I think I had a bit of a weird introduction to crypto. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, how could you possibly have a "normal" entry into a market that gained traction as a medium of exchange for Magic: The Gathering Cards and illicit substances. It's definitely interesting to hear how different people got sold on the idea that blockchain was world changing technology.
For me, I guess it started back in 2012. Any previous mention of Bitcoin in my life kind of slid off of me and was forgotten since it was typically just the same hate that we all must be used to by now. 2012 was my first year of college, and I happened to have the fortune of signing up for an International Economics class that was taught by this odd caricature of a punk rocker. This was a 35 year old man with a mohawk, baggy black jeans with like 100 zip-up pockets, and a different band shirt for every day of the month. This was the one and only time I heard any of my college professors talk seriously about blockchain. He went over whether Bitcoin could function as money, namely, could it function as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. His view seemed to be what everyone has been saying for years, that Bitcoin's transaction costs are too high for it to act in the place of fiat. It isn't a very good medium of exchange since it takes too long to verify transactions on granddaddy Bitcoin's blockchain and the fee's are relatively high. However, my punk rock professor still loved the underlying technology and seemed pretty optimistic about the outlook and at least saw it as a store of value for quite a few years to come. It certainly helped that one of my fellow students had bought a car off of his investment. I'm sure that guy would rather have the Bitcoin now since it went from $10 then to $9000 today, but hey, you live and you learn.
image source: TeePublic
Sadly, I did not invest at the time. I was a broke college student, and I still didn't really have a grasp on what the hell Bitcoin was, how blockchain worked, where to buy crypto, or even whether or not it was legal to do business on any Bitcoin exchanges. Is it something I regret? Well, not really. If I were to dwell on every missed opportunity that comes along I'd be stressing myself 6 feet under. And, at the end of the day, this unconventional Econ teacher had laid a solid groundwork so that the next time I heard crypto being talked about seriously, I would recognize the opportunity.
Fast forward 5 years, it's 2017, the altcoin market has caused a crypto-revival, I've had my degree for about a year, yet I find myself NEETed up. I'm enjoying my time playing games in my room, masturbating (as you do), messing around on the guitar, and just all around doing typical NEET activities. Truly a shameful existence. It's fun while it lasts. I loved it.
Finally, I decide to get a part-time shitty wagey job. I'm working for a few months, getting pretty bored, and I turn to my old faithful. Now, I don't recommend self-medicating your depression with weed, but it was probably one of the better decisions of my lifetime.
I ring up my old buddy from high school, the sort of quiet savant type. Smarter than everybody else in the room, but too awkward to exist in the real world. I NEETed around for about a year, but this guy has become a sort of professional NEET. He's pretty much scraping enough cash together by filling out online surveys to keep himself outfitted in top of the line NEET gear. He's been NEETing for like 5 years, has the latest in gaming technology, a fresh laptop, a new guitar (he jams as well), and enough entertainment, be it books, games, music, or pirated movies, to keep himself busy for a lifetime or to start a small entertainment store. We've known each other since elementary school, and every once in a while I'll buy a bong and go on a trippy, year-long substance abuse adventure with him.
image source: 4chan
Well, as it turns out, this NEET savant has been taking every extra penny that he finds and stacking Satoshi's in preparation for what he is sure is an impending moon mission. Together, we get into this cycle of smoking, chilling for a few hours, then I'll sit through the longest and most in depth shill ever conceived. I mean, this guy has a harddrive completely dedicated to images that he has saved from 4chan's /biz/ boards. I don't condone spending too much time on 4chan because it's mostly cultic shills and endless fud, but my friend is like stupid smart, and a lot of the crap we comb through is oddly informative. He has a little bit of every altcoin under the sun, but his favorite shitcoin by a wide margin is, undoubtedly, Chainlink, king-dick of the crypto cult world.
Eventually, he shills hard enough that I actually begin to understand all of this technology. Things start to make sense, and I begin to get past the initial thought of, "damn, my old pal got sucked into a crazy internet cult." The straw that breaks the camels back is his description of a trustless shrimp farm. He paints a picture of a shrimp farm that runs off of AI, smart contracts, and off-chain data with Chainlink integration. I'm talking about the works. This shrimp farm is utilizing off-chain information on optimal mineral levels in the water, feeding tables from top shrimp health professionals, and even pricing data from various shrimp exchanges. I'm hooked. I mean, I don't necessarily want to start a shrimp farm, but I'm definitely Link-pilled.
So, I get around to starting an account with a crypto exchange, buying Eth on Coinbase, sending it to Binance, and buying Link there since this is way before the Coinbase listing. I start funding it from my part-time job, and before I know it, I have a halfway reasonable portfolio for the lazy trash person that I am. Of course, I've diversified quite a bit, but the vast majority of my money at the time went into Chainlink, because, you know, shrimp farms are the future. Thanks be to the Oracle at Delphi because while everyone else dove into a bearish year. I sat on a stack of slowly appreciating internet funny money. Link really turned out to beat most of the market. Really, compared to everyone else at the time, my timing was pretty great. The lesson in all of this...well...trust your autistic friends. You might learn a thing or two.
image source: 4chan