I've had this Steemit account for awhile, but have never posted anything. Therefore, I decided to go ahead and post my first post and ask a group of people that I don't know and will probably never meet to reach out and help a family that you don't know and will probably never meet.
When something good in the cryptosphere happens, I always hear some YouTuber crypto personalities follow-up the story with "that's what crypto is supposed to be about" or something like that. I'm hoping that one day soon I'll hear a follow-up story regarding what I'm about to share with you using those exact same words. My only problem is that I don't know how to tell you this story and make this request without possibly sounding like one of those Nigerian emails or the more recent and constant Twitter scam tweets; however, I'm going to give it a shot and we'll see what happens.
Yesterday, we buried a work peer and one of my best friends. It was a horrible death in a tragic car crash. He was only 35 years old and he was born in the year that I graduated. There never seemed to be an age difference between us. He was a good man, a good friend, a good husband and a good father. He leaves behind his wife and two children (ages 1 and 3.)
Any "he'd give you the shirt off of his back" analogy of which you could possibly conjure up applied to Chandler. He was just one of the best people that I've ever known; a quality human being. My kids are older so it was great to see him get the experience of the first words, the first steps, etc with his young children.
It was a horrible crash scene. There does not appear to be any skid marks where he tried to regain control of the car, so hopefully he was already unconscious and did not have to experience the pain of what happened inside that car upon impact when the family vehicle finally came to a sudden and dramatic impact. Thank goodness no one else got hurt and the children were not in the car.
Here is the link to their local news coverage of the incident: https://www.ktbs.com/news/local/killed-in-overnight-crash-in-shreveport/article_f7058ff6-447b-11e8-a9a7-0fff2b724266.html
There has been at least one GoFundMe set up and that will certainly help the family navigate some of the stuff that will come up in the near future; however, I wanted to attempt to do something even bigger for their two children. His daughter is three and his son is still just one year old.
I wanted to see if we could do that whole "butterfly flaps his wings" thing and help take the "how are we going to send these kids to college one day" question off of the list of things to worry about for this young family. There are several reasons that I wanted to try and achieve this in the cryptosphere, but first I'll tell you the backstory to the main reason first:
Several months ago, I had asked Chandler if he had any money invested into crypto. He responded with a resounding "NO!" I went ahead and took a small plunge when Bitcoin was at $14k back in January. (You know what happened immediately after that.) Chandler was very supportive and gave only a very little "told ya so." It was a compassionate "told ya so," and I decided to devote my time to researching this new universe: the projects, the exchanges, how it all works, and how other traders react to different circumstances (airdrop announcements, approaching snapshot dates, upcoming main net announcements, etc.)
A few days after our initial crypto convo, I decided that I was going to be purchasing x amount of DragonChain for the kids and putting it in a wallet for every Christmas, birthday, graduation, tooth fairy encounter, whatever because....well, I'm just that kind of friend and "uncle" and he came to our company from the banking industry. I just loved the irony of that because that's also the kind of person I am. I also thought the Disney connection was appropos because of their ages plus I like it personally and thought that in a few years that it would still be around and would appreciate in value.
A few weeks ago when it appeared that we were going back to a $6k bitcoin, we spoke about it again. I could audibly hear his head shaking when I told him that I was about to at least double-up on my fiat contribution. However, ultimately - he said "Well, rock on." "If you're gonna work in the whorehouse, be the best danged whore in the house." (I apologize if that offends anyone. It's just a southern way of saying if you're gonna do something, be the best at it whatever it is.)
And then I got the phone call at six in the morning.
I was numb for several hours before I went ahead and had a good cry.
...and THEN I had an idea!
Anyway, here's my idea and my plea:
I have set up some wallets for donations for the kids. I have set up an ETH wallet and a NEO wallet. I come to ask you to donate whatever ETH, ERC20 tokens, NEO or any NEO based tokens that you might have to spare. I don't ask for anything more than what you are willing to give and it doesn't really matter what coin or token that you wish to contribute. I am simply hoping that with the vastness of the crypto community that there might be enough folks willing to help this young family if everyone could just give a little. If you knew Chandler, you would know that he would also really appreciate the irony if crypto and numerous big-hearted people that he'd never met before helped put his kids through college even though he doubted the future of the cryptosphere in the first place.
Do you have some bags in your portfolio that you've now grown to hate, but don't want to sell it at a bit haircut on principle? Donate it/some of it to help these kids. Let's turn those bad feelings you have towards that holding and make something positive out of it.
Got a holding on which you're way ahead and can afford to throw a little at this effort without feeling it at all? Let's turn that celebration into something even more positive.
If you do send a token on which we need to do the Add Token thing on to make it visible in the wallet holdings, please let us know. In the spirit of making things easier and more effective, I am advising you that we may move your donation to an exchange, make a trade and then move it back to their wallet.
As I look at the CoinMarketCap historical snapshot from a few years ago, there are countless Top 10 coins/projects that aren't even around anymore. I wouldn't want the family to have to try and stay on top of what's going on in the market if there were 174 different currencies in the wallet or try to liquidate one of those coins if one were going defunct. That's just too much risk, too much work and something would definitely get overlooked.
In other words, there are no poop-coins in this scenario because we can turn whatever we might be able to raise into something glorious for these kids.
I will never co-mingle any of these funds with any of mine and I will make all of the addresses visible at all times in the name of transparency (as soon as I know how to do that) except here in the very beginning as the NEBL staking address is my address as I didn't want to set up a staking wallet for them yet as I don't know if I can run two NEBL wallets on my Raspberry at the same time. (Perhaps, StakeBox would donate one to the cause if needed.)
I can even create a Facebook group page to keep everyone updated on what is going on if this effort gains any traction what-so-ever where you could monitor how this effort is progressing and even offer advise on portfolio management on potential moves.
Since this is a very, very long term plan, I do plan on putting a pretty big portion into stronger PoS holdings like NEBL and NEO and any other suggestions that might be offered. As I mentioned earlier, the NEBL staking wallet address is mine and I currently only hold 113.5 NEBL's. I will set up a separate NEBL staking wallet and share that once established. It just seems to me that staking rewards would really help power the butterfly wing flap thing especially throughout the years.
I will be the custodian of the account and wallets until we find out which of his college buddies are fluent in crypto and can take over the custodianship as I'm 55 and it's probably not a real good long-term plan to have me being the one holding the private keys etc 15-20 years from now. We believe that we've identified the right person (technology-wise and trust-wise) to be this custodian in the future once we get it all set up, but we may just have to "crypto-up" someone in his circle of influence to take over this labor of love in the near future when I no longer can.
I will also be purchasing a new Ledger Nano S to protect the donations for them and will pass all the information onto the custodian for the account as soon as that time comes.
So, with everything going on with scams, hacks, and other shenanigans going on in the cryptosphere at present and obviously worse in the future, how can you know that this isn't another scam attempt?
Here's his Facebook page that has now been turned into a memorial page for him: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=chandler%20bergeron
I had posted a picture from our company's communication portal, but we are a publicly traded company so I had to change the picture since it had our company logo etc and I don't have the legal department's permission to post it. However, if you click on his Facebook Memorial page, you can see for which company we work. I am the Store Manager at our Barton Creek store in Austin, Texas. If you wish to contact me at the store to verify that I am who I say I am, please feel free to contact me at that store. If I am transferred or move, I will return to this post and communicate that move.
Additionally, my personal email address is sperry1063@gmail.com if there are any other questions that I can answer.Sometimes in life, you just have to trust and believe in the good in somebody and their intentions; however, if there's anyone who needs any more convincing that this effort is coming from a good place with no ill intentions - please email me and let me know what else that you may need to know to believe that this what it says it is.
Please help me help this family if you are able. Even the smallest of donations would help these kids. Anything that you may be able to give would be GREATLY appreciated and it all adds up. Help me give the crypto YouTubers a reason to once again say, "That's what crypto is supposed to be about."
A newly established MyCrypto ETH Wallet (for ETH / ERC20 Tokens: 0xE10A5B44Cf6324af5c786D5ecA487650083c866d
A newly established NEON Wallet (for NEO and Neo tokens:) ANhmBfzY1yXyoLd7Xpm4RA9KZJAEUit24T
NEBL Staking Wallet (will establish a new one near future for the kids:) NYhG8d59cDU15YKhSvs1h7uwHt8TRcgGvZ
BTC : 1HvFYopJ3PpbGK7XXXE9yj2jxKDtUrYL76 (I will come back and edit this post with the new address when I've received and set up the Ledger Wallet for them. Currently, this is an exchange wallet of mine where I keep no funds.)
Thank you for the time if you've read all the way to here and thank you in advance for your support.
Please help me jump-start these butterflies and let's see what happens together.
