Pondering Crypto, Where We're Heading and "Reasons to Buy"

Earlier today I got to thinking about the first time I came across the whole cryptocurrency concept, and what it brought to mind, back then.

We were having a gathering at our house, and my sister-in-law - who was a bit meddlesome and always operating under the impression that I was "in computers" - started to regale me with stories about this new "online money" called Bitcoin. And how it sounded like something I would be involved in.

It was an odd source to hear this from since she was pretty much a luddite, but I listened. Later on, I went poking around a bit and found the somewhat limited information available in 2012. Whereas it sounded intriguing," it also sounded like the sort of thing that would soon enough fizzle because it was "too technical."

I even looked into the whole "mining" thing... at the time you could actually mine Bitcoin with a good gaming machine. Again, I abandoned the idea as just more complicated and technical than my skillset.

Silly me, I also didn't buy any, although I did look into it. I got as far as to look into something called "Local Bitcoins" but the idea of driving 50 miles to meet someone at a Starbucks to hand them $100 in order to get a digital file that allegedly "meant something" sounded very sketchy. So I didn't.

And that is pretty much where I ended up leaving that. It was several years later before crypto came up again, and that was when a friend of ours came and stayed with us for a couple of weeks in early 2016, and it turned out that he was involved with Ethereum... not surprising, I suppose, as he is a hard-core anarchist.

But getting back to the main storyline here, we talked quite a bit about cryptocurrency and it was during his visit I really got a sense of my crypto roots which were far more idealistic than the path crypto follows today. I love the whole idea of universal currencies like this that could be worldwide and independent of governments and exchange rates. My crypto roots are very much anchored in the idea of cryptos as currencies rather than as investments.

It was appealing on a personal level for my collectible postage stamp business because I had buyers pretty much all around the world, and billing customers in their local currency was a pain in the rear.

All these years later, there is definitely a part of me that is a little bit disappointed that crypto has become so oriented towards "wen Moon" and people filling their pockets from day trading, rather than with the original idea of having mediums of payments and exchange, and banking the unbanked.

As such, when I look at reasons to acquire and hold any kind of crypto, I'm always more oriented towards actual tangible use cases, rather than the opportunity to watch the currency go to the moon next week.

If your entire orientation is focused on just trading crypto for a profit, then you're not really supporting its development and growth, just the filling of your own pockets. But then I was always a "buy and hold" investor in the legacy financial markets as well.

Hive appealed to me - and continues to appeal to me - for exactly the reason that there are tangible use cases here, whether it's the social content venue, Splinterlands or something else.

If a crypto token doesn't have a tangible purpose and a real business plan, I'm just not that interested. Old Fashioned, perhaps... but so it goes.

However, if crypto is ever going to shed its "get rich quick scheme" image, people have to start focusing more on the fundamentals when they invest.

Thanks for coming by and have a wonderful remainder of your week!

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Created at 2024-01-31 01:20 PST
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