I was an early adopter of cryptocurrency. I bought my first couple bitcoins for about $80 each. I was attracted from the moment I learned of the invention of bitcoin, for all the same reasons all early adopters were — the elegance of the double-cryptography, the innovation of blockchain. Most of all, my conviction that governments given the opportunity to print more currency always will do so. For me, the genius of cryptocurrency wasn’t the mining or the blocks, it was the mathematical limits to supply.
When Charlie Shrem was unjustly overprosecuted in 2014, I bought five bitcoin from him for $1000. I thought I was doing him a big favor – basically making a contribution to his canteen for the ludicrous prison sentence they had in store for him. Those coins would be worth about 400 grand today.
In 2013, I wrote about bitcoin for Esquire. No one there had ever heard of “bitcoin” or “cryptocurrency.” To his credit, Peter Griffin had the curious mind and sense of what’s next all writers pray for in an editor. He approved my column about pretend money. I believe it was the first ever mention of “bitcoin” in Esquire and definitely one of the first mentions of “ripple” anywhere in mainstream media. “Over an already volatile 2013, the value of a single bitcoin has ranged from $13 to more than $250,” I wrote.
This is when Ripple the company was still confused with its token, which is now called XRP, but then called ripple or ripples.
Ripple also solves some other elemental problems in the existing system of government-issued money. Banks are thieves. Every three months, I get a distribution of about $1,400 from an investment I have in some apartments. It’s wired directly to my bank account, yet my bank charges me $15 for the privilege. Then there’s the time question. I am a user of Dwolla, an online payment system that you can use like cash in thousands of stores. Funding my Dwolla account took six days from the moment it was taken out of my bank account. It’s absurd. Someone had use of that float for almost a week. The entire corrupt system is ripe for disruption.
I went on to join Ripple’s advisory board and then sat on its board of directors for 4 years. As crypto joined the mainstream – and in too many cases became as scammy and disreputable as the worst of the legit financial system the early idealists sought to replace – I lost a lot of enthusiasm. I didn’t write about it so much and our site that covered crypto, ModernConsensus.com, became more skeptical and even critical of the industry it covered.
Still, it was wonderful to be in on the gold rush in those heady early days. I learned a ton about standing up an entire industry. And as a financial columnist, my first duty was to provide actionable, profitable advice. My last sentence of the column reads: “it’s clear that imaginary money is becoming more real by the day. Meanwhile, I’m stocking up on ripple while it’s still less than a penny apiece.”
With XRP having crossed the $1 threshold long ago and stayed there, that’s a 100x tip. You’re welcome.
