You're so immature!

I don't know about anyone else, but I am constantly feeling like I am very immature for my age. I remember back when I was a freshman (grade 9) in high school, it seemed like the seniors (grade 12) were so much older than us. I mean, they were basically adults. It wasn't just the fact that they were physically imposing, they seemed so mature and "together" as well.

Of course, by the time I became a senior in high school, I didn't feel nearly as old or adult-like as I expected them to be. In fact, through pretty much all of my life I feel like my body has aged for sure, but my mind on the other hand feels like I am still that high school freshman.

I'm smarter for sure, hopefully a bit wiser, but I still have this feeling when I am in a room full of adults that I just don't belong. I can't really explain it, but it's this feeling that just kind of sits in the back of my mind. Perhaps it is some weird form of imposter syndrome. I don't really know, but it's there, and I wonder if I am alone in feeling that way.

So there was a news story I read last week and I was going to include it in my post on Friday, but then like the ADHD fool that I am, I forgot about it. That means instead of adding as a talking point last week, I am going to dedicate a full post to it this week. Lucky you!

The story was splashed all over the cryptoverse, so I am sure you heard about it, but I didn't actually see anything here on HIVE about it. The long and the short of it (to spare you any further confusion) is that a guy was going to swap 50 million dollars of some token into AAVE I think it was. As he was doing the swap, he didn't pay attention to the liquidity or slippage in the pool and ended up getting about $36,000 for his $50,000,000.

Ridiculous right? Heartbreaking for sure! No doubt there are plenty of people, including ourselves who are thinking, what a moron, the person totally deserved to lose all that money for not paying attention to what they were doing. Like it or not, it's partly true, moving crypto around is a dangerous prospect. I get a bit nervous each time I do it. Sending small amounts first and checking to make sure you have all the info correct is paramount to not ending up wrecked.

However, I think it also sheds some light on just how immature the crypto world still is. Yes, cryptocurrency has been around for over a decade now, businesses, countries, and even Chet in the polo and khakis down the street are buying it and stacking it. The fact is though even though they are buying it, they still don't really understand it. It's not just the currency itself either. Clearly the mechanisms to move it around and to interact with it are a concept that people just haven't seemed to grasp yet.

Trust me, I get it. It's complex. We have centuries of traditional currency basically ingrained into our DNA. Paying cash, using a credit card, depositing money to a bank, writing a check (who freaking writes checks anymore?), it's all something we learn early on. In addition to that, there are protocols in place to keep funky things from happening. If you overdraft your account, you get a fee, etc. It's supposedly a well oiled machine.

I'm not saying we need overdraft fees, but if crypto is going to be something that really becomes something, we need to have some guardrails in place to keep stuff like the story above from happening. Over regulation isn't something I a looking forward to, but nobody is going to want to use a form of money where they have to worry about their 50 million dollars becoming 36 thousand dollars because of a technicality.

Like I said, it's a glaring indication of the fact that cryptocurrency is still quite young, or perhaps like me it's old but still feels young. I hope that isn't the case, because crypto needs to be taken seriously, and trust me, when you feel or act immature, you don't get taken seriously...