For the past 8 years, I’ve been a crypto addict. During that time, I’ve spent approximately infinite hours checking crypto prices, crypto twitter, and listening to crypto podcasts. But 8 years (that’s 96 months!) is a long time, and recently, I couldn’t help noticing my addiction seems to be waning.

I’m spending less time staring at charts, less time on crypto twitter, and way less time listening to crypto podcasts. It’s hard to say exactly what’s to blame. Maybe it’s because of the lack of an alt season. Or maybe the twitter algo has ruined my feed. Or maybe it’s because all the crypto podcasts I used to listen to only seem to talk about the same things over and over again, and none of those things are what I believe makes crypto interesting to begin with.

Which begs the question, what do I find interesting about crypto?

My answer? Crypto’s potential to change civilization as we know it.

The reason I became so addicted to this space was because it captured my imagination. It not only opened my eyes to a new way of seeing the world, but it gave me a glimpse of what it made possible.

I remember the first time I experienced a 0-conf transaction is when I finally got it. It showed me how cryptocurrencies can offer us a new way to interact with one another, almost like magic.

But over the last few years, this industry seems to have all but forgotten what made crypto so exciting to begin with, which is why I was pleasantly surprised by the latest episode of The Bitcoin Takeover podcast hosted by Vlad Costea where he interviews Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

During their three hour long conversation, they touched upon everything from crypto history, the various characters that have been part of that history, the technical, political and social challenges that come with developing a project like Ethereum, the importance of privacy and decentralization, the cypherpunk ethos, and much more.

But I’m not here to rehash their entire conversation. All I want to do is highlight three key things I took away from it. One about Vitalik, one about Vlad, and one about myself.

The first takeaway is how impressed I was by Vitalik. I’ve always seen him as one of those rare intellectually honest people in crypto, but this interview also showed me how based he is as well. I loved how he talked about his mistakes and his regrets, even if they were when he was just a teenager. He’s not afraid to be himself, to say what he thinks and believes, or to call people out. I don’t know who’s in Dan Larimer’s posse, but I wouldn’t want to be one of them. Mostly, though, what I loved was when he talked about Ethereum’s values, because I believe eCash also shares those same values. It helped me remember why I’m still here, and why I still believe in crypto, because of people like him, and the members of Bitcoin ABC, who share the same mission. Here’s what Vitalik said: “So I just try to focus on the things that I can change, and focus on improving the parts of Ethereum that like I think can improve, and should improve, and so we can do our best … making a platform that can keep humanity open, and free, and safe for the 21st century.”

My second takeaway is how impressed I was by Vlad. I only became aware of Vlad and his podcast when he interviewed Amaury last year. While I’ve been pretty much following his work ever since, this was probably the first interview after that Deadalnix episode that I watched in full. It made me appreciate how much Vlad knows about the space, and how obsessed he is with the technology. Despite mostly being a Bitcoiner, his knowledge of the ETH ecosystem was eye opening. He also has a way of asking questions and drawing out answers that are interesting for non-technical people like myself. The other thing I realized was that he’s been doing this since February 2019. It proves to me how passionate he really is, that he isn’t driven by his audience, but by his passion for this space. Hope he gets to interview many more interesting people in the years to come.

My final takeaway has to do with myself. While I have at times tried to create crypto content as well, specifically for the eCash community, seeing how good Vlad was made me realize that I will never become as knowledgeable about crypto as he is. I don’t have the will, or the desire to learn about every new development, or dig into other projects, or go back and learn all the history. But what I do want to do is be able to use eCash to further my own goals. To make this site a place where others can experience using eCash the way I did way back when, but also a place where people come to enjoy my writing. Everyone’s dream is to get paid doing what they love. I love writing, and my dream is that eCash makes it possible for me to finally get paid doing what I love.

(FYI, I’ll be interviewing Amaury myself in a little more than a week, so stay tuned. Until then, enjoy Vlad’s interview of Vitalik below.)

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