I have such fond memories of those early days. It wasn’t about the money — I’m pretty sure we all zapped well into the negative most nights. We were there for the absurdity and hilarity of it.

We were literally sending thousands, if not millions of sats, to near-perfect strangers on the internet, and then experiencing those sats being zapped back in return, plus more.

Who would send the most unnecessarily large zaps (zap cannons)? Who would 🥷 anon-zap as many other anons as possible (zap grenades), making it harder and harder for others to actually send it back to oneself? (We all did, because it got competitive in the best way).

Why!? Not for ego. For the memes, the lols, the tell-our-grandkids-someday stories.

For the friendship. What this really represented was a series of trust-falls with people we had just met.

“Send me .01 Bitcoin and I’ll send you .02 back”, a cliche from the DM scammer, became an actual thing we did.

I had the honor of engaging with “strangers on the internet” who are full of integrity, wit, and common interests; these zap wars were suffused with the good will and authenticity that arises in moments of human connection, discovery, and perhaps a splash of degeneracy.

These friendships feel like real, lasting bonds. The coolest part is that we’ve still just barely scratched the surface in getting to know one another, but there is a fundamental baseline of trust that normally is only achieved in relationships after a great deal of time.

It got weird, and it got awesome.

Love you friends 🫂⚡️🍷