My crypto Journey

I thought about my cryptocurrency journey today, as we have a HardFork today, which is much more unusual then the previous ones. I reflect upon Bitcoin and other Altcoins I invested in, but I Bitcoin was the first I ever heard of. The history of Bitcoin is quite colorful as there are many stories about the people involved with Bitcoin; founder, contributor, price action, forks, copycats and those who improved upon the origin or so they thought or still think. But for me the coming birthday means many things which are not centered around Bitcoins birthday, instead something altogether different.

remember reading about Bitcoin a few years ago as something people used to buy drugs anonymously on the internet. It seemed like something to avoid like bad weather. But when Bitcoin soared in price last fall I found myself interested in it again.

I began reading with great interest and motivation, but found myself unable to translate all the jargon used to explain Bitcoin, the blockchain and cryptocurrency. All articles about these three subjects are heavily laden with unfamiliar terminology for the beginner. You really need a cryptocurrency dictionary in one hand and the Bitcoin article in the other so you can look up the terms as you go along. The irony is even though I did just that I found myself still barely grasping the importance of what I was reading and I was mystified by the enthusiasm of Bitcoin proponents. I kept asking myself things like; What’s so important about decentralization?
What’s so bad about centralization? What’s the big issue about transparency?

I realized that I didn’t understand this terminology because I didn’t understand my countries banking system. I was an adult who had worked for years, paid taxes, had a checking account, savings account, credit cards and a mortgage. I thought I had a good understanding of the banking system, but when faced with the task of evaluating an alternative system I realized how much more I had to learn.

Since that realization occurred it has been a non-stop stream of new words and concepts to learn. Thus motivated I set I began to understand how cryptocurrency was different. I also began to understand the banking and monetary system which existed before cryptocurrency. I began to grasp what is meant by “centralized” and learned it’s advantages and disadvantages. I began to understand transparency and the lack thereof.

It was an amazing day when I felt like I finally had a working understanding of the traditional banking system and the concept of transparency became real to me. Although I should add the caveat that cryptocurrency and the Blockchain are transparent to the educated, not to everyone who buys it. It is often said that the blockchain is transparent, but if you don’t understand where to go to find blockchain transactions and if you don’t understand what the numbers you are looking at mean, it’s not transparent to you. But unlike the traditional banking system where many transactions are secret and rules are often not written anywhere you can educate yourself about the blockchain and the more you know, the more transparent the blockchain becomes.

When I look at this space called cryptocurrency, I see a financial and potentially large scale social revolution. I also see an amazing evolving entity. The evolution of many of the elements in this space like cryptocurrency mining, staking wallets and masternodes is amazing. New and improved blockchain and communities are born practically ever day. The changes are occurring at an amazing pace. Those that are attentive are witnessing something truly unique, which will be written about in the future.

When I was growing up people referred to great historic events as a turning point in their life, when they changed their way of thinking about life completely. Events like the Apollo Astronauts landing on the moon stand out in many peoples minds as a defining moment when they changed their thinking about what was possible forever.

I think the new defining moment for many people in crypto was when Bitcoin’s price reached 20,000! I think on that day cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiast suddenly realized the cryptocurrency was real, big gains from investing Ing in cryptocurrency are real and we are learning the real social change is possible. But now, here in the land of DPOS we have had greater moments, again for us here, but also events that effect every blockchain project and especially DPOS ones. The freezing of someone’s stake, the exchanges using depositors funds to take part in project governance, replace the community elected node operators to seize control of governance and a community response of cooperation to take regain control of half the nodes and regain half of their governance. This is one of the most talked about events in cryptocurrency right now and the things learned here will affect all of cryptocurrency forever more.

Certainly a huge moment for DPOS and also crypto. The world is watching this space evolve and we are part of the forces of evolution.

✍️ by Shortsegments

Posted via Steemleo