yay, my first real steem dollars and i had to try transferring them out to bitcoin and then to my exodus wallet. the wallet i use to store my crypto currencies (or at least one of them) making it easier for me to send to other wallets and ultimately cards that are connected to them like bitpay to be able pay on sites or take our currency from atms (wanna stop doing that!)

my first attempted to do this failed.

as it was a small amount i was not too worried or expecting to get it back, somehow i still managed to mess up the very easy (in hindsight) exchange process using @blocktrades, something with memo’s and steem and not steem dollar (sad) so totally on my part that i got it wrong, sure there is nothing wrong with the blocktrades.us system at all. user error!

anyway, i thought i would try again today by getting in touch with the @blocktrades account and telling them the problem, i should have maybe commented on a message to them (we have no way to message each other easily right?) yesterday but i was giving it some time to work. in the end i realised i had to message, within minutes i had my money refunded. you don’t get that with usual banking right?! dayum.

after reading another article i decided to change it up and use @poloniex instead, there is an account on steemit as there is for block trades that you basically transfer the steem or steem dollars. i had steem dollars to the account of the exchange you want to use. i went into poloniex searched for steem from the box at the top right and jumped into that view.

once inside there you can see a button that gives you a button/link to deposit money into poloniex where you do all what you want to do with your deposited funds. in my case i just wanted to trade it for bitcoin and then send that bitcoin to my exodus wallet address. all in all the process of doing it was quite quick, i had to wait a little while for the funds to arrive but that’s all down to the speed of the bitcoin blockchain.

that’s not to say that i did have my wallet open on the other screen waiting for it to arrive because you know, you get used to things updating and you hope it’s coming and you didn’t mess up. it’s at this moment however that i started to think how much this changes the world of finances, money and payments and how me engaging and taking part set of this sequence of events that ended up with me with some value/currency in my virtual pocket to use as i wished.

so it arrived pretty quickly, i’d say maybe twenty minutes or so and while it was only $9.69 it was money that i never had before that time, just me writing like i was used to to my wordpress blog that never paid me anything, the odd occasional adsense but who really wants adverts that have nothing at all to do with you alongside what you say?

anyway, hope this helps others, it certainly was a straight forward process in the end and i’m super excited about the future of blockchain and value payments like this. super rad, having a nice wallet like exodus.io helps but do go through the setup video and make sure you save your 12 words for restoring your account in a very safe place.

i hope this helps someone else! :)

TRUST AND AUTHENTICATION. .

^{http://socialgandalf.com/legacy → pinterest epic wins pinboard → i was a brand advocate for nokia, 1000heads, verisign → won a vloggie for involvement in node666 (san francisco 2006) → on television for time team history hunters 1999 (burton on trent) → sold me.dm to evan williams (twitter) in april 2011 for 5 figures → went to phil campbell, alabama to help repair/recovery/help raise money month after a tornado ripped through the town (was on sky news, bbc news, al jazeeza, nightly news, alabama weather channel?!) → CNN for sxsw 2013 about austin south by southwest event → video chat with robert scoble from rackspace → i was in a music video can you spot me? → won the digital derry contest for 5k euros to kickstart web tv studio → did project work with sleepydog indirectly for nesta (responder) → crowdfunded digital signage concept called the pi street (do it for steem?)}

your upvote, resteem or comment is welcomed. new followers will often be followed back like the one big happy steemit family we are, have a fantastic day. stay safe!