You can't even go for a shit these days without overhearing a conversation about crypto. And there's a good chance there's at least one smug bugger in your circle of friends that has made a small fortune buying and selling 'magic Internet money'.
Those that have made a bit of cash have gained overnight affirmation of their status as the next Warren Buffet despite having no idea what these internet coins are or where you can spend them.
In my group of friends that crypto guy is me. I was one of the lucky individuals who ended up stumbling across Bitcoin years ago and transforming my modest investment in to a life changing sum of money. At the time of 'investing' I was none the wiser as to what Bitcoin really was, what it wanted to be and just what a transformational tool it's underlying technology - the BlockChain would become.
The first time I heard the word Bitcoin was when reading an article about a small corner of the internet known as 'the dark web' where users could meet and participate in illicit trade.
The article was from the same news site that had previously introduced me to Torrenting, a technology that had provided me with countless hours of movies, MP3s and TV shows of dubious legality. When I read their article about the Dark Web I knew to pay attention (thanks BBC).
Until the release of Bitcoin the Dark Web was largely the domain of geeks and the information and sites accessible here were unstructured and frankly quite shit. Think book clubs and Star Trek messaging boards.
That was true until an anonymous figure, Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper (a technical manifesto for a new digital currency) in 2008.
Remember 2008 was the year of the biggest stock market crash since the 20s and institutions like Lehman Brothers were collapsing around us like a house of cards. Bitcoin was a 'fuck you' to this broken system; a means to transmit value across the Internet in a trustless manner without the need for a central banking authority.
Admittedly by the time I stumbled across Bitcoin in 2012 I was less interested in the creation of a new financial paradigm as I was in purchasing narcotics on the Internet. As a weekend drug user, the appeal of bypassing dealers and being able to buy something that wasn't completely cut to shit was an obvious allure.
While it was the combination of two technologies, the dark web and Bitcoin that made this possible it was the creation of the marketplace, The Silk Road in 2011 that completed this puzzle.
The Silk Road was my online apothecary and functioned in the same mould as Amazon. Sellers and products were rated so as to ensure a quality experience for users. It was absolutely typical to order my weekend supply from the Silk Road on a Thursday and to see it sitting on my door mat by Friday evening. Needless to say, I spent a lot of Bitcoin here and in doing so destroyed many fond memories of my late 20's.
The Silk Road (R.I.P) was eventually shut down by the FBI in 2013 and with it, my kidneys began their long journey to recovery. Although a number of copycat market places popped up for me it was the end of the road for drug purchasing online.
And so that was that, I forgot all about crypto for the next few years. Cue 2016; thanks once again to the BBC technology pages, my interest in blockchain technologies was piqued, this time not by Bitcoin but by a promising new blockchain technology called Ethereum.
Ethereum was a new form of Blockchain, one that instead of just being able to transmit value, could be used to run software and host digital contracts without fear of censorship. It promised to be the technology that would underpin the future Internet and I fancied a piece of that.
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Unbeknownst to me I'd managed to leave myself a nice little bonus in the form of 18 Bitcoins that I'd left in a wallet. This had grown in value from around $90 to around $10,000 in my time away and became my investment pot for my Ether purchase.
Despite doing a lot of reading about Ether over the next six months or so, my actual understanding of Ethereum was still limited but I was firmly drinking the Kool Aid. Fortunately, the gamble paid off...handsomely. In 2017 the price of Ethereum sky rocketed around 6,000 percent, effectively proving me with the equivalent funds of a small lottery win.
This has given me the chance to quit my job and see a bit of the world, it's also given me the chance to research other crypto currencies.
Over the last few months we've heard a lot about scams and bubbles related to crypto currencies and while it's true the space is currently like the wild west, there is a lot out there to be genuinely excited about.
Whether any of the current crypto projects will be around in a few years remains to be seen but we can be pretty sure that Blockchains and Smart Contracts are here to stay.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: Bitcoin, Business, Money, Interesting, Cryptocurrency