The 2018 Year of Cryptocurrency Challenge – Week 11

TRY TO SPEAK TO AS MANY PEOPLE ABOUT CRYPTOCURRENCY AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN
I’ve found that social gatherings are a really good place to strike up these conversations, particularly when I haven’t seen some of these older acquaintances in some time. “What are you doing now?” lends itself particularly well to my challenge since I work in the blockchain/cryptocurrency industry. The follow-up is that, while perhaps less so than before, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are in the news, and people want to know a bit more about it.

At a friend’s birthday party in a dive bar, an old acquaintance of mine started talking to me a bit. She laughed at first when I answered “Blockchain and cryptocurrency” to her question “What are you up to these days?” She was interested in getting the basic details down first, and really began to wrap her head around the concept before too long. She disagreed that things only have value because we assign them value, but overall I think it was a very productive conversation and hopefully she learned a bit.
At the same gathering, a man I had met only once before exclaimed, “Will everyone just shut the hell up about blockchain already? The only cryptocurrency I would buy is if they made a ‘monopoly money’ coin, because at least they’d be honest about being worthless and a scam.” While I made far less progress with him than I did with my old acquaintance, I had to try. By the end of our short talk, he was no more convinced of cryptocurrency’s worth. I still took this as a learning experience, as it helps inform how I need to approach conversations with those who’ve already made up their minds. With no hard feelings, I offered to buy his next pint.
LEARN SOMETHING NEW ABOUT CRYPTO
As many of our readers will be aware, cryptocurrency mining is a resource-intensive task. While I’ve always understood this on an abstract level, a recent study came out showing that bitcoin miners in particular need a price of at least $2,400 to break even. While that’s not entirely surprising, this is kind of a big number, even when considering that Bitcoin was worth about 3.5x that at the time of writing.

I don’t mine (not with these electricity prices!), but this number is a pretty good indication of what a floor for bitcoin might look like, in my opinion. However, I doubt it will ever get that low again.

BE GENEROUS – GIVE AND USE YOUR COINS
I was lucky enough to receive a few physical bitcoin wallets (those coins with QR codes on the back) at a recent conference I attended. I’ve found that these make fantastic gifts to people who do not fully understand the concept. In fact, my friend received one of these for her birthday from me. Once I teach her how the network works a bit better, I intend on sending her first fraction of a bitcoin. I didn’t want to preload it, in case user error ended up losing those coins forever.

Are you participating in the challenge? How is it going for you? Tell us in the comments or via Twitter! Let’s make 2018 the year of cryptocurrency together!