Why I do what I do.

I am, for the most part a volunteer.

Most of the things I do in the space are of no direct benefit for myself and in fact (until this week) were very much in the red.

A non exhaustive list of my volunteer work:

• I co-organize the Osaka, Japan BCH meetup which during covid was also the online Asia BCH meetup..

• I co-organized the Osaka BCHxETH Devcon 2019 after party.

• I am a moderator and/or creator of 21 BCH related Telegram channels which I spend many hours every day deleting a never ending stream of ever increasing in sophistication bots/spammers/scammers and answering legitimate questions when and where I can.

• I moderate the (mostly dead) smartBCH discord (please join).

• I am the creator of build.cash (whose flipstarter gloriously failed) which, while limited, was one of the first places that provided a tutorial on how to setup smartBCH as well as maintains the most comprehensive list of BCH related Telegram channels.

• While I was originally brought on board just to manage Youtube/Zoom for the Bitcoin Cash Network discussions, I slowly became responsible for the summary videos and the ELI5 write ups. This then ballooned into hosting and even the organization of it. I by no means am doing it all by myself but I think it is fair to say that the project would struggle or even die without me now.

• A lot of what I do, most people will never see, which is networking and facilitating communication between various people and groups. I am not sure what to call this, perhaps a “consultant”. But to give you a somewhat recent example: People from Bitcoin.com contacted me to find out who was in possession of the “verse.bch” LNS domain. I then tracked down the owner through social and chain analysis and put them in touch with one another to work out the details of the acquisition. I do similar things very often. Someone has a question and I do my best to help them myself or to put them in touch with a person or people that can better help them. Connecting teams and people together. Reviewing things, and giving general advice.

• I recently started investigating previously completed flipstarters to investigate if the recipient did or did not actually deliver what they promised.

I am sure there are many more things but these are just off the top of my head.

One of the very few times I interacted with CSW while he was around was when he wrote a tweet that said something to the effect “If you are doing it for free you are an idiot” to which I pushed back and asked “what about all the meetup organizers?”

His reply was clearly some weaselly worded rollback along the lines of "well you should sell merchandise or maybe charge admission". I disagree and am glad we shed ourselves of him fairly quickly.

Of course I hold a limited amount of BCH, I too would love to see "Number Go Up", and despite getting into Bitcoin in 2011 I am by no means a whale. I do of course believe that the high tide will raise all boats and with that I will benefit as well.

Value can be and measured in ways other than direct monetary gain. A whale who donates to BCHN or Satoshis Angels (or me) does so because they believe it will bring MORE value to the rest of their holdings. Imaginary Username lays it all out better than It can in the original proposal for flipstarter here.

SOMEONE needs to all the things. We do not have a developer fund or a founders fund or a premine or a tax allocating 10% to a DAO that can be voted upon. The IFP failed. No matter whether you think we SHOULD have a foundation etc, we are where we are and BCH is a completely voluntary system. It is developed and propelled by for some profit and for others goodwill and a desire to make BCH succeed.

But why?

For some people the answer is very complicated and for some it is very simple:

BCH bags are heavy and they want to sell down the road to get a golden toilet on a diamond and barnacle encrusted yacht.

Personally I think there is nothing wrong with that, as long as the high tide also raises my canoe.

Satoshi was brilliant in incentivizing greed to keep the network secure. Profit motivation is valuable and plays a very important part in the network and I fault no one whose main motivation is their bottom line. For many of us early adopters though, the promise and appeal of bitcoin riches was not THE primary motivation.

While the BTC crowd seems to openly admit they have had a pivot, slowly disassociating the project from Satoshi and saying things like "it is time to move on" and "its time to rewrite the white paper" etc. I tend to see people in BCH as the people who are still motivated by peer to peer electronic cash.

On the surface it seems very simple. I send money directly to you, instantly and basically for free!

THE END

Well................................... Not for me.

It is a bit more significant than that.

For myself and many other BTC exiles the project known as "Bitcoin" is the project that gives humanity the best chance of moving away from the downward spiral many of us feel swirling around us. Hyperinflation, war, the honey bees all dying off.

It seems like everywhere you turn there is another broken system.

Basic rights? Refugees? 2 parties? Leeman accountability? Season 8 of GOT?

At the root of everything is money. The only way to reverse the course of action is to take the power away from those who make all these terrible choices and their power is control over the money supply.

The best way to wring control away from the broken and ossified hands of those who have no desire to make any real change is to change money itself.

Capitalism in it's current state is basically Proof of Stake (generational wealth) combined with centralized inflation.

It's a big club and you are not in it.

We can do better and we must do better.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Be part of the solution.

Despite the mostly thankless task of being a volunteer mod. I have dedicated myself to the bitcoin project since 2017 when I discovered that I, a simple merchant can actually do something. I was a SOMEONE that can do SOMETHING. I started small, converting my store from BTC to BCH and participated in the OB Beta test and then graduated to co-hosting the Osaka BCH meetup. From there on it was a slow ramp up to where I am today which is basically volunteering fulltime on helping BCH projects because I think it is worth it for the future of our planet and the next planet.

The pandemic was kind of a double edged sword. On the one hand it basically ruined my business and eliminated my income. On the other it freed my time to focus on helping BCH projects. I threw myself into helping everything I could and never asked for anything in return because in the end I believe that by helping BCH I help everyone and I am someone. I did get the odd donation here and there which I of course appreciated. It was never substantial until this month though.

Someone gave me a massive tip. I am not sure who you are but whomever you are. I can not thank you enough. These last couple years have been hard for everyone, many much more so than myself and while I do not know who you are, I can only say thank you. I will keep doing what I am doing and try to help others as you have helped me.
I am proud and honored to be part of such a community that is to a large degree united or aligned with similar goals and motivations the stretch far beyond individual wealth.

I feel so much motivation and passion around me with the people I talk to everyday.

I have not been this hyped in a long time. I feel we have a real chance to pull this off.

We are building something that humanity has never see before. This thing we are building is new. It doesn't even have a name yet, emergent parallel power? Someone will coin a better name someday. I am excited to be building all this with you.

I can not wait to see what we come up with next.