The price of Bitcoin matters.
I really wish that wasn't the case. I wish Bitcoin would do its work, at the same speed, regardless of it. But, we live in the real world (so they tell us), and I turn to the price as an indication of the mainstream interest level at any given point in time.
I've watched the price of Bitcoin like a hawk since early 2013. It's just become one of those things I do. Eat, sleep, shower, check Zeroblock or BitcoinWisdom or CoinCap, rinse, repeat. The act of pulling up the price on my phone gives me a charge. Whether the price is up or down, it reminds me of this developing story that lies outside of mainstream thought, outside the memes and conversation that perpetually hang in our cultural air. It cuts through the chatter of a doom & gloom media, through the superficial gossip of celebrities and politicians. The power of Bitcoin is hidden, but once exposed, incisive.
When I see the price, I once again remember that there is this technological force gathering steam over the internet. As the number of transactions rises, as the term "blockchain" grabs hold in the mainstream media, I can't help but smile inside that I sniffed this out a long time ago. Yet, it still doesn't seem like the mainstream media appreciates just how revolutionary this all is. Or maybe I'm just overly obsessed with it. Or maybe the mainstream media remains silent in hopes it will just fade away, and not grow from joke to nuisance to threat. As for me, I need it to continue to defy death. I admit, I mentally will the price to move (hopefully upwards, but ANY movement would tell me that at least someone else is taking it seriously).
That there is a price at all, no matter the volatility, gives me hope - a whisper that a better way has been set down in code and released into the free market wild, to live and die (repeatedly, it seems) by its own rules and ideals. I feel a sense of brotherhood, camaraderie even, with it. This charged feeling, however, is also tinged with a bit of psychedelia - a passing hallucination of a flourishing ecosystem of cryptocurrencies evolving out of bounds and to god knows where and what ends. Just checking the price can trigger a now well-worn shortcut in my head to a perverse hope that Bitcoin leads a beautifully orchestrated hijacking of the machinery holding this broken society together.
I wonder if I'll still be checking the price in 5 years, or 10 years, or when I'm old and gray, and, obviously, where that price will be. I wonder whether all this energy I'm investing in an idea was in vain - a life spent watching the red and green bars dance up and down to the right, doing nothing but etching a wild trail over time.
Yet, as much as I try to pull my eyeballs away, the charge remains. Simply tapping an app open and seeing that dollar amount staring back at me is one of only a few ways Bitcoin reveals itself. I mean I've used it, I've traded it, I've sold it, I've bought things with it, but the price is something more tangible, one of its public faces we can all point to. It is what it is. It's not everything, to be sure, but it matters.
