At the beginning of 2018, I wrote an article outlining a New Year’s resolution that I thought could help boost cryptocurrency adoption and awareness in 2018, as long as enough people were doing it. Two weeks ago was the twenty-seventh installment of my challenge. Last week, I was busy with a few items and was unable to post an update, so this week is a two-for-one!
One of the reasons I was unable to write my update for our dear readers last week was apartment hunting. After deciding I wanted to move, I had to start looking for new places to live, and a friend from my undergrad was also moving to the city, so we decided to look into splitting a place. He mentioned to me that there was a Bitcoin ATM not far from one of the places we were considering. We ended up signing on that place – though not because of the ATM.
My new roommate and I did end up discussing cryptocurrency a bit further, though. I jokingly said, “Don’t worry, I won’t mine here,” to which he replied, “Why not?” We talked about the fact that it wasn’t all that profitable to mine now, and that our electricity bill would be enormous. However, we chose not to discount it outright. The current lull in price means that Antminers are relatively cheap (for whatever reason, they seem to circulate around a 90-day ROI model, so the price of an S9 usually tracks the markets). Chicago electricity isn’t all that cheap, but our building has forced heat (not radiator heat). Finally, both he and I like the idea of securing a network or contributing computational power to a greater cause. He did this for free (added computational power to a network) in undergrad, and I’ve mined in the past. Who knows, it may happen. If it does, I’ll share the experience.
Moving on, this week I also had the honor to moderate a panel for the International Blockchain Congress in Chicago. My panelists were all incredibly knowledgeable (I had a little imposter syndrome going on because of it actually), and our panel was a hit. We discussed cryptocurrency, ICOs, tokenization, and regulation in front of a crowd of about 90 people. We were at standing room only, probably breaking a fire code for our small classroom. What this particular conference taught me was that even in this “crypto winter,” everyone is still massively impressed by the technology and more people want to learn. Frankly, I prefer people learning in a “bear” market – you can still go broke in it, but at least there aren’t as many moonboys driving FOMO at an unsustainable rate. The flight path should be learn, then buy in, not the other way around.
I’ve continued to gift DOGE where possible and LTC to my friend who streams. I’ll ask his permission, but I may share his stream on here one day, since it’s really rather entertaining. Who knows, you might even see my truly awful PUBG performances if you follow him.
How goes your challenge? Tell us in the comments or tweet at us!