Hi everybody,
This post was not created to inspire pity, nor it is a way to covertly ask for financial support from this community. I am looking for none of that. Kindly keep your tissues and your wallets in your pocket.
My name is Emmanuel, I am a french guy living in the Philippines for the past 12 years or so and I am also the father of 2 beautiful kids. I am saying that to explain in what situation Im in right now - and also to excuse my questionable English.
Since I am not a Filipino citizen, I do not have access to any financial services in the Philippines beside a regular bank account, and since I do not go back to France regularly - I came back only 4 times in 12 years - I do not have access to any financial or social services in France either.
And I take pride in not asking for that. I grew up in a general distrust of governments and financial organizations, and I never had an "assisted" mentality. Even when I was living in France, I never asked any reimbursement from the french health care even though I was entitled to it. However, I am not rushing to pay taxes either.
What I have, I earned it by creating businesses or by working for other people. That is how I have always done things.
No wonder I ended up in this space.
Now I work online. I have built small businesses and a big youtube channel at some point, but a few months back I decided to sell my main business to invest more heavily into crypto. It was clearly not the best time to invest, but I know what I am doing. I've been in this space since mid-2016, and I think I understand the potential this space has to offer.
That is why you don't need to worry about me today. I do have some money aside. However, when I sold the business and invested, I decided to take a day job online to secure an income for my family while this space develops.
I just lost this safety net due to the virus today. That is why I decided to exchange some of my crypto holdings into DAI to make sure to have enough if times gets real ugly.
And boy oh boy, once you really need to get to your funds quickly, you realize what works and what is just a smoke screen.
This morning, I realized Ethereum was the project giving me the most options in the shortest amount of time, and without outrageous fees.
I like Tezos for the on-chain governance success, however this project is no use to me right now. Eth might be governed by a herd of unicorns, but it works.
I will surprise no one here if I told you the user experience of BTC was just too slow. It is not the project I invested in back in 2016 anymore.
BCH is clearly the easiest and fastest to use, and as soon as they add the option to switch from BCH to USDt from within the bitcoin.com wallet, it will be even more useful - I simply cannot wait for that.
Bottom line is: In the situation I am in today, I do not want to leave any money in the banking system - however, I cannot take the risk to have all my savings take a 20% drop within a few hours.
For the same reasons that I do not want my money in the banks, I do not want my money on exchanges. So I need to take advantage of the Defi ecosystem that is *thank god* (god is probably a group of devs) available to us today.
I need to be able to access my funds fast, and to be able to send and receive money in a fast and reliable way. So here it is:
To use as a currency: Bitcoin cash. To use as my bank, Ethereum's defi. To store my value short term: USDt, and DAI.
The rest, I will drop for now until this shit show stabilize a bit.
Hope this whole situation resolves fast. Keep safe out there!
Sad topic to see, but good write up. But you have a good write up that inspires people around the world.