For the past six years, I’ve been more or less obsessed with this idea of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. It wasn’t just the potential gains I was obsessed with, but this vision I was fortunate enough to barely catch a glimpse of in the early days of my crypto journey.
This was late 2017, and I was just beginning to learn what crypto was all about when I stumbled on this website called Yours.org. Sadly, it no longer exists today. Fallen by the wayside like so many other Bitcoin Cash projects. But for a brief period it was a shining example of what cryptocurrencies made possible. Anyone could sign up, create a Bitcoin Cash wallet, and post content. If someone liked your work, they could tip you in Bitcoin Cash.
It was my first time actually using crypto as it was intended, as a form of digital cash that was fully under my control. I loved earning BCH from people all over the world and being able to withdraw the coins to my own wallet whenever I wanted. It was frictionless, borderless, anonymous, and it opened my eyes to all sorts of new possibilities.
But like I said, I only caught a glimpse of the potential of this so called magic internet money because Yours.org didn’t last very long. Others tried to carry on the torch, but they either failed as well, or fell short of expectations. Because not only do you need talented developers who are willing to put in the hard work of building something that works, but you need a source of funding to pay for that work, which simply wasn’t available until the eCash project’s self-funding mechanism came online in late 2020.
As one of the first projects funded by the GNC, I have been anxiously awaiting the launch of PayButton for well over a year. Now the wait is over. I know some of you will look at the bottom of this article and only see a simple button, but I see the future.
Now anyone, even someone as technically challenged as myself, can copy and paste a bit of open source code and create a button on their website to accept XEC. And this is just the beginning. The creators of PayButton have also built a back-end that allows you to keep track of overall revenue and number of payments across all your different buttons, and will be adding paywall functionality along with plenty of other features to come. But enough talking. The best way to learn about eCash is by actually using it, so send me a tip to let me know you are out there, to experience the magic of eCash, and to encourage me to keep doing what I’m doing. As always, thanks for reading.
(Pro tip: Install the Cashtab chrome extension on desktop to see just how smoothly it all works)