I can't consider myself a poor person. I have my house, my iMac, my Macbook and my tiny studio for producing electronic music stuff. On the other hand I'm really far from calling myself rich. Struggling to have a job and a basic income, from time to time I barely can afford to go to the grocery shop. That said, I can identify financially with what I think is the majority on this planet.
Or not... Living in Europe seems an easy task nowadays as more and more refugees from the East and the South arriving and exposing us, the western folks, to the unsettling truth. That we are privileged. And we are privileged because we, historically, took advantage of these people, their resources and their hole culture. Imperialism and Capitalism are still eating the fabrics of society, giving birth to the greatest financial crisis the human kind has suffered and which is yet to be deployed in full scale. But suddenly there was hope.
In November 2008, the Bitcoin White Paper was posted to a cryptography mailing list and a few months later the decentralised peer-to-peer financial network was live, promising (for the few that could get it at that time) the economic utopia. I was introduced to bitcoin when it's value was 2.5$. Without bothering reading that white paper, I classified it as a ponzi scheme and continued my life. Some years later I was introduced to a strange network, with a strange name and a pyramid as a logo valued also at 2.5$. After a small research I decided to wait for it. It looked too good to be true in a way. And again I didn't bother reading the white paper of course.
Fast forward one month and a half ago I had an epiphany. Blockchain, the technology underlying those too strange networks, could save the world. Ι quit my night job as a dj, started selling unnecessary stuff and broke up with my girlfriend so I could study full time this thing. But entering this spiral was not an easy task at all. Just to invest my first 60 euros in bitcoin took me two weeks and a visit to a local ATM that is charging way too much for the service. A few days later I found a way to buy my first ETH also, through a European exchange that is accepting SEPA transfers (still the only way I have), for 50 euros. During these two weeks the prices were constantly skyrocketing giving me anxiety and resulting in buying in double the prices that I was hunting a small amount of time ago. At least I was in the game finally.
Because of my small investment I decided to use these funds just to learn how this thing works, AKA making mistakes and learning by loosing my money. I got to know many other coins and technologies and ended up consuming all my bitcoin in small transactions and fees that were higher than the transactions themselves. I came to realise that trading in bitcoin when you don't have a lot of it, is completely unprofitable. And guess what, it's the gateway to almost every other cryptocurrency.
ETH was a different story. Sitting silent in my Mist wallet, which took almost a month to sync, when revealed opened up a new world of possibilities. I was even capable of participating in an ICO! Ethereum motivated me to start learning coding and use my mind to produce ideas that could make money and even change the world. It's a hard task I guess but it seems the only way, in this occasion, for a guy like me to play the crypto game. A game that is fair, revolutionary and decentralised.
Or is it?
PS. I chose to introduce myself like this because I find it very trivial to follow the introducemyself recommendations. If someone needs to identify that I am a human, with little research can find sufficient info about me. If not enough you can always ask me. With that being said, pt. 2 of this story is coming soon. Best