The 2018 Year of Cryptocurrency Challenge – Week 16

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. Last week was the fifteenth installment of my challenge. After a few slower weeks for my challenge, I’m happy to say that this week was far more productive for me.

I’m going to change up the usual format of this series a little bit, but probably only for this one post. I had an interesting encounter recently that checked the boxes for all of my challenge goals. Story time!

A few days out of my week, I try to go to a coworking space to get some work done, and one of the building’s weekly networking events includes a spread of free snacks and wine. My interest was piqued! I realized that this was probably a great place to try to engage with more people on cryptocurrency and blockchain. Admittedly, the prospect of free wine was also a driving force (as it is for most writers). Almost immediately, I was able to start up a conversation with the woman in front of me in line. She was new to the building and asked what I did, and seemed intrigued by the idea of cryptocurrency. She was mostly interested in it as a potentially lucrative investment vehicle. Despite my attempts to steer the conversation to focus more on the technology, she was pretty dead-set on trying to get financial advice out of me. I told her the only advice I’d ever give was to never invest any money you can’t afford or are unwilling to lose.

Next, I spoke with a few of the building’s Community Managers. They are the points of contact for the space’s members and the event organizers. At events like these boozy and foody networking events, I do my best to stay on their good side (I know where my bread is buttered) and have tried to avoid annoying them with too much crypto-talk. However, two of the Community Managers were extremely receptive, and we spoke for about 30 minutes. I learned that for many, the hardest concept to grasp is the use case for cryptocurrency. This disconnect is understandable. With so many coins, so many projects, and so many “experts” all saying what crypto is good for and what crypto is not good for, the layperson can be left dumbfounded. So I started to show them some of the places I like to spend my cryptocurrency online.

While telling them how I’d just bought some plane tickets off cheapair.com with Dogecoin, I saw another educational opportunity for these two. “Do you two want some Dogecoin?” I asked. Both chuckled and said yes. I helped them set up their wallets, and sent them 500 Doge each. It wasn’t much, but they seemed pretty excited to have Dogecoin. “I feel like I’m part of a completely new culture! I’m in the crypto game now!” one said after the transaction was confirmed.

The Community Managers are going to plan a blockchain and cryptocurrency-specific happy hour networking event soon. I look forward to attending.

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Are you challenging yourself with this resolution too? Do you have any good/random stories that resulted in great crypto-centered conversation? Tell us on Twitter or in the comments!