It's nice to see you're still here and posting. I was recently reflecting on the fact that one year ago I founded a local meetup for Bitcoin & cryptos. My main motivation was to find other folks to talk to so I didn't have to abuse the patient ears of my wife and daughter.
I can still remember how breathless people were that short time ago. We were meeting for the first time right at the ALL TIME HIGHS. There was a strong vibe of FOMO and get-rich-quick, something all of us were prone to at the time. I remember needing to take a deep breath and process all the craziness.
The best part of that first meetup was a local financial adviser who played devil's advocate asking, "Seriously, folks. What is all this REALLY worth?" And so we had a great discussion.
We decided to hold two meetups at the time: "big picture" (led my me) and "investing" (led by someone else). I remember having very little interest in the investing side. A few months later, the "investing" meetups fell through. The "big picture" discussions continue to thrive.
We have about 40 people who attend, though get anywhere from 5 - 15 people at a given time. The discussions have been fantastic. It's challenged me to dig deeper and learn more. I've been studying monetary history, distributed systems, blockchain patterns, game theory, investing psychology, macroeconomics. I've also learned to spot people who know what their talking about and weed out the fakers. Together, as a Meetup, we've all gotten smarter. We still have new people showing up, offering new perspectives.
I love the idea that the 2018 theme is #buidl. That's what the year's meant to me.
Thank you for sharing the Andreas. I got my start listening to an interview with him that lit a spark in my brain. I'm still excited. I'm still buidling. I'm grateful to be alive in interesting times. I'm taking full advantage of the downside in prices.
And thank you for still hanging around. Whether or not Steemit makes it, there are a lot of cool people here I will make every effort to follow, wherever they go.
Thanks for your reply Sean!
Your experience with the local meetup is great. I wish we had something like that here. Our Linux User Group talks a bit about crypto, but not that much since the prices are down.
I'm still around and will be posting some on Steem. I found Whaleshares and I really like it, but I'm not about being a platform fanboy for one or the other. It's about connecting with people.
If you'd like, feel free to message me directly using the encrypted Wire messenger. My username is 'matthewdavid'.
I appreciate your thoughtful reply :-)
I'm behind on Steem developments...what's Whaleshares?
Whaleshares is an alternative, or compliment, to Steem (depending on how you look at it). It is a separate blockchain, but currently works similarly to how Steemit works. Changes to the default interface are scheduled to be launched with the next couple months (in private testing now).
I like Whaleshares, as my posts get a lot more comments and interaction there. I was a bit discouraged with Steemit, as few of my posts got any comments. I'm still on Steemit and it is a great way to connect with people, but I'm not seeing it as my only crypto social platform now.
Feel free to check out my profile on Whaleshares.