I can't be the only one ;)
over 3 years ago before Dogecoin was at it's prime and was just picking up "steem" My roommate came to me to show this crazy new thing he had found on reddit a currency that we could mine with our GPU's. I had heard about Bitcoin before but never looked into it much as it seemed too good to be true and by that time it's price was way over my price range, I didn't understand that it could be broken down to the 8th decimal point... I didn't understand any of it at the time.
My roommate was much more technically minded than I am and he had already figured out the mining part of DOGE before he showed it to me and within minutes he had me set up and mining my first coins on my PC. I couldn't believe it at first, After learning the basics of how it all worked and how the global crypto markets worked I was hooked... Not on DOGE but hooked on the idea of participating in a secondary global economy.
It wasn't too long before I was exploring other coins and switched from mining DOGE to POT then onto MINT etc etc. all the while my roommate was "sold" on thinking DOGE was going to be the "next BTC" and actually got mad at me for switching off of it to other coins. But I saw it's "hype" as dangerous and realized that very few people where controlling the market and keeping it at a high value (comparable to ETH/ETC IMO but that is another story)
Needless to say eventually DOGE fell from it's pedestal and it's hype train crashed into it's "true believers" like my roommate, Who has not touched another crypto since... I tried to tell him to live and learn from the mistake, but he felt burned and disenfranchised by the whole ordeal (I did my best to not say "I told ya so")
It has been 3 years now and I am still a true believer in what BTC and cryptos can offer the world and with how crazy world politics has been/is getting, I see even more need for a secondary global economy than ever before.
What if DOGE was part of a platform that could have replaced reddit like STEEM is threatening to do? where would it be today? I think even after the major holders dumped onto the market it would have slowly climbed it's way back up to surpass previous market levels and would probably still be at the top of the charts. But it didn't it was just a regular Altcoin that offered nothing new besides quicker block times than BTC which almost all alts can say... so now it struggles to stay afloat in the vast world of cryptocurrencies.
I'm thankful I was shown DOGE as it brought me into this crypto world, But I'm even more thankful that I listened to my instincts and common sense to get out of it when I did. It taught me to not chase/follow "hype trains" like ETH and many others of the past 3 years.
For the past 3 years I have been a BTC advocate with only a few people ever taking me seriously then thanking me for introducing them to it, While in the last month or so I am having near a dozen people a night thank me for telling them about steemit. Never have I had such a powerful tool to get cryptos into the hands of regular people, I truly hope the devs continue to make the site better and eventual fully replace reddit.
The coming "Synereo" that looks to be the replacement for Facebook is looking very promising and I will be proud to be among it's first users. Just like FB is not in direct competition with Reddit, neither will AMP/Synereo be competition for steemit. I believe they will both thrive together just like their predecessors have in the past. I will be an advocate for both.
Finally we are starting to see the true potential of BTC/cryptos to influence actual change in our society. And I am proud to be a part of it.