I have been meaning for a long time to talk about Bitcoin, and while I still love the concept I have opted almost completely out of the market, despite being invested when Bitcoin was priced at about $1 per coin.  I had a lot of ups and a lot of downs with cryptocurrency, and this is a small story about my experience with cryptocurrency.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9oqtd6SvI8]

For many years of my life I sacrificed the comfort and my availability to my family to be able to accumulate more.  More in general, but also more bitcoin.    I had reasons, and very few were materialistic.   Despite working for an Automated Pharmacy company as an engineer on their robotic dispensing and storage machines.  I also was investing in a few different retail stores, and some side businesses.  Eventually I got into activism in the form of fighting to decriminalize cannabis.   Which also led me into supplying equipment and code for dispensaries who needed point of sale equipment and particular legal needs needed to be addressed with custom coding, which I supplied through   http://emeraldpos.com   (at the time of this posting I still own that domain, but I may not own it in the future, you can look it up at, www.archive.org for its history)

After about 2009 I started working with WordPress to create a digital currency/economy/market-place.    I started with a few different names, but it was sort of a centralized currency, even though it was outside the boundaries of Government Controlled/coerced banks like the Federal Reserve.  We had a point system to reward users for interacting with the site, and for giving word of mouth recommendations to our site.   For the points to be valuable, and we created a marketplace with products mostly by our own making, however we had products from other sources too, you can see more about it here:

xCannabis grams is the new kudos system

Cannabits xCannabis v2013

You can see, that release announcement was on January 21st 2010, but we had been working on that for many months prior to that.   I started with the forum/marketplace in 2008, and I had the currency developed in Alpha stage by the end of 2009.   Bitcoin was released in January 2009.  I believe that I was working on my digital currency at the same time that the developers of bitcoin were working on their’s.   At the same time I was developing my currency/economy, I was also working 96+ hours a week, and getting some times only 10 hours of sleep in a week.   It was maddening to my family, and my poor wife felt like a single mother for many years (despite that I worked at home, I was locked away doing something all of the time, or traveling for business).

By July of 2013 I had made my first real estate sale with cryptocurrency, and unless I am mistaken, I am not aware of anyone before July 2013 who had completed a real estate transaction with cryptocurrency, no yet Litecoin.
You can see this, I got 1170 litecoin in September of 2013 via Ebay:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130915205706/http://statelesstrade.com/?add-to-cart=213
StatelessTrade.com was a website that we use to sell all kinds of gear, mostly camping and hunting hear, plus hunting land in Northern California.

That price rose from about $2.80 to over $60 each in just two months between August and November 2013

I tried to give a lot of help and technical support to people just getting into Bitcoin, or who wanted more information before they jumped in.   I also sent fractions of bitcoins to dozens of people during this time to sort of prove the market.

https://disruptarian.com/funding < funding citizens campaigns with bitcoin mining

See more cannabis history (about 24 videos during my days chasing bitcoin)
https://disruptarian.com/bitcoinhistory

Now the point is, that I have been at the absolute top of my game.  At one time renting an $8000 a month house on Lake Washington in Bellevue Washington, while mooring a 50ft yacht at Foss Harbor in Tacoma.

This was our 4.5 million dollar habitat in Washington, and we have had many others that were very upscale before and after that home.  We lived here for 2 years;

https://www.facebook.com/utah.pirate/videos/44652326788/

And now, after going through a terrible car accident in May of 2013, and then losing everything we had in Hurricane Maria in 2017, we are basically starting over again.

But the one thing that I learned from this lesson, is that money comes at a cost, and time with my family that I never had before has become my greatest treasure of all time.   My greatest treasure, is the one that I had already found, and I was hunting all of that time for something that had no more value than the time I wasted on it.

Although it would be nice to have all of that cryptocurrency that I had accumulated.   My first large loss of Cryptocurrency was when MtGox crashed  (or was hacked allegedly) and I lost several thousand coins at that point.  But they were only worth about $1 a piece at that point.
Then later I lost a bunch in 2015 when my  www.btc-e.com account was hacked.  I lost about 6 coins, but they were only work about $314 a piece then.   Then when www.BTC-e.com was siezed I lost a few more coins.  They were worth about $600 each when that happened.  During the hurricane I lost 10’s of thousands of dollars of mining gear that I had setup in my office at our house in Juncos PR.

Server Farm

Here is one of my servers from November 10th 2013

I had some ups and some downs with crypto-currencies.   But let’s say you invested $10,000 in cryptocurrencies back when I started with crypto-currencies.   Today that would be worth;  $39,749,900.00  (39 million dollars).  Or if you cashed out in December 2017 when bitcoin were worth $17,900 each that would be worth $179,000,000 (179 million dollars).

From $10,000 to $39.74 million in just 6 years isn’t a terrible investment plan.

I may have some stored on the mainland in a storage shed that we have, but there is no assurance it is still there or that the device is still functional.  We will someday explore that option.   It may be by then bitcoin will be worth something again.

Reference:  https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin_history

More on my investment lessons with crypto-currencies and the real estate transaction information:

https://xcannabis.net/2013/10/02/how-to-use-bitcoin-in-the-real-world-and-in-the-black-market/

I may have had a bit more than 10,000 coins at one time.   I had various alt-coins too, like Litecoin, NameCoin, and a few others that I traded with.

But as a work-at-home family, we often share other tips, including tips about cryptocurrency, at our website:  http://capitalismtools.com

My economic beliefs are some where between Lysander Spooner and Dr. Ron Paul.   I don’t believe that total anarchy is possible for a long term plan, but I think far more freedom that we have now should be our birthright, and not this un-signed and illegitimate contract.   Read more about “The Constitution of No Authority” by Lysander Spooner for more insight.

I have learned that money can be easy, but there is so much that must be sacrificed in it’s place.  I prefer to be happy than to be rich.

Cryptocurrency is very disruptive and goes WAY beyond it’s financial value and I believe Lysander Spooner would be extremely impressed with this leap towards freedom.

For a heads up, I am still paying closest attention to Litecoin and Ethereum.

Today’s show is featured on “Talk Story Saturday” by Disruptarian Radio

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