If You're Using Crypto, You're a Pioneer! We are Writing History!

If you know what bitcoin is, you’re a pioneer. Seriously. How do I know? I’ll tell you.

On Sunday afternoons, my family has a pleasant tradition that’s been going on for longer than I’ve been a part of it. On my wife’s side, we would spend Sunday lunch “at the farm” her grandfather’s rural property about 30 minutes outside Oklahoma City. There would be food, volleyball, stories, cards and family.

Now, some of my own kids are grown, her grandfather is gone and the “farm” was downsized for a 15 acre plot 10 minutes from town where her mom, grandmother and one aunt all have homes. It’s great.

I have to tell you that I have the world’s greatest mother-in-law, hands down. Without this amazing woman, I really don’t know how we would have survived our younger years. She has rescued us more times than I can count. And, she’s smart. Really smart. While I don’t know that she realizes it, she’s in the top percentile in her financial acumen.

I know this, because she’s passed all of her SEC tests, up to and including a broker’s license, but doesn’t want that stress.

She manages an office for a highly successful investment broker and has for over 20 years. That’s why it shocked me when my wife called me in to the “poker” table (yes, this woman, with all of her knowledge about money, still loves to play poker and blackjack, and typically for money) in her den and asked me to explain steemit to my mother in law.

“It’s like bitcoin,” I started.

“Well, I know that, but I don’t really know anything about bitcoin.”

I had to collect myself to keep my jaw from hitting the table. It had never really occurred to me until that very moment how in the dark people are about the modern world. Here is a woman that deals in investments, and as she went on to explain, no one in their office knew a single thing about bitcoin.

WHAT??

This might not come as that much of a shock, except, the IRS just approved an IRA that can hold bitcoin as a part of its portfolio. Yep, someone in this office, with sixteen brokers, in one of the most affluent bedroom communities in America, should really know a thing or two about bitcoin.

So, I explained what I could. She’s way smarter than me, knows how to read candlestick charts, like I read play scripts. She seemed baffled by how crypto is generated. But, then I compared it to fiat and the lights came on.

“Sure, I see what you’re saying I guess, I mean paper money doesn’t have much behind it either.”

BINGO!

So, for those out here, working in steemit, and using exchanges to cash out their crypto currency, you should realize, you are a pioneer. Someday, a hundred years from now, when the monetary system has hopefully returned to its libertarian roots, and currencies are ALL decentralized, history teachers will talk about us.

Maybe they won’t mention us by name, but we’ll be there, in that story about how the world changed from a government controlled monetary system to one that was more fair and harder to corrupt. That will be us, there, in the foundation of the blockchain, smiling into the future.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world thinks we’re crazy. How do I know? Because they call me crazy all the time. I post on Facebook that I just got my first $1000 plus article on steemit for about thirty minutes of work, and immediately the naysayers come out and start talking about how it’s not real money, then they point out, of course you do, you’re a writer, and on it goes.

But the best part is the inbox messages with people warning me about the tax implications and how unstable it all is and how careful I should be. Seriously? Fine, you sit there with your depreciating paper fiat that will get you nothing when you go to the bank. I’m good.

At the moment, my only issues with crypto lie in how infantile the industry is at the moment. I’m blocked. My power down payment yesterday is in limbo on Poloniex, so I move some coin to Bittrex and send it to my coinbase wallet, where, two hours later it’s still pending without a single confirmation!

Now, most days, mind you, it’s great and it’s not as if banking errors never happen outside of crypto land. Oh no, they do, like Sunday for example when Ross Dress For Less suspended a transaction after debiting $116 from my wife’s account and then would not give her the merchandise, although she could prove they had her money and we had to call the cops the get the woman to give us documentation of the error, because she wanted us to leave with no money and no merch.

Yeah.

But, out here on the digital frontier, things should be different, and maybe they will soon. But, I swear, one more Wallstreet type suggests centralized banking needs to involve themselves to make Bitcoin more acceptable and I’m gonna start throat punching people, NO! It’s just like the Children of Israel, having escaped Pharaoh, begging Moses to take them back into slavery, HELL NO!

To be perfectly honest, at this point, I only convert to fiat out of necessity. If I could spend my steem straight from my wallet, I would. I love everything about the idea of crypto, imagine wealth without government intervention! What a concept.

If I had to pick my favorite feature, it’s got to be the transparency of a blockchain. Being able to see every single transaction here on Steemit is what convinced me to join, where could you hide all the fraud everyone out there keeps claiming is happening in here, while they are part of the biggest scam of all time, an entire monetary system based on phony paper money!

So here’s to all you wagon trainers, heading out into the digital west. May your boots stay dry, your whiskey wet and may you always see the rattlers before they see you.