The 2018 Year of Cryptocurrency Challenge – Week 8

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 seventh installment of my year of cryptocurrency challenge. It’s becoming easier and easier, the longer I do this challenge, to keep to it. This week was rather interesting.

TRY TO SPEAK TO AS MANY PEOPLE ABOUT CRYPTOCURRENCY AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN

This week, one of the more interesting events I attended was a hybrid mini-conference and meetup in Chicago involving blockchain projects. There were excellent speakers and panelists discussing the industry and its future. They even raffled off an AntMiner (though I didn’t participate, since electricity costs 10.44¢/kWh in Chicago and I don’t need a loud heater in my apartment, though if I ever get the Bitcoin beer idea going I may purchase a few). Here are the (mental) notes I made from some of my conversations at this event.

1. A middle-aged man and I had a conversation about identity on the blockchain. The company he owns specializes in data and personal information security. I explained to him how beneficial tokenizing identities on the blockchain can be. Put simply, we currently share too much information when asked for one specific thing. Think about it this way: when entering a bar, sometimes you must produce proof of age. However, to do this, you have to provide a government-issued ID, which has way more information than the bouncer needs to say, “Yes this is you and yes you are old enough to enter the bar.” You don’t need one’s home address and license number to determine that. Therefore, a token, signed by a private key, proving age would be far more efficient and protect one’s data.
2. Also, at this event a man spoke to me about cryptocurrencies as investments. While I understand that the price and volatility will always attract speculators, I feel like those only in it for the price are missing the point. Cryptocurrency started out as independent money, free from the whims of governmental or institutional control. While that may be idealistic, I think it is important to at least read Satoshi’s whitepaper before getting involved in the space. I told the man that he should consider learning more about the assets he was buying rather than just checking Coinbase’s prices.

LEARN SOMETHING NEW ABOUT CRYPTO

It’s not necessarily crypto-related, but I am trying to learn more code so that I can participate in open-sourced projects on GitHub, so I am learning Git and continuing to bolster my Python. I’m also considering looking at Solidity. Learning code is actually something that I think is a very anthropological experience, especially when helped by a robust community. I will keep everyone posted on how that is going too.

BE GENEROUS – GIVE AND USE YOUR COINS

Continuing the thought above, a friend of mine sent me some resources to check out while self-teaching. I decided that they deserved some Dogecoin and sent them 100 Doge for the time they took to share their resources with me.

Are you participating in this challenge too? How is it going for you? Tweet at us or reply in the comments!