In case you’re not aware, I’ve been giving away 1 million XEC a day for the past 91 days. It started on a whim one night in early August. I was home, and everyone else in the family was asleep, and the price of XEC was still just under $0.00005.
I remember when the idea first popped into my head.
“One hundred million XEC, one hundred days,” I thought, and it had such a nice ring to it. Then I did the math and realized how much it would cost me and thought, “Fifty million XEC, fifty days.”
But it didn’t have the same ring, and I knew I had no choice.
When I announced it I described it as an experiment more than anything else, because I had no idea what to expect, no clue how many people would participate, or if I would ultimately regret the whole thing.
I didn’t even really know what I was looking to get out of this event, only that I wanted to try and see what came out of it. Now that it’s almost over, I thought this might be a good time to reflect on everything that’s happened thus far.
I guess I should begin by saying that everything far exceeded my expectations. The amount of passion, and talent, and dedication surpassed anything I could have imagined. What was perhaps most impressive was the sheer amount of voluntary spirit the XEC community displayed.
Amaury once said, “The [eCash] crowd is the most amazing crowd in crypto, hands down.”
Almost a year later, and I still believe this to be true.
Sure there will always be those bozos who only want to know when moon, but what these past 91 days has taught me is that the bozos are heavily outnumbered by people who truly understand what this project is about and believe in what it can accomplish.
I’ve watched as the eCash project has helped people from every corner of the planet discover cryptocurrencies for the first time. And not as digital gold, but as electronic cash.
Over the past few months I’ve translated tweeets in Arabic, Turkish, Indonesian, Korean, Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Chinese, Portuguese, just to name a few. If you had told me three months ago how global this thing would become in such a short period of time, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Even more surprising was that these weren’t computer scientists, or cryptographers, or libertarians, or anarchists joining the community. These were people who were mothers and fathers, teenagers and retirees, people like me who know nothing about code but everything about wanting something better.
Maybe you see that as a flaw. Because it’s true that in order for this project to succeed, we need as many 10x engineers and cryptographers as we can find, but that doesn’t mean we don’t also need artists, and content creators, and people who are simply willing to educate others in their communities.
And over the past 91 days that’s exactly what I’ve seen. I’ve seen people wanting to contribute, to participate, and to learn.
I will also admit there were times when I felt like I couldn’t wait for the 100 days to end. Days I would lose my temper, or get annoyed, but it was never to such a degree that I ever considered calling it quits.
If I really think about it, however, I didn’t quit because of you. Not only because you would have held me accountable, but because anytime I asked for help, there seemed to be someone willing to provide it. Anytime I had a question, there was someone happy to give me a good answer.
This site is a perfect example. Someone I’ve never met dedicated hours and hours of her time coding, and designing, and walking me through everything step by step.
Then there was the fact that two days into the giveaway, when I was still asking myself if I was an idiot for telling strangers on the internet I was going to give out all this money, I get a direct message on Twitter from @Sedona_Biz saying he thought my giveaway was a great idea, and he wanted to know if he could take on half the burden.
I remember I was driving when I got his message. I was stunned and could hardly believe it. It made me feel so much better, like a burden had indeed been lifted. I can’t remember where I was driving to that day, but I remember I was smiling as I did, like I was no longer concerned that I’d made the wrong choice.
I want to thank @Sedona_Biz for what he did that day, as well as everyone else who has participated, or given me their valuable time and attention.
The other day I tweeted I was looking for missionaries, not mercenaries. Some may have found this confusing because it might seem to contradict everything I’ve been doing, but I hope you can see past the surface and realize that this wasn’t about paying people to create memes, or art, or VR websites and telegram bots, it was about getting people to believe in something I believe in, and joining me in the mission to change civilization as we know it.
Because for me, that’s what eCash is, a revolutionary new technology that has the potential to change everything.