay"

Granted I could have maybe explained it better, but I was excited about this thing, it was cool and I wanted people to get excited about it too. Time went on and my enthusiasm waned from the lack of excitement and just not hearing about it for awhile.

Fast forward a couple months as all these other coins start to crop up. I'm on Reddit looking at gifs and what catches my eye but a Shiba Inu.

So down the rabbit hole I went searching Doge memes until I stumbled upon the r/dogecoin subreddit.

"Dogecoin?....like bitcoin...but with the doge meme?"

Yes, younger, more naive Tajstar that ask dumb questions he knows the answer to. Exactly. Except with more memes and supportive people who help you understand and invest (to the moon!). Oh, and sponsor a NASCAR driver. Anyway, after reading a ton and getting help from lots of people I decided I wanted to really get more involved in this coin and community I convince my uncle (after explaining what blockchain technology was much better than before) to go half with me in building a mining rig. It was a ton of fun and we mined a lot of coins. All the while learning more about other coins and the advancements they made.

After awhile mining got expensive and being a broke college student I just couldn't keep it up. To add to that the price of doge had dropped significantly, at that time it went from 47 cents per 1000 doge to 27 cents per 1000 doge. So I torn down the rig and sold off the parts and the dogecoins sat quietly in a wallet. I still checked the dogecoin subreddit every now and then but it quietly started to lose some of the steam it had before. I checked the dogecoin for the first couple months but it never went higher so I stopped.

Jump a couple of years in the future too late 2017. Finished up college, got a job, got married, just living my life. At the same time, bitcoin is SKYROCKETING. 5,000! 8,000! 11,000! 15,000! 19,000 US DOLLARS! The price just seemed to keep going up. Meanwhile, I'm kicking myself for buying a couple new games for my PS3 instead of bitcoins when they were $200.

Well, you win some you lose some nothing you can do about it. But wait....don't I still have some dogecoin somewhere? So I rummage through a box of old drives (I have a problem), plugging them each in to look for my wallet back up until I find it. Then spend the next hour or so trying to find the latest version of the wallet software. I finally get it working and look up my account balance on an exchange at the current rate.

"WHAT THE F-"

Granted it wasn't a small fortune but it was about 4 months rent and considering what I spent to get them (a couple bucks here and there + the free ones I got from mining) I was looking at a 3000% return on my investment. That's insane when you think about it. I don't get that kind of return on basically anything I've ever invested in. So, of course, my spark's been reignited. I go on an absolute binge, reading everything I can about any coin I hear about.

Eventually, I settle on a few coins reinvest my doge into them and keep reading whatever I can. One platform that always comes up when talking about real USABILITY is Steem. So I sign up, wait a couple of days and in early January I became a member of Steemit.

My time so far

I'm not sure what I expected when I signed up for Steemit, I guess post = pay. But it sounded too good to be true and it was. Though I don't think that's a bad thing. It's such a rich community with so many varying interests that it amazes me. All these content creators are here and they are all motivated to make the best stuff possible. There is a little something for everyone and every person can find their tribe(s). The best part is the way you get paid. Not only can you support your favorite writers and friends in a monetary way but you also get paid for curating great content. To me it's all the professionalism of Medium with all the fun and conversation of Reddit. I really think this community is awesome. I got a lot of help from great people here.

@inquiringtimes wrote a great resource on all the things Steem has to offer. It was a day well spent looking at all the services, I encourage you to give it a read here. I found this post by @overkillcoin that really explains how to gain traction on Steemit. And of course, @runicar not just for hosting this contest but also bringing out so many minnows with some interesting projects, blogs, and stories.

Goals

I have a couple goals now that I know what kind of place the Steem community is. I want to build up my Steem and Steem power so I can reach more people and make some Steem dollars. I plan to use my blog like a learning journal, writing about what I learn about Steem and Cryptos (am I the only one who calls them that?) in general and some other stuff I've taken an interest in. I'm not the best writer so I hope to improve my writing and really find my voice by posting a couple times a week. I posted a picture yesterday and was surprised that I got a couple really nice comments so I think I'm going to post here more for my photography hobby. Last but not least is I want to make friends here. It's awesome that I can find people with similar interest and that are really motivated to talk about what they love so I'm hoping to connect with people here too.

My favorite post

I'm a bit conflicted on this one. Including this post I only have 3. My first post about the future of coins cryptos this year took a lot of time. But I got a lot of really nice responses on a post I did of some pictures I took.

Welp, that's about it thanks for reading and feel free to reach out to me! I know this platform is going somewhere and I'm excited to see people think the same! Full Steem ahead! ( I'm sorry I been waiting this entire post to slip that in somewhere. I know, I'm a terrible person.)