The 2018 Year of Cryptocurrency Challenge – Week 1

At the beginning of 2018, I wrote an article outlining a New Year’s resolution that I thought could help promote cryptocurrency adoption and awareness in 2018. It would not have been fair, or interesting, if I chose not to do it or not to follow up with my progress. While we only just finished the first week of 2018, I thought it would be nice to start writing updates on a weekly basis.

Try to Speak to As Many People About Crypto as Possible

I am happy to report that since the start of the New Year, I have found time to speak to at least one new person every day about cryptocurrencies. I jotted down some notes after some of the best conversations so I wouldn’t forget them. Here they are:

1. Cryptocurrency is becoming more mainstream because it has finally found some more legitimate use cases. The friend I was speaking with about this had previously hesitated and recoiled from any attempt to purchase crypto in the past because she felt they were “tainted” and “only used on the black market to buy drugs, order hitmen, and so forth.” She confided in me that it was CME’s decision to take on futures trading of Bitcoin that really changed her mind about it. “It’s really for everyone, isn’t it?” she said to me. “Just got a bad rap early on.” She’s since purchased Bitcoin, Litecoin, and ETH (pretty much all that’s been on Coinbase).

2. I was speaking with a bartender at a local brewery and – half jokingly – asked if he would accept Dogecoin as payment (it was a dog-friendly taproom). He gave a good laugh, but then asked me about it. He told me that he had been hearing about Bitcoin and other cryptos a lot recently in the news, but was too nervous to ask what they were or how they worked. Stigma and pride had kept him from doing so in the past, he said. We spoke for a good 20 minutes, and I explained blockchains, proof of work and proof of stake, and crypto’s benefits for businesses. I ended up actually getting him to download the mobile Dogecoin wallet, and I sent him 100 doge. While I didn’t expect to receive anything in return, he found a way to have a pint “spill” for me.

Try to learn something new about crypto every day

This one was not hard at all. There is so much happening from code to community that it makes finding out something one does not know incredibly easy. For example: previously I thought Peercoin only utilized a proof-of-stake model for minting. To my delightful surprise, it uses both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, which makes sense for keeping members of the community active.

I also learned that many people in crypto still do not pay their taxes when they take profits (or report losses to mitigate those taxes), which is baffling to me. I learned this when Coinbase’s app (I use it for quick price-checking on my phone) displayed a banner reminder about paying taxes. After some investigation, it became apparent that there is a large portion of the cryptocurrency community that does not report crypto. This seems 1) blemishing for us in the eyes of the wider world and 2) just kind of not well-thought-out. The nature of the blockchain makes it rather easy to track money, and this will probably catch up with a lot of people.

Be Generous, Use and Give Your Coins

This part of the resolution is not going to be a daily, or even weekly thing due to the extent of current adoption. It is my hope that it will become more common as the year goes on. However, I am happy to say that this week, I did give that bartender some Dogecoin, and that I got a “spilled” beer for it.

Have you taken on this resolution as well and had interesting stories from it? We’d love to hear them below and on our social media!