down the crypto rabbit hole

i was brought into the cryptocurrency world by @stellabelle just as she brought me into the #hive world.

we met about 10 years ago at an ad hoc group of disparate would-be urban sustainability pioneers trying to "save" a neighborhood in kansas city, mo. from the inevitable real estate speculation then gripping the city due to the number of property seizures for back taxes. at the time the city was sell these properties cheap - sometimes for only a few thousand dollars. needless to say this attracted a diverse cross section of people. many of the neighborhoods had fallen into disrepair over the decades, mainly due to middle class (i.e.white) flight to the suburbs and the resulting cheap property prices that encouraged out-of-state ownership. these houses became rentals that were rarely and poorly maintained to the point of near collapse in many cases. this was not unique to kansas city, it was happening all over the country - many cities were feeling the pain.

we were all searching for a place to fit in, both physically and figuratively. most of us wanted to create a home, others were looking for a home - having lost our roots. and we were looking for like minded individuals to share the experience with and to get support from. we had that for a short glorious time until internal pressures flung us apart in the end.

stella and i stayed in touch through facebook for awhile then she started posting about this new social network - steemit! so after reading her rhapsodic posts, i joined too! so now i'm down that rabbit hole. and i'm posting and making "money" too, not much but it's better than "likes" - you can't spend likes unless you're mark zuckerberg. i was loving it until disaster struck - i had been using a new ms surface tablet that friends had got for me to replace my defunct laptop. it was knocked off the table i was using, breaking the screen and crushing the power switch. i had been planning on exchanging some of my steem dollars to get the laptop repaired but was unable to backup my keys for access to my steemit account and wallet for use on another computer before the big crash. so ended my first brush with blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.

flash forward a few months, my very generous brother paypals me 200$, so the first thing buy parts to get the laptop up and running because i know it isn't enough to fix the surface so i can at least stay active and in touch electronically with friends. as i limped along on an unpowered and outdated years old laptop i dreamed of escaping the zuckerberg trap.

so lo and behold stella starts tweeting about a new platform she's using - #hive! now i trust her, her knowledge about technology and science runs wide and deep so i'm going to follow where she leads.

now i'm om #hive too!

in our next episode, surviving a stroke