i’m a relatively new person to the world of crypto, i’ve finally got myself some bitcoin, litecoin and golem (too cheap not to take a little punt) and i’m working towards getting some ether too. my driving force is not the trading and acquisition of wealth or some massive asset portfolio (although hey, having numbers look good on screen are always nice) no for me it’s about accessibility and taking part right now.

keys to the crypto castle - pay to play

my initial investment in bitcoin mining was only £50 and that was well over five years ago, it was the first investment i think i’ve ever done in something where i had actually saved something, got my money back and then some, in hindsight with the greedy side of my dna i kinda wish i was the guy who had bought big and now didn’t have to worry about money in life anymore, i know i’d be more productivity as a person if that was one facet i didn’t have to consider. think about it for a minute, aside from the spoils of material items, place to live and trappings of the good life what would you do with your life if the goal was no longer pegged to earning a living?

for me crypto has always been about access. at some point in the future i’ll need a crypto wallet, need some funds in there and i’ll have to use it for something, the futuristic me thinks of grand movie scenes where the border wall to another zone won’t let me in unless i have a certain type of coin for access or verification as being on the grid. give that a good time to digest a little in your brain. access and verification. legacy and a skill witness, i see blockchain as more than trading of financial value. it’s the value of our collective time.

the old gatekeepers hang on

i’ve had a PayPal account forever, i have a card attached to it. it’s been my lifeline at periods in my life, the ability for people to pay into it, send me funds, it’s been great, the charges are probably bad and the support more so, the fact that chargebacks exist is bullshit and yada yada, technology and process and legislation moves on, ground is being broken in realms with no instruction manual on a daily basis. i use what gives me access, even if don’t enjoy using it. i guess in some ways it’s like everything in life. you put up with the level of angst and anxiety your willing to suffer for your access.

i saw recently something about PayPal payments being instant between them and banks which got me thinking about how payment providers in the position of power realise the ever ebbing change around them, how technology rushes in like a wave leaving behind traces in the sand that are washed away by the next technology wave to hit. i believe we are starting to see that middle ground erosion process starting to take hold and i think from here it’s going to have no way to return without adopting some of the latest and greatest alternative methods of transferring money.

steemit is fast, exodus is cool, value consideration

i keep learning new things about steemit, how fast the transactions are, transferring money to different accounts is a breeze, saving, upgrading my steam to give me curation power. it’s wonderful. i feel like a car owner that finally knows what’s under the hood instead of standing in front of it and looking around like where do i start - the ability for me to send funds anywhere in the world to another steemit user in seconds is amazing and with no fees. that’s unreal. let that sink in for a moment, no fees.

the second thing that has lit a fire under me is the exodus.io wallet, it’s a really nicely designed wallet and shows me a number of crypto currencies, it’s not got steem but i guess i dont want my SBD or steam to be there anyway, i want it to be in steem power to make my posts stronger for curation rewards and such like, the idea of being part of a community at steem is strong and it was something missing from social media — sure they had a crack it with ranking services that worked out your social graph worth but it was not pegged to anything apart from a number. a number that could be faked with crypto it’s all there, laid out, time invested, effort invested and those that contribute will rise to the top. ..

i added 50 followers in the last 24 hours at least, that’s nuts and proves to me that we have a community of people here that want to connect that want to engage, that feel like they have found their people.

the biggest change in me however i would say right now is spending. i’ve been doing much better regarding rewards and i’ve be re-investing it in steem, i’m interested in taking some out to a wallet and getting it changed to bitcoin and sending that to cryptopay.me just to go through the process and to trigger that action of realising that my effort and my words and your engagement paid for my next meal or fuel for the car.

i want that to happen for a number of reasons but the main one i’m finding is that it’s making me look at my wants and needs, it’s providing a buffer to consider things, something i never had with just fiat currency before like pounds and dollars. you get it, it’s a round figure often and it serves a purpose, it comes in, it goes out. it pays for a meal, it pays a remote cloud bill. very black and white, straight forward. boom, work, get money.

with crypto i’m noticing a side of me that i never had time to consider before and that’s the investment in my future. hell, even the future of the people connected to me, virtually, not next door but local in the digital sense. we now have the ability to influence the value exchange at a fractional level, what we are worth, what your time or my time is worth to you. we can do that now, it’s like i just got a colour tv for the first time after spending a decade with a black and white.

the richness and clarity of the colour is the blockchain, it’s allowing me to see detail and real world cross referenced real world environmentally value to me like never before. unlocking what i didn’t know i was missing out on

conclusion

as much as i will continue to use PayPal and other middleman, middleware transactional services in the constant way i always have, expected, reliable, paying for my access i now know we have a huge playing field of choice when it comes to transactional value exchange. it’s changing the way i work, the future i want to be part of and the time i want to spend more effectively.

thanks for reading,
much love xxx
phil (dm0us3 or dm for short!)

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?)}

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