A Journey thru crypto and into the Shadows

When I Found Bitcoin, admittedly, it was for the wrong reasons.
Honestly, the first thing I thought was “ so..how do I make real money out of this magical internet money?”.
Yeah.. i saw the use potential, but did I really “get it” as in get what it had the potential to do? of course not..dollar signs were flashing.
Ironically it wasn’t until i switched on the news one evening late in 2013 that i started to understand.That’s when reality hit me in the face…hard!
That ‘’Magical internet money” that useful but seemingly at the time digital fad had now grown up…and was worth $1200 USD a pop.
When reality hits..reality hurts and it hit hard.It was then I began to re-trace my steps and really try to grasp the ramifications of my failed hindsight.
I remembered the ads on the wiki selling pizza for BTC i remember laughing about that and finding this amusing, it wasn’t funny anymore, as i realised my magical get rich scheme to turn magical internet money into “real money”, had not only failed, it had backfired and the universe was now persisting to rub my face in it..facepalm.
If i had only been seeing the bigger picture at the time maybe things would have been different, but like they say everything happens for a reason.
I knew i had blown the opportunity of a lifetime and felt pretty stupid about it, but after a few weeks of wall staring and endless beer i began to come to my senses i began reading more about bitcoin and understanding the idea behind the product
i started noticing other similar “ digital currencies “ Litecoin, per coin and all at a fraction of the price of bitcoin, i began wondering if any of these alt coins as i came to know them had the potential to repeat what bitcoin did, i decided it was worth the gamble..two problems, I’m broke with no job and i have never used an exchange as i had always bought directly from miners, and it all looked a little bit confusing.
I started looking for alternative ways to buy in, and that’s when i stumbled upon miners selling its on eBay a little over market value but at the time i didn’t care, i wanted in!
I bought many of these Alts Infinitecoin(IFC), Feathercoin(FTC)began learning more and more, began to respect the technology and the fact that Bitcoin was not built to be a pyramid scheme or a get rich ticket it was built for a “revolution” and it was unfurling before my eyes.
that’s when one caught my eyes, Quark it was innovative for its time boasting of brand new and unique algorithms, marketing its self as more secure than BTC with faster transaction speeds, it was exactly what i was looking for and Quarks liberal-minded community made it even more appealing.
next problem..mums credit card is maxed out from buying alt coins thru PayPal…time to scab off my dad for a change.
so i hit my dad up and he’s as broke as me but lucky we don’t need much as a miner is selling 50k quark for $29AUD my old man’s broke but he has a jar full of coins he has found in old cars lying around his property as he scraps metal for money that he says i can borrow, so i count it out and it came to about $296-$297.
So I knew i had enough and luckily for me he had enough to sell and I ended up buying 500k quark for $290AUD and honestly i thought maybe i make a little but i wasn’t over optimistic about it, I had done a lot more research since buying Quark, i was really starting to understand Bitcoin as a whole,warts and all.
you see back when i first bought into Bitcoin it was sold as completely anonymous as in, its not a bank so you need not disclose personal information, therefore, you are anonymous.
well apparently not so, i began to understand that this although in a way factual at best misleading.
i learnt there was multiple ways to identify senders and receivers of bitcoin transactions, IP tracking, blockchain analysis etc i began to look for coins that were innovative, i wasn’t interested in faster speeds and transaction times, everybody was trying to push that sales pitch and all the new algorithms seemed unnecessary and over hyped, i wasn’t buying it, bitcoin was secure and reasonably fast! faster then my bank, that’s for sure, i wanted coins that fixed the weaknesses of Bitcoin not improved on its already incredible strengths.
Then bill still happened…
Bill still began to publicly endorse my newly acquired investment Quark and the Price was going nuts, it looked like it would repeat what BTC did, I was shocked,amazed It was too good to be true, and yes.. it was, because as fast as it rose as fast it fell, and there i stood..holding the bag…well not quite.
i ended up selling and walked away with a good enough profit to pay my debts off completely, go on a holiday and then come back and get ready to find work, i didn’t think this crypto investment stuff was my thing, at that point i was a fierce fan of the movement and the technology but the investment side of it seemed like a mugs game, and it seemed a pointless scramble to pump the next coin, scams were left and right it was easy to make money but far, far easier to lose it, it wasn’t worth it i had decided, but my fantasy of some type of “ Digital Anarchy” with Bitcoin and crypto had grown to a point of romanticism, Bitcoin was defiance to “the man” and as a younger bloke who had worked for “the man” Since the tender age of 14, I found that defiance..beautiful.
then it happened!
A trend began unlike the others, it was not faster speeds or better Algo’s it was what i had been sticking around for just in case.
A trend of coins claiming to offer anonymity
They began popping up everywhere and with the few thousand i had left after my holiday i started buying a few here and there, Darkcoin(DASH) was my first but as more and more options became available i began to diversify monero(XMR) Quazarcoin(QCN) Xcurrency (XC) all of them had great teams behind them and communities, especially Quazarcoin but they all lacked something.
I didn’t like dark coins master nodes set up but it was really nice otherwise, monero and quazarcoin seamed promising but development was slow paced and it seamed the cryptonote base was harder to build atop then the bitcoin based coins so XC seamed like the better option for me personally as an investor.
but then i found it.
after a “trip” to the beach one night i returned to study the altcoin section of bitcointalk.org when i stumbled upon my shall i call it “holy grail”.
it was boasting better speeds better Algo’s and anonymity plus encrypted chat! and they were younger then XC and developing faster, the decision was made
it’s name was shadowcoin (now Shadowcash SDC) and it had me hooked already i bought what i could and began closely following development, these guys worked hard and the community was only small but very close knit.
the releases just kept coming and if that wasn’t enough my investment was already up x5 in just a few months, it was a good return but i was hooked.. selling didn’t even occur to me.
as the weeks turned to months my enthusiasm only built, this project was unlike any other i had come across, i was impressed, to say the least, they were a small team with no funding, no premine, no ipo, ico, none of that, just hard work and dedication and the releases were not only fast..they were nice.
the look and feel of the wallet was better than anything i had seen up to that point everything artistically articulate, and the tech was really taking shape.
then they announced it.
The shadow project developers came out and announced it was their intention to build a decentralised market, a market with no governing authority to tell you what and what you may not buy and sell, it was groundbreaking vision in my mind, and something i don’t think i could of come up with, the combination of a cryptocurrency offering optional anonymity plus encrypted communication and to top it off a decentralised market to top it off, it was in my opinion, the first breath of a revolution.
the concept of the combination of these features into one application was too perfect for my mind to conceive.
it was from my perspective more then a currency but a platform where the crypto currency is just one aspect or piece of a larger decentralised infrastructure, it was the pieces of a puzzle making up an entire enclosed economy a private economy! controlled by no man and governed by no law, it was what bitcoin was invented for yet had drifted away from.
it was at this point i realised the significance of this project and actually how important it was, while other projects chased the almighty dollar the shadow project seamed legitimately unhappy about the erosion of the basic and god given right “privacy” and they were determined to do something about it.
they didn’t use hype or PR stunts they just kept quietly and consistently developing never straying from the original vision of “built by the people, for the people” their determination even against hardships to deliver a product to the world doesn’t even know it needs yet, was inspiring, to say the least.
so for two years i held my bag of shadowcash while others bought other coins and got rich, i held on awaiting each update with anticipation, because i believed in this project and do more so today than ever.
the road has been rough and rocky with low prices, a bug that was found and fixed, and an endless slander campaign against the project by opposition, inadequate donations as well as all the normal everyday stuff I’m sure our developers have to deal with but they stayed true to the project and true to their supporters/
so today on the evening of the shadow projects big release(whatever it is?? do you know?) i just wanted to reflect a little on my own journey and thank the team for their loyalty to our community.
when i invest in something i invest in the minds behind it and the minds behind shadow cash and the shadow project are the reason i know shadow cash will one day to be a very important part of human history.
privacy is a human right and the developers at shadow project are fighting to restore that right, without demanding funding or recognition, i think that really says something.
dadon