So Hive account@whatsup put out a call for those of us who weren't into crypto prior to Steem, to share our stories. Here's mine!

1. How did you hear about Steem?

I found out about it because Facebook friend Hive account@lyndsaybowes kept posting about it and I decided to finally give it a shot.

2. When did you join?

September 2017 - just in time for the mooning to start!

3. Why did you join? (What was the attraction?)

Honestly, because I have been looking for ways to earn a little here and there in ways I can handle (because I have been too unwell to work a traditional job for a while), that hopefully will add up to enough to live on. I'm disabled without a disability check. So, to earn from blogging, I didn't expect to strike it rich; I thought it would be like my YouTube channel. At the time, I earned a YouTube check every year, year and a half or so. I hadn't been able to add to the channel in years because my laptop had broken, so that was just residual views, mostly on my how-to videos. I basically made $100/year. That's what I expected out of Steemit. So all the people who bitch because they aren't crypto billionaires make me laugh. I was a newbie redfish when cryptos started mooning, and legitimately, if I counted both the SBD I was cashing out to pay bills and buy cat food and the SP I was keeping, at those prices during the ATH? That was enough to live on, right there. That was as much money as I had been earning at THE BEST PAYING JOB I HAD EVER HAD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. Granted, those prices didn't last, and I don't make enough to live on now (not even close). But for like a month, I did - at three months in. I've accumulated a lot more SP now. The potential is there to earn an actual living here, when prices get high enough and/or you have enough vested. That's what got me so excited, short term or no, because I could see the possibilities for the long term.

4. Have you expanded your crypto life beyond just Steem?

Sure have! Again, I'm way below poverty line, so I can't invest fiat into it. If I could, I would. But I am able to hodl a few altcoins I think have promise, and I've purposefully bought things I needed with the coins I earned here from sites that allowed me to use crypto directly, to support that as a thing, where possible. So like, I bought a t-shirt from 6dollarshirts.com because they take Bitcoin, and I bought my new blender (I still call it "new" even though I bought it months and months ago) from overstock.com because they take crypto, too. If a pet store that sold my kitties' special allergy food took crypto, I'd be a regular. I also use DuckDuckGo through Presearch for all my searching to earn coins, I have signed up to get free Manna coins, I got some SEED coins from an airdrop (they're coins for a crypto-based game), things like that.
But most importantly, I started teaching myself about it. I started online - my favorite thing to point beginners to is this video from SciShow on YouTube:
...and I read a lot of crypto news sites, like https://cointelegraph.com/
But I also downloaded a couple of audiobooks to learn more, like The Age of Cryptocurrency (here's a link from B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-age-of-cryptocurrency-paul-vigna/1120327580?ean=9781250065636) and The Truth Machine (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-truth-machine-paul-vigna/1126245381?ean=9781250114570#/).

5. How would you explain your current interest in Steem and Crypto in general?

I am reeeeally left, politically speaking (green or eco-anarchist, is probably the closest to my views), and see crypto as a way to end social inequality and a stepping stone away from our current capitalist system. Wrest control away from the oligarchy/banksters, and give it to the people. Steem is one of the big coins, IMHO, to do that, because you can onboard already-poor people like me who don't have fiat to invest. We can earn with our actions and build up our worth, like any job, but with much greater potential, and without benefiting the plutocratic "powers that be" while doing so. We're not funding the banks that are funding the oil pipelines here - we're literally planting trees (Hive account@treeplanter), or investing in solar (solar coin), and investing in people. And for all the people who try and freak out about the amount of energy used by crypto - those figures are based on the older mining rigs for Bitcoin, not the more common, newer setups (video cards versus ASIC, I think, but I'm not a techie and don't remember spec type stuff offhand so google it if you're curious), and if all Bitcoin was mined with ASIC (which it might be by now, I don't know), it would be like a small town in America's worth or something, I forget the exact stats (they're in the book The Age of Cryptocurrency). Ethereum is moving to PoS so their energy use is supposed to be cut by 99%, and frankly: how much energy does the world banking system use? Visa? Mastercard? Western Union? Each mega bank individually? FUD stats can sound scary, but they say nothing about what type of energy is being used (maybe those mining farms are run on solar or wind because they don't want to pay obscene electric bills), what other industries use, and the plain fact that if we're creating economic activity anywhere, there's going to be energy use, and I'd rather there be energy use for fairer systems like crypto banking the unbanked, than some oil tycoon adding another digit to his net worth while poisoning the water. I'm an environmentalist, and this sounds like fear mongering to me. But I digress...

6. Are you holding or investing (no judgment here, I am just wanting to prove or disprove the value)

I am trying to hodl as much as possible, but again, I'm already way below poverty line so I need to cash out some just to pay rent and eat. That being said, I've never actually powered down here on Steemit so far. It looks like I might have to to make rent at this moment, but I've always managed to squeak by somehow without doing it so far. Flying by the seat of my pants life right now.

So there's my story! I hope it was useful. Have a great day, Steemit! <3

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