This Was My Gateway to Crypto — Part 1
#023 Dad, the Crypto Catalyst
If there was ever a symbolic photograph for crypto I’d offer up this 2018 shot I took of a golden-suited man hovering above the Iberian Sea on a water jet pack.
I’d captured the photo from a catamaran sailing towards Es Vedrà while leaning against the edge of the boat’s handrail and nudged between conference guests.
It was a time of promises and crime.
The Seeds of Entry
When I was first introduced into the blockchain and Web3 space it wasn’t by choice. A vigil for a woman I never met was held at Venice Beach in 2014 and I picked up an attendee.
The woman’s death in Singapore was preceded by the fall of Mt. Gox, a Japanese Bitcoin exchange that had experienced a number of hacks resulting in the loss of $600 Mln USD of customer money.
Identifying the culprits and returning the funds was deemed unsolvable and it brought a lot of concern about blockchain’s future.
Three years would pass before I entered into the blockchain space, and within the years after the woman’s vigil I would be told more about her. The details of a dead woman who meant a lot to so many people aren’t about to be written here though — to do so would cross the boundaries of ethical writing.
But what I can tell you is that her death haunts me. All the crypto and blockchain deaths — and murders — from that time haunt me.
Dad, The Crypto Catalyst
In 2014 I was still a classroom teacher and there were challenges that began to compound for me in Los Angeles.
Compassion fatigue had begun to set in. Helping seventh graders — who’d just broken up their young romance over some misunderstanding via a third-party whisper — find a way to rekindle friendship instead of falling too easily into the emotional, “I hate you!” trappings, was beautiful to lead and witness. But on top of every other administrative and parental communication demand that was placed on me then, the role zapped the energy stores out of me.
As I approached thirty, other realities set in too.
The school district sent me to a conference where a keynote speaker lamented how no one in the room would ever be able to purchase a house in Los Angeles on our salary — ever. I hadn’t focused on my salary as much as the folks of industry because part of your preparation in college to become a teacher is to just understand that you’re choosing a career for the kids — not the money.
The hurdle for me though was gestation compensation. The natal nine. Pregnancy pay. None of these are official terms, but they uncannily point to the remuneration reality that for every twelve months in a year, teachers are paid for the length of time they can be pregnant. Nine (or ten) months of pay, with two or three months in which you have to find another source of income.
So, the caveat that kept me really worried though was that in 2014 I had just been granted custody of my father by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and that responsibility terrified me.
An agent arrived at my home in L.A. after an investigation had been conducted on my dad’s first wife — not my mom. The Veterans Affairs Department had concluded that she’d been stealing my dad’s money while I had been living abroad in South Korea two years prior. So, he effectively became mine to care for.
The agent complimented the quaint L.A. house that I shared with my roommates. I let her rest in her assumptions — that it was mine, and that the home’s soft bohemian motifs and furniture made me appear like a responsible, fully grown adult on a teaching salary, and not one of four roommates.
During our meeting the agent outlined my financial duties, and she explained that if I lost income or was audited by the IRS I could lose custody of my father and he would be given to the state of Texas, where he lived, and granted a state-appointed fiduciary.
All I could think was, Who would I be if I lost custody of my dad? I wasn't going to let that happen. So, it felt like leaving education for industry was going to be the best move for my dad and I. I’d have the flexibility to visit him more often, manage things better, and ensure he lived out the rest of his years well.
Gateway to Crypto
The first step out of the classroom and into tech was a job I got excited about in the pet industry. But after a few short months in I was overcome in the near-similar sadness that I thought I was departing from.
My experience in the pet industry was terribly sad. I’m not saying sad in a pejorative way. The pet industry, like every industry, has its own pockets of corruption. When you couple that sort of corruption with pet-loving people there’s a horror that my overly-tender self was not prepared to face.
There’s the media side of the pet industry with the rags-to-riches videos — yet for every triumphant video there’s some large number of animals that were not so fortunate. There’s the underground pet market, rife with baby animals stolen away from their habitat yet coveted by unawares who may or may not know any better.
There are pet food companies who knowingly sell cancer causing, low-grade food. Pet owners that make repeated, yet tragic mistakes in the care of their animals and the high rate of veterinary deaths by suicide from repeated exposure to these unique emotional stressors.
There were other factors that made me question whether I’d made the right choice, but after twenty-seven months in the pet space, a doorway opened up to Artificial Intelligence (2017’s pre-ChatGPT AI) and Blockchain. So, I openly walked right through those doors.
I told my dad that I’d be working on Skynet. He laughed from his bed and told me that he thought I’d really enjoy it. But I had no idea that in doing so I was entering into one of the world’s most unhinged/volatile industries.
Many thanks to Foster for its writing circles and other writerly resources.
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