It seems like yesterday when the tweet arrived in December of 2016 with a notification about a blockchain based social media platform named Steemit. As someone who has been involved in the cryptocurrency space since 2011, it was a rather delightful sight to know that someone had invented a means by which one could earn value from the content they create, and share with a community. Upon discovering Bitcoin on a Friday afternoon in November of 2011, it instantly struck me as a revolutionary financial product. The prospect of being able to transfer value without the need of a middleman was overwhelming.

Because it was created as an open-source product, it was soon replicated, and re-branded under other names with slightly different characteristics. One of these was Litecoin, which was later followed by Dogecoin. The one that particularly caught my attention was one called Peercoin as it was the first proof-of-stake token in contrast with the proof-of-work system that Bitcoin was created on. In spite of all the varieties of assets, they were only as useful as the holders of them intended them to be. And for the longest time, it seemed like no one was really that interested in doing useful things with these new found assets apart from holding on to them in hopes that they would increase in value over time. The first major use case for cryptocurrency was for the purchase of contraband through a website called the Silk Road. This is why Steemit came across with the impact that it did when brought to my attention.

Over the years, the market has shown that cryptocurrency has two value propositions: Store of value, and the earning of yield. After being in the space for a few years, the desire to do something that would allow me to live off of my holdings began to materialize. Steemit was the first opportunity that allowed for the pursuit of this. Then, in the summer of 2017, someone began hosting a cryptocurrency meetup group in the local area. For the first six months or so, it seems like him and I were the only people who showed up every week, so we got to know one another fairly well. I would tell him about my Steemit activity, and he would tell me about different income prospects he was engaged in by participating in the mining of Bitcoin with other investors. These operations required more of a capital outlay than I had available to get involved in. The mining of Bitcoin was something I desired to do since the beginning, but was always just beyond my reach for one reason or another.

Eventually he told me about a company that allowed people to participate in the mining of Bitcoin at a much more reasonable price. That was the first of several potential yield earning opportunities that I pursued over the next year, only to have all of them fail, and me losing everything I put into them. This would include all of my Litecoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and a large amount of Bitcoin itself.

Another person that was brought to my attention in 2017 was Richard Heart. He has a YouTube channel, and would livestream fairly regularly. It didn’t take more than a minute for me to realize that this is one of the smartest people in the space, so I always prioritized his content above everyone else’s. After the price of Bitcoin began to dip in 2018, he started talking about a product he was working on called Bitcoin Hex, which was meant to serve as a yield earning token. Although I didn’t understand the mechanics of it right away, I knew that if he would build it, it would work.

The name of the product would eventually launch under the simpler name of Hex in December of 2019, and has continued to operate without error or downtime ever since. Not only that, it is the first cryptocurrency product that was designed with the opportunity of earning yield without the user having to surrender custody of your assets to a middle-man like the other operations I encountered in the past. This invention has since made me independently wealthy.

But more than that, it has garnered a community of people from all walks of life that I have come to love, and have spent a great deal of effort with in cultivating, supporting, and upholding different relationships with various people. This is turn prioritized my time away from Steemit while working to becoming financially established.

While taking a walk this afternoon, which was documented on the actifit app, and posted previously, the desire to re-visit Steemit came upon me after discovering that my account was still active while playing around with my new computer. The fact of the matter is I love to type as a way of documenting the things of life more than any form of content media. Of course, I did sign up on D-Tube also, and will possibly post things there too.

So with that, I am happy to have some time to engage with this community again. I hope to get around, and get to know some of you as well.