It’s 9:17am and I’m on my way to the mechanics shop to get the taillights replaced and I get my daily morning email from FreeBitco.in. Every morning this email comes and, while it’s subject line most often reads something like “Another round! Another change to win a LAMBO!” to me it might as well just read “Good morning! Free Satoshi”. At the end of each of these emails is a coupon for a free spin on the FreeBitco.in Wheel of Fortune! I get one spin a day from these emails and 7 spins each day as I'm a Premium member due to the amount of FUN token I'm holding. What do the spins get you? It doesn't matter. What matters is they are free and you get them daily.
While most folks are still years away from their first Bitcoin transaction there is also a small legion of folks like me spending a small amount of their days collecting the Satoshi they will retire on.
When it comes right down to it this is a very simple article: Some of those who understand cryptocurrency and scaling are accumulating as much Bitcoin as they can. We’re not doing this because this is going to change our life at that current price of BTC. If you are someone who sees a future in which cryptocurrency is continuing to change the world, the specific daily BTC price is unimportant. One bitcoin will always cost one bitcoin and the price of one bitcoin, in my mind, will always be “more than it cost last year”.
Satoshi’s grand experiment is changing the world and, in time, I have a feeling that these years will come to be seen as an almost quaint period when the world was changing in a really clear way but it’s only fully noticeable in retrospect. In my mind this is the only real comparison between the Bitcoin of today and the Internet of 1997. A lot of people like to draw this connect in a path that always seems to be leading to “there was a dot com bubble so this must be a bitcoin bubble.” but if you ask that person to define what a ‘bubble’ is or even to name another one you quickly learn this is most often a kind but ignorant person repeating something they heard they thought sounded intelligent. They aren’t bad people, they just don’t understand what’s going on, and that’s uncomfortable. It’s also normal.
The people who currently do not understand why Bitcoin is a world changing technology are not our enemies any more than the people who were taking those “Free 2 Hours of America Online!” and throwing them straight in the trash were. Some folks, as Earlie Cuyler put it: “don’t need no internet. No sir, not in my life.”
While this feels crazy to me, hey, no problem! Respect for difference and the ability for those who aren’t hurting anyone to live how they see fit is fundamental to my worldview so no problem! For me to demand that these people use a technology they are not educated or inclined to use would make me sound just as silly as the folks demanding they we not use this amazing new tech because it makes them uncomfortable.
So, I don’t tell the folks around me to use or invest in Bitcoin. I don’t see it as my place to tell other people what technology would improve their lives. To quote a slightly more serious source: “Figuring things out for yourself is practically the only freedom anyone really has nowadays. Use that freedom.”
Maybe you don’t need Bitcoin for your future. Maybe you are all set for financial stability, I honestly hope you are. My issue is that for my entire adult life the financial institutions that currently hold the world together have been lining up to screw the poor over at every possible juncture. Right now, as I write this my checking account sits at $ -36.66 because an automatic payment came early and overdrew me. It overdrew me less and $5 so, naturally, I owe the bank almost $40 for the crime of not having money. I have repeatedly asked the bank to deny these charges, so I won’t get hit with their bullshit ‘courtesy charge’ but they have refused telling me they don’t have the ability to deny auto-enrolled bill payments. Which, to be clear, is complete horse shit. They have the ability to do so, this is just not something they offer. Why cut off an income stream just for something like customer dignity?
But this isn’t an article about how the institutional banks exist to separate the poor from their funds, there are enough of those out there. Honestly, I am acutely aware that as someone with a home, full fridge, wife, cats, and job I’m one of the luckiest people in the world and hold that close. This is a call for understanding, focus, and for my brothers and sisters to ‘stay the course’. If you are one of the hundreds of thousands of poor folks who are out here collecting Satoshi there is no guarantee will ever change their lives: I see you.
I see you and I’m impressed. You are out here hustling for a future that others cannot see. I’ve heard it said the expert hits the bullseye but the visionary hits a target no one else even noticed. Sometimes, when a visionary is walking toward their future, they are walking away from a lot of the folks they know and love. It’s easy to feel like you are walking in the wrong direction. I want you to see me here cheering you on and encouraging you to keep moving! Believe in yourself, believe in your future, and keep going!
I don't care if you are doing this with random faucets, play2earn experiences like Rising Star, the new world of possibilities called Splinterlands, or an old standby like RollerCoin I'm proud of you and I think this is going to work out very very well for you. Keep going.
Are you looking to hang out with other Crypto-Gamers? Join us over at the The Crypto-Gaming Guild discord. We are looking for game captains and folks who can help organize. If you are interested, please step up!
The games we are currently focusing on are:
Rising Star
Splinterlands
RollerCoin
UpLand
Neon District
Alien Worlds
Lost Relics
eXode