In fact, you waited until I couldn't risk doing anything with crypto's as I had the copy/paste virus and then quickly gorged yourselves on free and near-free cats and dogs tokens, and then pumped up the cats and dogs, so it's basically pointless for me to get into it at this point.
Well, might as well have a look at my sponsors, I guess. They're doing better than I am.
This has gotten my spirits down so low, Satan's joking i live in his basement!
All joking aside though, its good that i am not superstitious or religious because if i had been there's no way i wouldn't have thought that the sequence of events the past few days could have possibly been anything but a premeditated, strategically planned, and targeted malicious attack on me.
The time before the smartbch's most successful product to date launched there were announcements and coin drops on Twitter, where i hadn't spent much time coincidentally because of me doing a play-through of cb2077 after the 1.3 released.
Hebce i missed the free cats and dogs that were going around to, seemingly, everyone as a promo for the Dex's launch of the ETH bridge. Then i try to transfer half of my bch to the wallet i use for activities in preparation for getting some tokens at bottom price and wound up sending it to some malware coder in Russia because, somehow, undetected and slipping through a gauntlet of three real-time protection against viruses and malware, a copy/paste scam had infected my computer that replaced any crypto wallet address i copied into the cache with another address when i pasted it.
I know it's peanuts for most of you but 0,5BCH for me is a shitload of money!
By the time i caught on to being infected, it was too late. I had sent 0,5BCH to an address that was different from the one i had copied into cache, and it was gone.
Then after a thorough scan and clean ran by three antivirus products, assuming i was clean i thought to get in a little late but better late than never. But no, allass that was not to be my destiny. Luckily, my new opsec protocols helped me cath the bugger before actually sending something. I was still infected with that copy/paste terror.
I couldn't risk it, i had to get rid of that first, and so i went back offline. I performed any trick in the book that i could afford to try but nothing seemed to work, and still, Crypto wallet addresses i copied into cash got replaced by other addresses when i CTR-Ved trying to squeeze even more chump-change from me, a poor pauper that's so poor that he relies on food banks to survive basically.
But then, I did something unexpected. Instead of stubbornly wacking away at the problem on my pc I decided to turn it off, take my laptop and use that, running Parrot Os, to finally get some smartbhc and get me some of that lovely stake steak. All well that ends well right?
AAAaahhh... my abdominal and facial muscles are hurting so much from laughing so hard and long! All well that ends well... Of course not, not in my life, of course not! New forms of misery and torture had been prepared for me, and only me, so I wouldn't be able to benefit from the experience of other people to solve the problem.
You see when i got around to the swapping part of the SmartBCH - Ethereum bridging The transaction between Coinflix was uncharacteristically slow, both in showing up in the block explorer as in reaching the destination. Well, of course, I assumed that something had again gone wrong and, almost in despair, began to troubleshoot, bother the chat support, and hammering the refresh button a bit more than apparently, the browser used in the parrot OS distro liked leading me to spin my tires at top speed standing still, as well as annoying the frack out of a nice helpful young woman working at support for coinflex.
I had then run out of time for that moment because my son arrived and well, when my son is here in this world, that shadowy dark, and dangerously filled with the evil reality we all live in no longer exists. When my son's here nothing else exists than that which he and I are doing and like to be doing, and in which he is the one calling the shots insofar as determining what we do and when. You can imagine a 12-year-old hanging with his father, allowed doing almost everything he is not allowed to do by his foster mother is not likely to say "Yeah, let's go find out why a tiny bit of money is not reaching a virtual location from another virtual location!" in giggling delight.
Seven hours later...\
As usual, my son got picked up again at 19:00, and I returned to the spacetime reality that I share with all of you again. The problem is that for the first half an hour to an hour after saying goodbye to my son I feel as if all the positive energy is sucked out of my body, and descend into a deep dark pit of depressive hell so oppressive that even Satan considers it too frighteningly emphasizing the release, safety and freedom of death.
Transfers fromCoinflex to Metamask if BCH are not topics that my mind contemplates at those moments. A bit later, keeping my consciousness occupied with anything but silent thought gets me numb enough inside that i can resume my quest to acquire some scooby tokens and stake them. I oddly notice at once that somehow the bch did arrive at the Metamask wallet after all.
Fleetingly the notion of having a stroke of lunch caressed my consciousness before brutally being burned away by the Experience of getting an error message when i commit to the transaction on Benswap to swap the bch for EBEN's. Its astonishing how consistent my misery and misfortune is really.
When you think about it too long, which i NEVER ever must do, you could even come to the realization that statistically, the consistent persistency in its mean evil streak with which my daily small life is assaulted with is scientifically impossible. It would be the equivalent of not only asteroids keep getting struck by an asteroid every day, but that asteroid hitting the exact same spot every single time.
But of course, as i said, i don't think about such things, and continue on to find out if there is a way for me to get the &^%* BCH swapped for the EBEN token and %^^%$ stake it!!! (sorry, but the expletives are there to express how the use of expletives while i keep doggedly trying to get the transaction to work act like an overpressure release valve for me at times like that)
The whole process i went through was kind of extensive, and taking far too long to put to words here but it involved Support people, telegram, Reddit the mobile metamask app, and much much frustration.
BUT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN......WE'VE GOT'EM!!!!
Before you ask, you sharp and attentive reader you, noticing the small amount that was staked: I took an hour off from the problem and looked at some other things the smartbch could offer. One of those things i found was creating your own token, which worked remarkably well for me! I just failed to notice that though the making of the token didn't cost anything, registering it on the blockchain did. And when i noticed that all those little things were slowly eating away what little bch i had left.... well there wasn't much left.... (i do have a certain supply of MEMA tokens now, and i am willing to sell them, might anyone be interested....)
But yes, eventually i was able to buy EBEN and stake them. And do you know what was the trick to do it?? I ..... *drumroll* switched to Edge browser!!!
It must be a weird freakish combo of Linux and Firefox that doesn't mash well with the metamask addin which got in the way of the API working as it should. It's the only explanation that i can think of. Something that never happens, globally, except when i have an infected windows machine and have to use a Parrot OS linux laptop to perform the things needed to get EBEN staked.
Look from the bright side!
I did manage to find out a way that worked BEFORE i was completely out of bch to swap! It could have been worse. So now I've done it, I'm going to write it all down in an article for our community friends to read and then allow my consciousness to pass out and let my body rest for the first time since Sunday morning. When i wake up then i can start fresh on the hard wiping and fresh installing of Windows 10 pro on my pc.
Yeeey, fresh windows....
Yes, that was sarcasm. I totally not look forward to go through the process of installing the tools i am accustomed to, the addins, and the configuring of Windows and the apps that all have gone back to default with the wiping of the ssd. Also the installing of all the games i play, the remembering of passwords that i have not typed in manually for over 2 years is something i really really loath having to do.
But there's nothing for it. The copy-paste scam malware is still on the pc and i am sick and tired of trying to find and kill it so much i can't risk getting so angry with not finding it that pc's spontaneously learned how to fly! If they do, in my situation, they, unfortunately, have little skill in avoiding small obstacles like walls and also have very poor landing skills.
CONCLUSION
One thing i can not but conclude after all this though is that a sidechain, with a bridge and tokens and all has benefits for sure. But it does not make things smpler!
So yeah, good night and thank you for reading this.
Stay safe and stay happy!
I think I am in a similar situation. coinflex seems to be too slow. Is this the only swap service available to use SmartBCH? I am just getting ever-loading screens and just hope that the $10 I've send there are not lost.
*Edit: Never Mind, it reached after about an hour. Probably had to do with number of confirmations, or lag in their network, since at a point I got a message that network was disconnected. Must be my luck too, anytime I touch something new, everything that can go wrong, it will!.