Crypto Diary 0001: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

First in a series of diary entries about the blockchain and cryptocurrency by Jess Lander.

I’ve noticed something.

People who talk a lot about cryptocurrency typically sound like they’re delivering a TED Talk, or a sermon at an Evangelist church.

Like the thousands of women selling face cream on Facebook via their MLM (multi-level marketing scheme), “crypties” — this is a label I’m giving them, since they don’t seem to have an official one — are incredibly emphatic, so certain that cryptocurrency is the Golden Goose, the one get-rich scheme that actually, truly, for-real-this-time works. Their faces light up like a menorah on the eighth night of Hanukkah and everything they say is just so damn convincing.

The same can be said for the people who believe crypto is just going to be a short blip in our financial history, that any day now, it will be regulated by the government and you’d be a fool to invest your life savings in it.

Needless to say, recent discussions with close family and friends have left me feeling pulled in opposite directions as if on one of those Medieval torture devices. But at the end of the day, despite my very big reservations coupled with a slight worry that this is a modern-day pyramid scheme, I’m getting increasingly crypto curious and can’t help but want to follow Elon Musk right into the proverbial crypto desert.

The fact is, I’m a writer, so I’m unlikely to get rich the old-fashioned way unless I change careers. After months of masochistic scrolling through the California housing market on Zillow, I simply can’t resist the possibility that I could build legitimate wealth with little effort.

The problem is, I’m busy and a little bit lazy. I take calculated risks, which means I don’t want to go trekking into this desert without enough water. And if I’m being honest, I understand very little about cryptocurrency or this “super secure” creation called the blockchain. All of the jargon and talk about HODLing and NFTs and mining makes my head spin. While the desire to learn about it is there, I also have goals to read more books, cook more often, and learn Italian, and I haven’t made much progress on those either.

It doesn’t help that in the months I’ve been seriously contemplating throwing some money into the blockchain, there’s been a crazy crypto crash that made me second guess everything (though it does make this a great time to buy, says every crypty). Then this thing called Dogcoin — which turned out to actually be called Dogecoin — popped up and only added to my confusion.

Did you know that there are actually over 10,000 types of cryptocurrencies in existence beyond the original Bitcoin? So far, I can only name about four of them. Where does one even begin?

Ultimately, I needed a push, which in journalist speak, means a deadline. So this multipart series was literally created to force me into the crazy world of crypto, to do my research, listen to a lot of experts and podcasts, and publicly chronicle my journey so that anyone reading this that also feels completely crypto-inept can learn something, too, in terms they can understand.

So, if I tell you that NFT stands for non-fungible token and you think, “that tells me absolutely nothing,” then this column is for you.

And maybe, just maybe, we can make some money together.