For years,I’d felt like I was the mad one. Friends had got in early and profited enormously. For years,I’d had to hear about how the blockchain was the future of finance. About how Bitcoin was the new store of value. I felt glad they’d lucked out – but wholly unconvinced of everything else. No one ever seemed to buy anything with these currencies of the future. They bought and sat on it,waiting for others to buy in and pump the price up.
Reader,I was weak. I dabbled. I bought $5000 of Bitcoin before the pandemic. I did it for selfish reasons:so I would never have to talk about Bitcoin again. My novel use-case for the blockchain:block all mentions of crypto. It worked beautifully. It was like being able to tell charity muggers I’d already donated,like being able to tell the how-to-vote wielding pack I’d already voted. I was safe.
And yes,I made money during my brief flirtation. Other people bought in,and the line went up. Then I read more about crypto. About the ridiculous energy usage used by miners. About the people who’d been stung by an early price collapse. I sold,and pocketed $2000. Thanks,stranger.
The whole experience was like entering the underworld. For the supposed future of currency,it was ridiculously hard to navigate. Buying it was a pain. Turning my money back into faithful dollars was concerningly hard. This was not the future as you usually picture it,all gleaming cities and straitlaced,beaming people exuding good health. This was more of a furtive masturbatory future,made by geek men for geek men.
The miracle,to me,was that they’d managed to sell this future to everyone else. People at the pub were talking about it. Non-technical people. Normies. Give us your real money and we’ll give you some of our freshly minted internet tokens,which can only ever go up in value. And it worked! Maybe we should give up space colonies and settle for using make-believe money to buy badly drawn JPEGs. Maybe we never deserved that bright future dreamed of in the 20th century.
But sweet baby Jesus,the scammers. First Bitcoin,then the shitcoin copycats. Hundreds of dodgy tokens,run by blatant scammers to draw in the unwary. Dumb money pours in,pumps up the price and then the scammer dumps and runs. You can even use them to make your crypto marketplace look solvent.