It's been whirlwind three weeks for me. BCH and noise.cash and read.cash have been rather transformative. I have too much free time while I'm on leave, but I seem to spend most of my day looking at crypto charts, reading about BCH developments, and tipping all you lovely people.

Shortly after I received my first upvote from Rusty, the Random Rewarder, I made a post on noise.cash:

At the time, I didn't really know what to expect from my earnings. I had made less than $1. Rusty has visited me a few times since and I want to remain true to my commitment. To that end, I would like to open up my read.cash finances for a bit of scrutiny.

This is my read.cash wallet, and this is a wallet I created last night when Rusty went on a tipping spree, as I did not want to hold too much in my read.cash wallet.

Now I'm not going to go crazy with the accounting. This is an informal commitment on my part, and I mean to stick by it, but I was not expecting to make more than $5 on any particular article.

I no longer think I can reinvest 100% of my earnings. I'd like to do what I've been doing on noise.cash: distribute 75%, keep 25% for myself. Again, this is an informal commitment and I'm not going to count out my satoshis like some miserly old Scrooge. Many things may change, but the core remains the same:

I want to make a habit of engaging and including others on this platform. I want to foster the exchange of opinions and ideas by encouraging others to write and share.

I'm not going to hold myself to any tipping standards or reading requirements. I'm doing this because it's fun and rewarding and I don't want to make it a job. If I earn from my writing then so much the better but this platform is bigger than me.

I'm here for the people.

I want to embody some crypto organizing principles and lead by my example. I am not looking for followers, but I want my actions to be a statement of my faith in this project. The more time I spend here the more I feel that I need to be here for the long-haul, that I can engage my talents here to make a difference.

but wait, there's more commitment!

I posted this to noise.cash five days ago:

I've since done some follow up. The majority of merchants accepting BCH in my city are restaurants that use Menufy. This is all well and good but I'm not looking to onboard people to Menufy and have no need for the service.

There are three non-restaurant businesses that are listed as accepting BCH. Two of them are individual guys that are into Bitcoin that accept BCH as payment because it has Bitcoin in the name. The other is a Kratom retailer that seems to only accept BTC, and their website recommends their clients buy it on Coinbase using a credit card, while also saying that BTC allows users to transact anonymously. They then ask you to register an account on their site before you can make purchases. Not very reassuring.

I'm not particularly discouraged, though. I knew it would be an uphill battle to raise crypto awareness and this is as much about my growth as it is about BCH's. I am going to have to overcome some social anxiety hurdles to go out and start talking to people.

I've started with my mother-in-law, who has been vaguely interested in Bitcoin for a few years now. We've only had a couple conversations where I've outlined some Bitcoin basics, and she's left them a bit confused but I don't think that was entirely my fault. It's hard to communicate these complex ideas to people with very little frame of reference.

I have been studying a lot of merchant on-boarding resources and I'm trying to develop my approach. I'm reminded of the many Roger Ver debates I've watched recently, where he seems to have every phrase ready and practiced, where he even knows the opposing side's argument and is always ready to counter. I'm not there yet. I'm not comfortable with BCH in that way, but I'm not going to let that discourage me. You've got to start somewhere.

Bringing the world a sound, revolutionary currency is worth the effort.

Thanks for reading. Comment below if you have any thoughts for me, I'd really love the feedback!

Lead photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels