Former Mashable Staffer Watched Friends Make Millions in Crypto, Here’s What She Learned
BY Lauren Biegler ON 3/12/18 AT 10:00 AM
When It All Began
I first started blogging when I was 22. I moved to NYC after graduating from university and found myself lonely and without a community. I felt depressed and frustrated with myself because I had a job, money, and “no reason” to be unhappy when I was able to live in one of the best cites in the world. I decided to take matters into my own hands and started a blog called Living The List. I wrote out 365 things I wanted to do on my New York bucket list, and started to do one a day and post a recap article. This lead to a much bigger creation, and showed me that people love experiences, exploration, and to expand their comfort zone. From there I began to travel and apply the same “list” format to new cities. That’s what landed me in impact production and travel.
The Crypto Summit of 2017
I became interested in crypto last summer, in May of 2017, which l refer to as “The Crypto Summit of 2017.” This was about 4 months before the massive spike in Bitcoin that had the whole world interested in crypto and I was in Cape Cod with my boyfriend and 6 of his friends. They all went to Babson College and are very smart and entrepreneurial individuals. One of them owns a highly successful startup in New York, and another works for LinkedIn, responsible for $10M in quarterly revenue goals. Another is an intelligent programmer who became interested in crypto early on and turned something like $10k into $3M. Luckily for his friends, he tipped them off early, and they were all able to invest when ETH was about $15 per coin (it’s close to $1k per coin now). Another of the friends is a huge crypto enthusiast and has become an Ethereum “influencer” on Instagram and hosts meet-ups teaching people about crypto, specifically ETH. For more, you can find him @ethereumtony.
The first day of our trip, we went to the beach for a “beach day” which quickly became a crypto101 lesson. The programmer friend started to talk about Ethereum, and he was so excited about it I couldn’t help but want to learn more. I knew literally NOTHING about the coin or the technology, so I had to say “wait, you need to start from the beginning because it sounds like you are talking about the plot of The Matrix right now.”
We talked about blockchain, which is what enables digital currency to be 100% transparent because every single transaction is public. Then, you have an array of “coins” that operate on the blockchain technology and these are the digital currency. I think this is where a lot of people get confused, because they think of crypto like a stock, not as a currency. The way it was explained to me is that BTC or any of these coins is like a US dollar, and one day it will be used and exchanged in the marketplace like we use cash and credit cards. There is no physical or tangible way to hold the currency, which also can be hard to wrap your head around.
BTC or any of these coins is like a US dollar, and one day it will be used and exchanged in the marketplace like we use cash and credit cards.
The worth appreciates or depreciates according to how much support there is of the technology, and will accrue worth if more people accept it and start to embrace it. We also talked about mining, which really took a while for me to understand. Because the currency is digital and not regulated by a central system like the government or a bank, it needs energy to run. This comes from the “miners” who are literally providing energy to the currency through their electronics in exchange for crypto. This comes from different machines all over the world, and enables crypto to be open source and free from government control.
What I took away from that weekend was how exciting it could be to have unregulated currency. To some, this is very scary, but to me, I couldn’t embrace the concept more. I am a New Yorker, own a business, travel internationally multiple times a year, don’t carry cash, haven’t had a checkbook in 5 years, trust Venmo, ApplePay and PayPal, and value my time and recourses immensely. I would be the first person to embrace using crypto in my daily life because I can’t stand the process that goes into corporate banking and the amount of time wasted with outdated procedures.
A Faster, Safer, Global Currency
What I like about crypto is that it’s faster, safer, and global. I want to have lightning fast transaction times, no hidden fees, 100% transparency and a global currency that allows me to do business with anyone, anytime, anywhere. In addition, I see a lot of potential with crypto in the non-profit space, which is something I would like to explore more as a “social entrepreneur.” I think there are opportunities for developing countries to stabilize their currency by using crypto, and I think entire projects can be funded by crypto if people were able to make donations with their currency.
Overall, I believe in crypto, and even through some of the enthusiasm has died down around Bitcoin, I think it is here to stay. We have a long way to go before we will see supermarkets accepting the currency, but I do think people want to have more control and access to their own money. There is a lot more education that needs to happen in the space, and I urge you to ask questions, research the basics and don’t feel stupid or discouraged for not understanding. I think I have a 3% understanding of the actual space, but being literate and able to talk about it has opened doors for me and put new opportunities on my plate I didn’t think would be there.
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More on me 👇 The Social Entreprenuer
The Founder & CEO of RipplEffect
A Co-Founder of WeJourney
I’ve Got Socials Too 😎
IG — @biegz_
Twitter — @biegler
