I was introduced to Bitcoin in 2017. I was told it was an investment that I could put a little money into now, and it would grow faster than anything else. The introduction came by the way of a friend who had been attending meetings, and had joined a multi-level marketing campaign to get the word out and have people buy Bitcoin and put it into an account where traders would make more money than anything we'd ever heard of. At the time, the price was around $2,600, so I bought one BTC and put it into their trading program. It slowly grew, and I learned a bit about how to take it out. But when I tried to withdraw, I dealt with delays, then technical issues, then the runaround, then massive transaction fees, and finally was able to withdraw about 0.1 BTC, which at that point in time was around $2,600. It was a ponzi scheme, lessons learned.

I didn't blame the network, I blamed that scheme. I started a weekly purchase of BTC on Coinbase, and continued learning and researching. I also found a cloud miner, and tested it with small amounts. It worked, and kept loading it up until I put a large amount in to buy mining hash which was bringing in a nice revenue stream. But then it stopped. That website shut down, and the customer service disappeared. Another ponzi scheme, lessons learned.

I spent 2018 looking at the Ethereum network, wondering if I could find something better, something that generated an income stream on chain that I could manage better. I found a few things, but never put a lot into it. However, I did continue my weekly purchases of BTC on Coinbase.

It took until around 2023 for me to have the time to research and come to an actual understanding of what Bitcoin is, why it was launched, the problem it is trying to solve, and how it is providing the solution. Now all of my investment capital going into Crypto goes directly into Bitcoin, nothing else.

Bitcoin is a digital representation of Capital, which is one of four primary pillars that civilization is built on. Capital, Information, Innovation and Trust. Bitcoin is the first digital representation of capital that is purely wealth based, and is a complete departure from the debt based monetary and financial systems that we have been using for the past few hundred years. The fixed supply is unique, other than the other fixed supply blockchains that are copycats that never achieved adoption. If we can continue to expand adoption of this wealth based system, it will replace all of the debt based systems we have now. Bitcoin is not a threat to the Dollar or the Pound. It's a replacement for the debt based foundation of those systems, which is the bond market. Bitcoin and the other protocols that are pure wealth based are the only things that will enable our civilization to get past the great filter and expand to the stars. If we don't make the transition, we will not survive.

I found Nostr when Jack posted about it and Primal launched. I've been using social media since before the Internet came online in 1995, going back to Usenet in the 1970's and 80's. I hate the advertising model, more than almost anything else in this civilization. So seeing a social media protocol launching that uses the appreciation model instead was amazing. The user base is smaller, much more complicated. But I'm hoping that as more and more corporate controlled social media bend the knee to governments around the world, people will start seriously looking for a real alternative that will allow them to exchange information and value with no middle man. Nostr is the most important protocol since Bitcoin.