There Is Something Here

In summer of 2020, I was so new to crypto that I didn’t even know (or comprehend) that DeFi Summer was taking off right under my nose.

Earlier in the spring, I had searched “second largest crypto”. This was the moment I discovered Ethereum.

Through curiosity and luck, I searched Spotify for Ethereum podcasts. Into the Ether, hosted by Eric Connor and Anthony Sassano, seemed promising.

I was completely lost the moment they started talking. Arbitrum, zk-rollups, Layer 2’s, sharding, The Merge, Beacon Chain, were just some of the foreign topics discussed in detail.

I understood nothing for 30 minutes, then the episode ended.

It was one of the most enlightening experiences I’d ever had.

In most situations, listening to people talk about a foreign technology is overwhelmingly boring.

• None of the pseudo-tech hype bullshit spewed from YouTubers.

• None of the completely useless explanations like the “blockchain is a distributed ledger validated by miners” articles (I swear every media outlet was guilty of this one).

How have I not known this other world existed? And why are people building an incredible amount of infrastructure for it?

Fast forward to today, I’ve performed well over a thousand transactions and have spent hundreds of hours learning and exploring. I still have a difficult time articulating why this will be so important, as well as its current and potential use-cases. But looking at the space, you’ll see:

• Hundreds of core Ethereum developers.

• Thousands of developers from Layer 1, Layer 2, and other platforms interconnected with Ethereum.

• Organic culture and community continuing to grow.

Powerful political figures have publicly stated their hostile sentiment, including wanting to ban crypto or hit it with crippling regulations.

Many U.S. politicians and agencies sit with a straight face while saying crypto has no legitimate use-case. This is while, China has used the same technology to create their own CBDC, now the greatest threat to the United States dollar and global financial dominance post-WW2.

Now the United States sits at a crossroads as it decides whether to:

1. Embrace the well-established domestic infrastructure already built by developers through open-source and the private sector. Handing out contracts to companies like Circle to secure the dollar’s dominance as we move into this next era.

2. Fight fire with fire – ban all crypto and hope to catch up to China on the CBDC race.

No one knows for sure how blockchains and smart contracts will change the world, but there’s no denying the changes that have already begun to take place. There is something here.