Remember in the past when you went to a liquor store in the US, and all they had was Budweiser and other flavorless crappy beers?

Now when you go to get beer at those same liquor stores, you’re lucky if you can even decide on a beer brand. The variety of beers has exploded and brought small breweries to everyone’s backyard. The monocultured beer era is over and the craft beer revolution has blossomed, bringing with it unique flavors, small batches and immense variety.

I think the same thing that happened to Budweiser is happening to money.

Source: Budweiser website

After being immersed in cryptocurrencies for more than a year solid, I can never think about the US dollar in the same way again. Every time I ask my daughter what currency she wants to be paid in (she’s my assistant at my newly launched Bitcoin School KC), I remind her that if I pay in her US Dollars, her money won’t grow. But I tell her if she gets paid in Bitcoin, her money will have the chance to grow, maybe even double, triple or quadruple (or more) in the future.

Money now comes in different flavors, textures, philosophies, meanings and styles.

The most amazing part of digital currency is that it’s programmable. Money has rules, purposes and can represent ideas, futuristic concepts, solutions to problems that have plagued humans since humans began. And it is created according to mathematical rules, not arbitrary decisions by governments.

Digital money has become inextricably weaved into the fabric of ideas. You cannot separate a digital coin from the philosophical foundation on which it rests. (Shitcoins are the only exception.) Money is now alive and we are all free to choose which kind of programmable money we love. I’m a blogger/vlogger/writer, so my crypto beer of choice is Steem.

Pixabay

I feel sad every time I have to convert any cryptocurrency into US Dollars. Converting to dollars means that my precious coins die, and they have no more chances of growing, doubling or fulfilling a mission.

Converting my Bitcoin to Dollars feels the exact same as buying a can of crappy Budweiser beer. There’s no flavor, no philosophy, no depth, no chance for it to delight anyone. There’s not even a good chance of getting high from it. It’s common, flat and boring, a monoculture of the mind.

I was never really interested in money before I discovered Bitcoin.

Having an unhealthy attachment to money always seemed like a disease to me. I was interested in ideas more than anything else prior to 2016. I had a bad opinion of people who were filthy rich so people like Zuckerberg didn’t really impress me. Inventors, writers, artists and visionaries were the ones I admired more than anyone. Creators always seemed to be the most important people for society and the planet.

Now, I have an entirely different outlook on money, solutions, technology, the future and the connection between abundance and cryptocurrency. This is mainly because I am in a much better financial situation than I have ever been in my entire life.

I finally have time to think instead of rushing around like a chicken with its head cut off and Bitcoin (via Steem) is responsible for that shift.

I believe that different cryptocurrency coins are acting like a huge redistribution of wealth and this trend will most likely just continue growing. This summer was the first time in history that ICO fundraising surpassed that of Venture Capital, in terms of total funds:

And the connections between abundant ideas, nature and cryptocurrency definitely exists. Nature continues on in a very organic way without human intervention. No one controls the thunderstorms (yet). Nature is open-source. So are our ideas. The explosion of craft beers points to the fact that humans love diversity and different flavors over one generic type.

It is only the tiny beatings of Grinch-sized hearts that have stifled the flow of money and refused to let open-source become the norm.

Scarcity has been programmed into our existing system, in order to keep those in power continually in power at any cost. In short, I see now with clear eyes, that the system is indeed rigged. I had always suspected it was, but now that I am officially out of the matrix, I am living proof that the corporate cog system is antithetical to freeing the human mind.

I spent the last 7 years attempting to get free and failed.

Freedom for me means being able to cultivate ideas without interference from a “job”. Jobs to me were too one-dimensional and boring. I always over-performed at most of my jobs and generally received good raises, but I was never satisfied. I felt that there was no job for my overly curious mind.

I tried everything including entrepreneurship.

Basically, it boiled down to this:

I sucked at building a “personal brand” because at heart, I am not a marketer, but an idea person.
Self-help gurus gave me advice:

Stick to your “niche”.
Always create brand awareness.
Stay on message.
Be consistent with your “brand.”

The idea that a human can be reduced to a ‘brand’ is a repulsive thought.

None of those self-help gurus understood me and who I really am. It is the discovery and sharing of brand-new ideas that is my greatest passion in life. I am not stingy with my ideas, for I have no fear of them running out.

It turns out that my “brand” is a constantly shifting set of new ideas that are shared with others. So, Steemit is an ideal platform for what I want to accomplish in life and cryptos move at lightning speed, which I love. You see, my plans always involved this one thing which regular entrepreneurship didn’t include: the gift economy.

Variety and diversity are aligned perfectly with my mode of abundance and diversity thinking. Ideas are abundant within us. Money should be equally abundant, diverse, purpose-oriented and infused with ideas.

Money without ideas is set to go extinct.

When I hold a $5 bill in my hand, I feel no pulse, no purpose.

Pixabay

Once you get immersed in cryptocurrency, you will soon realize that the “real world”, (or Matrix) sets humans up for failure on a massive scale. We are the only species that hoard wealth to an extreme degree. There is of course hoarding of cryptocurrency, and it doesn’t solve the greed problem overnight, but I have seen with my own eyes and own life how the redistribution of wealth could change the world in profound ways. If slaves become economically stable, there will be no good reason for them to risk their lives working in sweatshops. Slaves could potentially become free.

In the past and recent times, money has been the thing that doesn’t follow nature’s design of abundance. Well, that is beginning to shift. And it will continue to shift, too.

The idea that money can become a vast and infinite variety of fascinating ideas is why I am interested in cryptocurrency. Well, I’ll be honest, if I hadn’t discovered cryptocurrency, I’d still be in massive debt and probably just barely scraping by. Decentralized economies are a better fit for my personality than centralized ones. Why? Because I am an independent thinker who doesn’t like to be bossed around, and who also doesn’t enjoy bossing others around. Centralized authority hierarchies are at odds with my innate personality.

I prefer to wade in the sea of fascinating and sparkling new digital coins because they represent a lot more than just money. They are the true embodiment of revolutionary ideas.

Cryptocurrency is like Christmas every day for idea freaks.

Here are some coins I’m currently studying (not yet investing in) and links to best resources:

EOS:
short: Smart Contract Blockchain Operating System
official website: https://eos.io/

NEO:
short: A Chinese Ethereum
Read this article by Daniel Jeffries before you do anything: https://hackernoon.com/is-neo-the-one-67799886b78f
Oddly, I couldn’t connect to NEO’s website at the time of writing this article.

Decentraland:
short: Decentralized Virtual Reality
official website: https://decentraland.org/

IOTA:
short: Tangle for the Internet of Things
official website: https://iota.org/

I no longer day trade cryptocurrencies. Instead, I focus my time on researching new coins and investing in the ones I think are valuable or solve something that has not yet been solved. I’m in the long-term game.

This article was first published on Medium: https://medium.com/@stellabelle/cryptocurrencies-are-the-craft-beers-of-money-6a25391c7d2d

About the author:
Stellabelle is a writer, entrepreneur and blockchain flâneur. Connect with her on Steemit. Her first book, Un-crap Your Life is now available on Amazon. (I looked at Peerplays today, but was wondering if there is any other Steem marketplace?)

If you haven't voted for @teamsteem as a Witness, please consider doing so today. Also submit your video to my Steemfest2 Giveaway soon. Deadline is Aug. 31! Go here to learn how to submit your entry for a free paid trip to Steemfest2: https://steemit.com/steemfest/@stellabelle/win-a-trip-to-steemfest-submit-a-3-minute-video