2019.
(This read — and honestly any other one — would be nicer if you had any playlist from duduke playing in the background)
I still struggle with what exactly these year reviews should be, despite having already written 5 of them (this one being the 6th).
I woke up this afternoon (had a long ass irresponsible night) feeling like I didn’t have anything to talk about per this year until I started looking at pictures on my phone and found that I was wrong.
As someone who is perpetually unsatisfied, I’m always looking forward, with ideas as to how he can kill that dissatisfaction tomorrow. I think the purpose, or the advantage, of these reviews is that they help me pause & look back…and sometimes I feel less “unfinished”.
BuyCoins
BuyCoins is most of my (work) life now. I sometimes can’t believe what has happened thus far. In January, we had just moved into our office space and now:
- There are 10 amazing, thoughtful, hardworking & communicative people working here. There’s still a lot to figure out, but I feel strongly that we have the right people. The culture at BuyCoins has more than exceeded what I imagined and it’s more to do with the team than anything I’ve done.
- People have bought & sold over N10bn (~$30m) worth of cryptocurrency on BuyCoins. For context, in 2018, the volume traded was less than N1.5bn (~$3.84m).
There’s a lot more to say about features (NGNT, Coinlock, Instant P2P) and our users but my co-founder Tomiwa is going to publish a “BuyCoins 2019 Review” soon. I’ll edit this post & link to that as soon as it’s done. Here it is.
Building a (cryptocurrency) product & its underlying company is hard, doing it in Nigeria is borderline insane. Despite knowing that most of the work is yet to be done, it’s difficult not to feel good about where we are now, especially considering where we’re coming from.
Writing
Little Bitcoin Book
I co-wrote a book. This was a fantastic experience. I & seven other amazing people in the industry, got together in some (sick) house in Redwood City and knocked out the Little Bitcoin Book in under a week. It’s a very good, entry-level (no technical jargon) window into the world of Bitcoin. I’m really happy to have been part of the effort to democratize this knowledge beyond the confines of the technically savvy bitcoiners.
Articles
I wrote just 6 articles this year:
- A Nigerian’s Guide to Starting a Career in Tech was the most popular. It was featured on Medium’s OneZero publication and has been viewed 25,000+ times at the time of this writing.
- It doesn’t matter what she’s wearing and What does “Men hate women” mean? are my contributions to Mensplainr this year. Mensplainr is a publication started by my friends & I, where we repeat things about feminism that women have been saying forever, in hopes that our fellow men will listen to us.
- I published the email I sent to my parents about my decision to drop out.
- There’s also this article about the daft games we used to play back in secondary school and another Ruby on Rails technical article.
Duduke, a music playlist newsletter
A few months ago, my friend (Temitayo Ayorinde) and fellow music lover started a newsletter. Every two weeks, we send two curated playlists of the songs we’re feeling the most at the time.
Thus far, we’ve sent out 8 issues (16 playlists). Today, we published a “Best of 2019” issue, check it out.
Arodan, a graphic novel
I’ve been slowly writing a graphic novel for a few years now and in 2019, the first chapter came to a sort of completion. I’m thankful to godofironart for bringing my words to life and to Maria Somorin & Kola Tubosun for helping with Yorùbá mythology & history.
You can read the current #1 draft here. I have no idea how long I’ll leave that up, but it’s certainly not going to be there forever. Also, reading on desktop isn’t the best experience right now but mobile works perfectly.
Speaking
I was on two panels this year.
- The Olso Freedom Forum in Norway. We talked about “Bitcoin Around the World”- how it’s being used, especially in relation to human rights. This session was recorded and released as a podcast episode on What Bitcoin Did.
- Also in August, at Singularity University’s Global Summit in San Fransisco. The topic was “Protecting Human Rights with Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency”
Misc
Side Projects
Tix — a service that makes it dumb easy for any one to sell event tickets in Nigeria launched earlier this year. F.Merry & I had been working really closely with event veterans Nosa Oyegun and Folayemi Agusto (the Eat.Drink.Lagos team) to bring v1 to life.
Hair & Tattoos
I got two new tattoos this year (bringing my total to 3).
My hair underwent a lot of dramatic changes this year: For most of the year I had locs, which I wore in many different styles. Towards the end of the year, I cut it all off and dyed it pink then purple, then a darker purple, then grey.
Now it’s really short and default black, but that won’t last for long.
Drawing
I like to draw but I rarely ever do. I did more this year. I’m not particularly impressed with the quantity or quality of the drawings but I’m genuinely glad I did more of it. With things like drawing, repetition is the only way to grow.
Travel
I went to three new places this year:
- Oslo, Norway (such a neat, well organized city)
- Ghana (loved it so much, I’m here again as I write this)
- Miami, US (went with relatively new friends, loved it. Will go back)
Fitness
I was fairly consistent with working out this year. I completed my Apple Watch activity goal ~60% of all the days in the year. This means I worked out ~4.2 days a week. This is obviously not a nuanced picture as I did much better in the second half of the year.
I just need to figure out eating healthier & drinking less and then I’d be satisfied/look how I want, but it does seem as though I’ve figured out how to work out consistently throughout the year.
I’m actually now certain that there’s other stuff I’m missing, but I need to go get food & prepare to party into 2020.
Namaste.
