For the past 8 years, I’ve been a crypto addict. During that time, I’ve spent approximately infinite hours checking crypto prices, crypto twitter, and listening to crypto podcasts. But 8 years (that’s 96 months!) is a long time, and recently, I couldn’t help noticing my addiction seems to be waning.
I’m spending less time staring at charts, less time on crypto twitter, and way less time listening to crypto podcasts. It’s hard to say exactly what’s to blame. Maybe it’s because of the lack of an alt season. Or maybe the twitter algo has ruined my feed. Or maybe it’s because all the crypto podcasts I used to listen to only seem to talk about the same things over and over again, and none of those things are what I believe makes crypto interesting to begin with.
Which begs the question, what do I find interesting about crypto?
My answer? Crypto’s potential to change civilization as we know it.
The reason I became so addicted to this space was because it captured my imagination. It not only opened my eyes to a new way of seeing the world, but it gave me a glimpse of what it made possible.
I remember the first time I experienced a 0-conf transaction is when I finally got it. It showed me how cryptocurrencies can offer us a new way to interact with one another, almost like magic.
But over the last few years, this industry seems to have all but forgotten what made crypto so exciting to begin with, which is why I was pleasantly surprised by the latest episode of The Bitcoin Takeover podcast hosted by Vlad Costea where he interviews Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
During their three hour long conversation, they touched upon everything from crypto history, the various characters that have been part of that history, the technical, political and social challenges that come with developing a project like Ethereum, the importance of privacy and decentralization, the cypherpunk ethos, and much more.
But I’m not here to rehash their entire conversation. All I want to do is highlight three key things I took away from it. One about Vitalik, one about Vlad, and one about myself.