I'm a girl from Lebanon, like many in a country that is going through a difficult and scary period. By the way, our people get used to endure trials and tribulations and, in addition to the big problems, we have to face daily minor annoyances that many of you never had or even heard of. But don't worry, as much as we are accustomed to these annoyances, we concider them as our daily dose of humor.
For example, how much is it easy in your country to make a PayPal account? or to add credit on an electronic card? or to receive money from another country? to pay with a google pay? Well, in my country there are a lot of restrictions, many innovative things are not allowed at all. And now they could be really so useful and precious maybe a life saver for some people since we are obliged to be in an open big unphysical "prison" since the restrictions got even worse.
Nowadays people are globally interconnected, being online makes us observers of a common show, but then everyone has to face their own side of the world and many of us never are able to experience what they would like to.
Facing the economic crisis, I tried to find online jobs that pays in dollars but I couldn't make a PayPal because even this is banned in my country. I was thinking to surrender to this condition, just being connected to the world but not for everything, when someone casually mentioned to me, in a conversation about the current hyperinflation in Lebanon, something I never knew before: a way to escape limits. I was totally ignorant about it, almost certainly very naive, but only knowing this way exists made me enthusiastic, ready to discover more.
What I have done back then was pretty simple: I installed a wallet on my mobile called Coinomi, I have sent a public key, I received 0.5$ worth in Bitcoin Cash. Nothing more, but I don't consider this is few! I didn't have any idea what a token is, how I can spend cryptos, the difference among them. Honestly many words I meet are totally new, but in the end I'm sure I liked what I'm imagining all this is: freedom, escape from impositions.
I loved the idea and started to read about crypto and educate myself about this world that seemed the future to me and it became my present and my whole life.
Obviously I din't think it will be easy: no crypto ATM here, no shop with a sticker of bitcoin acceptance, no people suggesting cryptos, no one talking about cryptos at all. I really have no idea where to get, where to spend, where to change them. A desert yes, but why not to believe other people will become curious the same way I am and so let this desert be less uninhabited?
So I wanted to learn, not only for myself but to be able to inspire people around me.
This is my purpose.
Now it's time to tell you why I'm writing, it's above all for 2 reasons:
The first one is to learn more and to feel myself part of a shared knowledge. I am sure that describing my problems will force me to understand, or to be helped.
The second is to learn how to teach everything I learnt to people that have never considered the existence of alternatives. This is something I feel when I think of my friends.
Thank you for reading ❤️
*This is my original article that was published first in publish0x.